Eminem, Vollman, and Transgression

Track #8 of Eminem’s "The Slim Shady LP," the album which rocketed the rapper to stardom in 1999, is a skit. It features a young woman calling her friend and leaving a rant of a message. She’s extremely pissed off over how disgusting Eminem’s album is.

Justin, it’s Zoe. Um, Kelly did not have me call you, but I just listened to Eminem in her car. It is the most disgusting thing I have ever heard in my entire life, and I seriously want to call his fucking agent and tell them how fucking disgusting he is. It like makes me upset. I’m now nauseous and I can’t eat lunch. Goodbye.

The track is helpfully entitled “Bitch” which is all the support you, the listener, need. After all, you’ve paid good money to listen to Eminem’s "Slim Shady LP." You probably listen to Eminem’s music for fun, maybe even to relax or help release your frustration with the world. The very last feeling you get from Eminem’s music is nausea. So, with Eminem’s not-so-subtle encouragement, you probably feel pretty good about laughing at Zoe along with Eminem. Ha! She can’t handle the music. She’s intolerant, weak-skinned, grossed out by what you and Em know is just some good-natured transgressive humor.

This sniping at and solidarity against authority is the well-spring of much of Eminem’s appeal, but the fact is that the rapper’s music is pretty disgusting. “Bitch” is sandwiched between a song that narrates the dumping of the body of Eminen’s daughter’s mother in a lake (with young Halie in tow), and a song that starts “Okay I’m going to attempt to drown myself . . .  you can try this at home . . . you can be just like me” and puns on, among other things, Sonny Bono’s death, which occurred when he tragically collided with a tree while skiing.

No matter how disgusting his subject matter is, though, the fact remains that Eminem is both a very talented performer and writer. His album may be crammed with drunks, abortions, murder, mayhem, prostitutes, sex, and mutilation, but in a sense all this disgustingness is redeemed by the quality of the rapping. The guy’s album may be a complete freak-show, but there’s got to be something more to it because, yes, it’s a very artistic freak-show.

I bring all this up because the way I feel about Eminem’s "Slim Shady LP" is almost exactly how I feel about William T. Vollmann’s The Royal Family. I’m almost halfway through the book (320/760) and, well, it’s pretty saturated with disgusting stuff. For starter’s, the majority of the book’s characters are prostitutes and Vollmann describes everything they do in fairly intimate detail. (Frankly, at this point I’ve read descriptions of so many penises and vaginas that they’re starting to blur together.) There’s also a pedophile whose lusts and activities . . . well, I don’t want to go and spoil the whole book here.

The point here is that part of the enjoyment of The Royal Family, on a very superficial transgressive level, is just to see what crazy shit Vollmann writes next. I admit that this isn’t a particularly intellectual reason for reading Vollmann, and it’s not one that will appeal to everyone, but it is fairly substantial.

There’s a definite amount of curiosity that surrounds the macabre, and it’s more than a little titillating. I’m not trying to reduce to a freak-show a writer whom I regard as highly artistic and someone who doesn’t need a lurid subject matter to attract readers, but it’s undeniable that this is a large part of Vollmann’s notoriety and appeal. I think this same logic accounts for a sizable fraction of Eminem’s following. It’s also a reason why people read journalism from some of the most depressing places on Earth.

Speaking of journalism, much of the writing in The Royal Family has a journalistic quality. I don’t mean the headline stories in The New York Times, but the kinds of first-person narrative journalism penned by the likes of Ryszard Kapuscinski. In fact, Vollmann often treads right on the line between fact and fiction. He has injected himself into this narrative many times and has included a 20-page extemporaneous essay on bail (complete with interviews and first-person reportage). It’s well-known that he spent a lot of time with prostitutes, and draws from these experiences for this book.

I’ve thrown a lot out here with this post, and I’m in no position to wrap this up. I think there’s a lot more to say on this topic, and I’d like to extend these thoughts out further later on, but for now I’ll end with a quote from one of Vollmann’s interviews. I think this quote throws a little light onto why Vollmann chose to include so much depravity and disgustingness in The Royal Family.

