The Royal Family is so richly enigmatic, one thinks they're unraveling the mysteries of the universe when they read it. This is a book of immense sadness, where loneliness knows no bounds. One can imagine its author, possibly the greatest writer alive, William T. Vollmann, sitting at his desk skimming over his first draft of The Royal Family and then saying to himself with a mischievous grin, "Okay, now how do I make this even sadder?"For one, what's sadder than the tale of Cain? And because Vollmann doesn't hesitate to inform you of its importance one bit: Cain was the firstborn son of Adam and Eve who was cursed for killing his brother, Abel. From the Wiki: A mark was put upon him to warn others that killing Cain would provoke the vengeance of God, that if someone did something to harm Cain, the damage would come back sevenfold. Enter Henry Tyler, our protagonist, who starts off as a private eye lured into the scummy underworld of San Francisco's Tenderloin via the cold hard cash spewing out of Brady's almost cartoon-like mouth (visions of pain and Mr. White's blistering megalomania in You Bright and Risen Angels) (If I get hired, that means something just went wrong, he liked to say). Henry's job is to find the legendary Queen of the Whores to combat Brady's own empire of sex, his sex-themed Feminine Circus that would only be rivaled by Disney Land. Henry does as he's told. He, who is a wolf who continues to lick the blade when it comes to Irene, the real one, the fake one, it doesn't matter. Henry slowly becomes the capability for sorrow within us all. He is pitifully human. The Royal Family, which has nothing to do with England's monarchy and everything to do with the allegiance the Queen of the Whores has created, is perfectly imperfect; its moral compass dwells, just as the opening quote states, But seriousness commands us to recognize that it's the multitude of laws that is responsible for this multitude of crimes (De Sade), within close proximity to a financial society that remains acceptable; Oh, they're a lot like the rest of us, Mrs. Adams, Tyler said. They just tend to act a little more on their feelings, is all.When Irene suddenly, although not completely unexpectedly commits suicide, the severity of his love for her grows. But just like Cain, Henry isn't given clemency to end his suffering. Throughout The Royal Family's massive scope, he is visited by her ghost countless times. He awoke with the taste of Irene’s cunt in his mouth. echoes all the way until the last few pages. (Although it is never admitted that he was ever that intimate with her, she was, after all, his brother's wife, and the only thing that matters is what he believes in his head, and the unified declaration that he "back-stabbed" his brother, or murdered him just the same as Cain did Abel.) When he finds her, and falls in love with her, or wants to so bad he'll do anything to forget Irene, the Queen of the Whores makes him envision Irene as a child. Inside, you’re little, same as her. You wanna be her friend. You wanna play with her. But you can’t, ‘cause she’s dead. This, the agony of losing a loved one, the agony of not attaining the love you so desperately want while its sitting complacently in front of you, is the heroin of life, the late-night jitters, the craving for just one last hit. Love can morph into any of these parasites. So Henry suckles at the teat of the Queen and feels saved, brand new, but Irene returns to him still in this newer better love because Irene's love is everyone's love; there is no difference whose physical body is distributing it. Matthew 12.46 states: While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied . . ., “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother, and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in Heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother.” Ultimately, this is a novel about longing for what is unattainable, even though the ramifications of the Genesis myth has taken hold across the world for centuries with no foreseeable end to our combined suffering, including modern day (1997 or thereabouts) San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. And then a mythical absolution of love. Not the physicality of it, but a reclaiming of its hold over you, as if every love gained and lost was just the right piece to complete the universal puzzle. Over the course of 780 pages, Henry works to believe what he wants versus what is. Through San Francisco’s financial district, including Henry’s dickish brother, John (Just pretend that he is a crazy and potentially violent panhandler who must be humored.; who is paid for