A review by lnprad
The Rainbow Stories by William T. Vollmann

4.0

Using skinheads and whores, drunks and tramps, and plenty of off-kilter faces from the Old testament and San Francisco as fodder, The Rainbow Stories spins all sorts of wonderful in the light and the shadows of American dark mythology. Vollmann, the journalist in many of these stories, proves to never let his narrative decay into judgement when dealing with the dirt of his characters (even if it becomes as intimate as receiving an limpid expert blow job from a prostitute.) This distance allows these shaved heads of hatred and prostitutes and tramps and killers to evolve independent from an obtrusive meddling focalization from Vollmann, granting them a freedom to be read as they usually are: broken, beautiful and fallen. Not everything floats, crashes, burns up so elegantly though. Some stories do whiff, a shrug of, "not sure what you're doing here, Bill." Yet Vollmann shines often than not, offering accounts true and messy in ultra-stylized stories of his love & vulnerability as the stories delve into his personal life. These points of intimacy give the collection an emotive centering point, a nice cleanser from the harsh and brave authentics of Vollmann's San Francisco streets.