The Rainbow Stories - Hardcover

Vollmann, William T.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0689119615 ISBN 13: 9780689119613

Publisher: Atheneum, 1989

Synopsis

A collection of short stories, including "Red Hands," "Yellow Sugar," "The Green Dress," "The Indigo Engineers," and "Violet Hair"

About this title

About the Author:

William T. Vollmann is the author of ten novels, including Europe Central, which won the National Book Award.  He has also written four collections of stories, including The Atlas, which won the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction, a memoir, and six works of nonfiction, including Rising Up and Rising Down and Imperial, both of which were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  His journalism and fiction have been published in The New Yorker, Harpers, Esquire, Granta, and many other publications.

From Publishers Weekly:

This stunning collection consists of 13 knockout stories, ranging in length from a few pages to a short novel, corresponding idiosyncratically to the colors of the spectrum. With an intensity and dexterity previously evinced in You Bright and Risen Angels , Vollman shifts mood from the leisurely, almost-detached account of the brutal contemporary San Francisco streetlife of skinheads ("White Knights") and prostitutes ("Ladies and Red Lights") to the surreal "Scintillant Orange," in which we meet three biblical martyrs to Babylonian Nabuchadnezzar's fiery furnace. "Indigo Engineers" juxtaposes mechanized objects of destruction, built for a sort of performance-art piece, with the just-following-orders mentality of Nazis. A serial killer with a dual personality murders winos with Drano in "The Blue Yonder," which documents the lives of alcoholics living in shelters or parks. Whether recounting a tale of a band of Indian thugs a la Munchausen, laconically noting episodes in personal relationships or dealing with the relentless realism of skinheads and hookers, Vollman writes with deadpan humor, self-assurance and incredible ability.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Atheneum
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0689119615
• ISBN 13: 9780689119613
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 541