his own cock-sucking, camouflaged in business suits and clean shoes), his deceased wife, the angelic Irene who Henry loved (he loved her for her gentleness, her acceptance of him, and her easily satisfied needs; her soul cried like a wounded bird’s, and he heard the cry.), to the mythical Queen of the Whores (the metaphorical Her pussy tasted like crack. The girls could drink from it all day and their cravings would go away. But the more they drank, the more addicted they were.), the Tenderloin pushers and prostitutes addicted to her love, who did their job of alleviated Henry of his pain alas for only a short period of time (the important thing was that she had tried to bring him joy, sexual or otherwise with the ladies of the night), and the homeless that border the Vanishing Point, like a wounded dog, Henry rolls around in his lost love, each crumb equivalent to crack.Together, the prostitutes' and Henry's marks on their foreheads burn feverishly in the night. It's a brilliant move on Vollmann's part to not go into detail about Irene's and Henry's relationship when she was alive. Once you lose what you had right in front of you, you begin to question even the most minute detail. It wouldn't have been right for Vollmann to spill the beans on everything, lest he wanted the reader screaming at Henry like someone watching a horror movie when some stupid idiot goes down into a dark basement. Same thing with the many-colored and eccentric prostitutes he errands with in the scum-ridden Tenderloin. Those crack addicts and rape victims who Henry pities at first (just as John pities Henry; it all depends where the one who gives out pity stands), don't need intricate back stories to explain their current debauchery because the same thing that had happened to them in childhood occurs in the present. Thus is the Mark of Cain. History repeats itself. Domino (the slimiest although prettiest and most sensitive prostitute) became mentally scarred a long time ago. She was more than likely beat or raped as a kid. She struck back. They struck back even harder. Nothing changed. And that kind of hardship in childhood is exponentially worse than what a mere adult can imagine, if not maddening to comprehend, so Vollmann leaves it up to us to mostly fill in the blanks, because, as always, your own imagination has no limit to the horrors it can create. Is it no wonder that resident pedophile, Dan Smooth, goes to such elaborate lengths to torture Henry about the glory of childhood innocence? Henry went into the sodden turf of the miserable streets with an inclination that he could help the others marked by Cain or maybe, just maybe, regain some of the love he felt with Irene. By the time we reach page 656, Henry's still obsessing over Irene, when her birthday is, the anniversary of her death, the countdown before all of these dates, etc., other characters have come and gone, some tragically, some leaving no trace, the Queen's black magic no longer functions, then Dan Smooth informs Henry, God’s speaking now, so you’d better listen. I’m telling you loud and clear, boy, that the reason you’ve let everyone down is because you can only love completely what you don’t have. This message communicated to him by the worst villain in the entire book, because villainy doesn’t make their advice invalid; and Vollmann, here and elsewhere in his extensive resume, tells you that villainy is the only thing we can count on. I think you never cared all that much for your sister-in-law. I think you only cared about losing her. It’s loss you’re in love with. That’s why you hang onto it. There is always something worse, something worse than the whores of the Tenderloin, worse than the waning homeless who drift into despair, who tell Henry just by the sheer virtue of their continued existence: Don’t futz about it. Go into the mud with a gun to your head and finish it. Even Dan Smooth (our pedophile and “hero”) started off small-time, in a normal suburban setting, who only became depraved and sick after various insults to his own sanity. And that's the kicker, people who become depraved start out the same as you and I; we are all at varying degrees of tipping points, but only a few of us actually go over it. The End Is the Beginning Is the End (I borrowed this title from a Smashing Pumpkins' song written for the 1997 disasterpiece, Batman & Robin, which bears no semblance to the majesty of The Royal Family in any way whatso-goddamn-ever.)The ending (or whatever I'm calling an ending), which lasts 150 pages, may seem unnecessary at first, but soon reveals itself as a means to winding down the 450 pages of tightly condensed