LM: Even if literature can't really change the situations you're describing, or even produce a deep understanding between people, isn't there some real value in simply opening a window on these other worlds?

WV: If literature is valuable in and of itself (which is something I'm not sure of) then opening windows is one of the most valuable things that it can do.

LM: But of course, these aren't just any worlds you've chosen to open windows onto--most of these realms are going to strike your readers as being particularly grotesque, violent, disturbing. Do you think there's something particularly useful about confronting readers with things that aren't just unfamiliar to them but which will likely seem ugly or repellant?

WV: Absolutely. Because in doing that, you're raising the stakes. Just getting people to accept anything that's different without being disturbed is a step forward. But it's a far braver step to accept the presence of dignity and beauty and most of all likeness or kinship in something that is ugly. If more people could do that the world would be a better place.

Comments

[Kirby Gann]

Hey Scott --
Interesting post. I agree with you, and really dig what Vollman says in the interview. One thing you didn't touch on -- and which I think differentiates Vollman as a serious artist from Eminem, who is all fluff and groove -- is that not only does Vollman stare without blinking into some very dark aspects of society -- the ugly and repellent, etc -- but he does so in a tone that does not glorify them nor judge them; what he manages to do so impressively is present their humanity. The Royal Family isn't one of my personal favorites -- precisely because of the journalistic quality to much of it, and the book just seems too prolix; have you ever read Whores for Gloria? Now that's a wild book.

[Scott]

Kirby,

This is my first Vollmann, so no, I have not read Whores for Gloria, but if you recommend it I will definitely try to take a look later on.

I think the "judgement" part is a pretty key issue. Eminem if definitely judgmental (although perhaps not glorifying, because his music does make the life pretty terrible-sounding), whereas Vollmann seems to want to challenge us to root for the most depraved characters you could imagine. The questions of what is moral and what is morally acceptable seem to be prominent in all of his work (they're pretty much the point of RURD), and I think that you are correct in saying that Vollmann has a gift for presenting the worst of the world in human terms.

[ed]

Wow, Scott, you've got guts going with "The Royal Family" the first time out. :)

Great post, Scott. I think one thing you're not touching upon is this: NOBODY ELSE is willing to write about the stuff that Vollman does. No one else is willing to go there. I think "The Royal Family" excels because it's kind of a Victor Hugo approach to the Tenderloin: complete with interstitial essays and pages upon pages describe the consciousness of depravity.

I recall reading one review of the book when it came out accusing Vollman of being the most passive-aggressive novelist of our time. I think actually Vollman's more complex than that. Here's a guy who obviously feels something for the prostitutes, yet at the same time wishes to show the world unflinchingly. One thing that you also get with TRF is the frequent asides, with Vollman often describing how the book is coming so far and some of the early reactions. So in a sense, you get the added bonus of Vollman creatively coming to terms with this book being either a breakthrough novel or a major work.

[Scott]

Ed,

That's a good point about nobody else touching this stuff (an aside: how cool was it to see Mark Gonzalez wuotes as a public defender in the essay on bail?). Here was Vollman in the '90s, at the city that was the poster-child for new economy success, and he's describing how the prostitutes' feet smell.

But the thing I like is that it's not bleeding-heart at all. So often when people are willing to touch a subject like this, it's like they're God asking you to look at them through His Holy Telescope. With Vollman I get the feeling that he really wants to understand these people, not to pity them but just to put their life out there for you.

btw, I actually came to TRF out of ignorance. I was at Moe's, it was available used and looked interesteing.

[SisterRye]

The characters in Europe Central, so far (I'm only 37 pages in) seem to embody this element of attraction-repulsion to one another, within the narrative. Lenin's wife's sympathies for the woman who tried to assasinate her husband, expressed to the actress playing the prisoner, and Stalin's lack of sympathy for the three ricochet off of one another in an early scene. Vollman's well researched and poetic use of nicknames and formal names also emblazons the intimacy or false intimacy and distancing happening early on in the work.