“The Last Contract: William T. Vollmann’s Battle to Publish an American Epic” is a nice long essay by Alexander Sorondo. First few paragraphs:
A few years ago, the novelist William T. Vollmann was diagnosed with colon cancer. The prognosis wasn’t great but he went ahead with the treatment. A length of intestine drawn out and snipped. It was awful but it worked. The cancer went into remission.
Then his daughter died.
Then he got dropped by his publisher.
Then he got hit by a car.
Then he got a pulmonary embolism.
But things are looking up.
William T. Vollmann spent “twelve or fifteen years” researching and writing a novel about the CIA called A Table for Fortune; as of this writing it has a few back-channel blurbs from editors and assistants who’ve caught glimpses and say it might be his masterpiece, or at the very least a new sort of achievement for him. But when he finished it, in 2022, he turned it over to his publisher, the final installment of a multi-book contract (although even that part gets complicated), and that’s when, to use Vollmann’s words, “Viking fired me.”
His publisher of thirty years.
It’s more complicated than that.
For starters, when he first turned it in, A Table for Fortune was 3,000 pages.
Read the rest of “The Last Contract: William T. Vollmann’s Battle to Publish an American Epic.”
Biblioklept 
Horribly look-at-me style of writing. Whoever that dude is imitating, it’s not his own self. Really can’t believe that goes for quality these days. I may have to write this comment there and throw a tomato at the total wall of positivity in the comments.
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Well, I enjoyed the piece – learned a lot about Vollmann, who I didn’t know about before and am now interested in. Thanks for sharing.
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