narrative(s) that came before. This isn't a book with a beginning, middle and end. Long after the "climax" hits, characters begin to dissolve unconditionally; people have to be put to rest; we have to be given room to move on peacefully. There is no gunshot at the end like coming off a year’s worth of heroin. We feel rattled because we are supposed to. The story progresses just in time for us to shed our clothes in order to stand solvent and bare to what it is we worship. So how can a book like this possibly end (if it does at all)?From the Gnostic Scriptures: Matthew said, “Lord, I want to see that place of life where there is no wickedness, but rather there is pure light.” The Lord said, “Brother Matthew, you will not be able to see it as long as you are carrying flesh around.”. Early on in the book: The car reeked of vomit. He thought of Luther’s strange doctrine that sin resides in the flesh, not in the conscience, because law has power only over flesh, not conscience. Her puke was corrupt, but not her, never her. We are all Satan worshipers down here. SMILE AND YOU’LL ALWAYS GET TRAPPED CUZ DEMONS ARE HERE. someone writes on a hotel wall. We were split into three sects after Cain’s wrongdoing: torturers, saints, and eccentrics. Henry is a saint, who believes he suffers so the rest of the world doesn't have to. Don’t you understand the sadness in my head! I can see it all crumbling around me and no one seems to give a fuck! What does not kill you makes you stronger sounds incredibly trite, but true here and elsewhere. When one ascertains that their sadness has no end, only then will the world open up wider, and any old day in October can be as glorious as someone's wedding day. What has to happen is that Henry eventually goes into the wild, as the tale of Cain enters its ugly fruition: Modern interpretation of the Hebrew verse 12 suggests that Cain went on to live a nomadic lifestyle as well as being excluded from the family unit. He attempts near the end of the conclusion's 150 page radius, to let a higher power take over. Try not to try. But still, I hate Irene! I hate Irene! I hate Irene! I hate Irene! I hate Irene! I hate Irene! I hate Irene! he pleads on the last few pages. Henry is mere hours away from being devoured by sadness. He lets it have its way with him. He is a whore to it. Although things can and will get worse, they can also get better.Once the blonde learned that for her grief was precisely the same as rage, she thought that she would craze and break suddenly.Henry picks up a copy of The Teaching of Buddha before he heads off into the abyss. In it, it reads, To believe that things created by an incalculable series of causes can last forever is a serious mistake and is called the theory of permanency; but it is just as great a mistake to believe that things completely disappear; this is called the theory of non-existence and Things do not come and do not go, neither do they appear and disappear; therefore, one does not get things or lose things. Henry is the Bodhisattva leaving his squalor to live among the poor and homeless in order to attain enlightenment. And depending on your intransigent journey into this book's broken heart of darkness, he either succeeds or fails.Words from a deadbeat good for nothing crack addict homeless whore: Maybe what you call love is just the feeling of needing to be loved.Additionally, the Mark of Cain is not real in any sense except for metaphor. The prostitutes and the homeless squatters and Henry are not cursed. They believe themselves cursed, and as long as you believe that, you rightfully are. And if you continue longing for what has been taken away from you, which is just the same thing as longing for pain, which it has become, it will conquer you, and the Mark of Cain may soon become the needle marks in your arm. John, Henry's big-shot brother, is a character we don't know much about. We know he's an asshole. We know he looks down upon his brother. But is he Cain as well? We only meet him after Irene is introduced into their lives, even while Henry remembers the two of them fishing peacefully together as kids. Is irrecoverable harm irrecoverable harm? Does it not matter that Henry is Cain, that they are blood-related, but only that they are two humans that share the temptations of this vast wilderness? Aren't we all applicable to pain and suffering just by being born? Everyone may just be Cain. And even though Vollmann strategically doesn't bestow upon us what kind of emptiness Irene filled for him in the possible hundreds of pages that proceeded this book, I do know that page -542 must have been just as delirious and sad and great.
