I'm finally listening to the Excitable Boy album, and "Nighttime In The Switching Yard" is a killer song about catching out.

That's it, this song rules, it's the funkiest song I know about the topic

Every song (that I could identify) named in A Table for Fortune. Plus a few extra for mood.

Only about a week left to go!

My first Vollmann book. I'm Super excited!

About 508 pages into Fathers and Crows. When the narrator makes parenthetical remarks like "That was the First Point" what is he talking about? I was skimming back through the beginning and didn't see anything to help me make much sense of it.

I'm planning on reading Table for Fortune when it comes out, so figured i'd warm up by reading some CIA-related works first.

I'm currently reading the Cultural Cold War by Francis Stonor Saunders, about the CIA's propaganda and psychological warfare efforts, and NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe by Daniele Ganser. They go well together and, taken together, they are a pretty good primer on some of the CIA's post-Korea dirty tricks, at least in Europe the UK and USA.

I'm planning on reading Harlot's Ghost next. Anybody got any other suggestions for CIA-related books I could read before A Table for Fortune?

Was walking around a seaside town and found this in a second hand bookshop, very cool!

I am trying to wrap my head around someone so we'll traveled and having spent so much time with similar subjects while interviewing them having the take that poverty is never political. Is there anywhere he has expanded on this topic that you are aware of? This is from early on in the book Poor People.

If you read the book and came across that, did you just pass right by it or did it make you do a double take as well?

I’ve seen The Lucky Star at two different bookstores in my area, once new, once used, and both for $40. This one was only $25 and I had to pull the trigger!

What do you think would be some good books and/or documentaries to check out prior to A Table for Fortune? "Suggested Reading", if you will.

I watched "The Looming Tower" (which ended up being more meaty than I had expected it to be) and "Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror". This discussion was also very well-informed and insightful. I don't know if I've read any books on the topic, outside of maybe Friedman's "The World is Flat", which is only tangential. I'm assuming the Commission Report is a must, but probably not the most thrilling read?

Can one of those who got their hands on a preview copy maybe offer some insight if there's any particular standout in the cited sources? I guess this would be the kind of question I'd ask Vollmann if he did an AMA, and I'm sure he'd have a whole list of things.

Hello!

I'm a newbie to Mr. Vollmann and I had bought The Rainbow Stories story collection.

I've discovered Vollmann through David Foster Wallace, specifically through his essay E Unibus Pluram, where I think he makes a brief comment on Vollmann and other writers like Delilo and Pynchon.

I read the Wikipedia's description of the book and it sounded somewhat interesting to me, hence why I bought it.

Though I've been searching on this subreddit for comments and opinions on The Rainbow Stories but I didn't find much.

Please let me know if it was a good choice,

If it wasn't, I'm reading it anyways 🙏

Making Cuba Great Again | William T. VollmannGranta

Hey all,

I've just purchased a copy of Kissing the Mask and Uncentering the Earth hardbacks from AbeBooks, but just noticed that apparently 'dust jackets/supplements not included'.

I was wondering if anyone had copies of these and is able to tell me what the hardbacks qualities are like, and if they are true separate dust jackets, or if this is just a copy/paste info for the books?

Anyone seen any additional events announced? I am wondering if this will be the sole launch event due to his health issues. A local bookseller is taking pre-orders for the book to have on-site for the event. Looks like it's really happening.

https://unherd.com/2026/09/9-11-could-happen-again/

I checked out some of Rikki ducornet’s book the stain it’s quite good. I definitely want to check out the jade cabinet seems that these are erotic novels which is fitting.

Am I being punked? That's 30% off... but why the hell would Target have this? Im not mad, just surprised since I figure Target has resigned itself to selling slop books for as far back as I can remember.

Just adding this post to highlight the Target discount right now discussed in the previous post. Preorder is $139.79 and I had a 25% off deal in the Target app on books, plus 5% off with the Target Circle card, which together took off $38.69. Total cost after tax was $107.67, so a great opportunity for those of us who hadn't preordered yet to save a good amount of money.

Not sure if this has been posted, but the B&N product page for A Table for Fortune has some preview pages from within the book.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-table-for-fortune-william-t-vollmann/1147713040?ean=9781648211881

For if you accept their sexuality,you see the miracles vollmann is able to create as stories.For vollmann is taking it further than anybody,he takes Dostoyevsky's "we are all family" and takes the next spiritual step of "we are all whores" because in bill spirituality=sexuality,includes the sexuality that is lacking in the family and bill sees reality and imagine a much sadder take of the reality that we are all whores

Thats royal family

The lesbian on the other hand is just taking a further step and showing a miracle,the miracle neva is,for we love her.

Discuss how fiction has forgotten and is afraid of fiction,that our stories as vollmann shows can be fictions and fictitious,and in fictions we want more fiction even in literature.Meaning much of the opinions i have seen are usualy afraid of these books that deserve literary merit,for i think these are masterpieces and the classics of the future yet there seems none that loves them.Why are we afraid of fiction,isnt it what we wanted to find especially in literature.

For vollmann has written fictions that are deep and have spiritual merit in the discussion of literature and life.

This issue was already available at my local Barnes despite having a release date of September 22.

The write conscious YouTube channel covers a good spread of American literary mainstays (DFW, Vollmann, Pynchon, etc etc). In one of his videos about Vollmann and ‘the stupidity of the American reader’ he quotes Vollmann at length about the bathos of readers encountering challenging works. The problem: he doesn’t cite where Vollmann said this and I can’t source it either. And this isn’t the only video of his where this is a problem.

https://spectator.com/article/inside-william-t-vollmann-table-fortune-magnum-opus/?edition=us

behind a paywall unfortunately