The book is riveting. At times I wished I could leave its world. I was unable, a captive in the dense bleak circularity of emptiness seeking a fullness always out of reach. Yet, when I neared the end I grew sad of ever leaving these haunted beings trying to survive within the web of fear. The narrator is a private detective hired to find the Queen of Whores. He enters the Tenderloin riddled with prostitution and drug addicts. At first they seem to fit easily within these labels. Our detective is emptied from within and hangs onto the memory of his suicided lover, his brother's wife. What he finds in the Tenderloin are children who had been horribly abused, abandoned, or born with crack cocaine sizzling through their minute veins. The selves they had were too painful and horror-struck to ever live with. Desperate and empty these children were forced to run away, traumatized and blind-eyed. Quickly they were picked up by predatory pimps and fed drugs. Given or adopting a name they walked the streets. They had to turn a trick, make the money, cop the next fix that would wipe out the horrors and fears they or no child could survive. Once addicted the drug itself required daily renewal, or a number of times a day so tricks must be turned or face the nightmare of withdrawal. The fear is amped-up by the ongoing danger of being beaten, robbed or killed. This particular group attached themselves to the Queen who provided protection, some sense of security, and a mystical reverence to believe in. Each prostitute could be given any name since there was no self to attach it too. Their only desire could be for the next fix to fend off the always threatening overwhelming anxiety and hell-fired drug withdrawal. Their vision could extend no further and their belief in their Queen was so vast that her suggestions became their physical placebo reality. Encased in an inescapable circle survival was their remaining instinct. Their only adequate attachment was to the Queen and that was acolyte to godhead, child to parent. Within this group of emptied souls, this Royal Family, distrust of anyone prevented any meaningful attachment. They related to each other from the backstage safety of veiled distance, the remoteness of anonymity. Served up into hell, they had no say over it.The narrative shifts to different settings where others are whoring but it is no longer called such since they wear the costumery of, waitresses, sales-people, bail bondsmen, attorneys, judges, entrepreneurs. No social caste escapes. The spidered web of fear entangles all. The costumes and customs, hierarchies are different providing silvered and golden solvents to hide the addictions to, work, sex, status, pride, ownership, accumulation, power, food, intellect, etc., which money provides as shields. The process seems the same-but for the grace of god that could be me. It not only could but is in different forms to avoid our insecurities, fears, aggressions, to maintain the image we have conjured of ourselves.We watch our detective as his search for the Queen becomes an obsession to heal his own bitter lonely emptiness. He is referred to as Hank, Henry, Tyler. He too has many names since he has none. However he is searching, believing a soul is within his reach, although he can only love-be attached-to what he cannot have. Where he can fit in is with the Queen's girls, women walking the street, the skank hotel rooms, alcohol, crack. In time he too prays at the feet of the Queen, hoping to merge with her through the ingestion of her bodily fluids, her placebo wizardry. They become a couple. His childhood dreams are answered.As with all gods made false by our needy desires The Queen over time fades and the Royal Family splinters. This is one of the best rendering of time passing a reader can hope to experience. Time passing is one of this book's exquisite themes. Hank is left without. His Queen is gone, as is the old neighborhood of the Tenderloin. He is left to search for her but in time he searches in order to search, another addiction.This is my first Vollmann. I read in some non-GR reviews he cannot write well. Whatever that might mean I thought this was the best example I have read of style dictated by content. This was the only way this story could have been written. The sentences are straightforward, easy to access even if their contents are not easily stomached. There is never a judgement, a prejudice. It is simply told. I was there stripped of all my comfortable preconceptions. I lived in those bars, hotel rooms, alleyways, on those streets. Yes, he is repetitive. If he wasn't I would have been disappointed. That is the existence of street life within the vicious circle of these women, within the life of junkies. Simply telling that would have flattened out the narrative and erased the vitality that makes this book pop. He showed it, he rendered it, I lived it. I now understand which is something far different, and I believe deeper, than acceptance or approval. Understanding others is where Vollmann has led me and for that I am grateful.
What do You think about The Royal Family (2001)?
As mentioned in my initium-dream mistrial, when Vollmann clicks it is a religious experience. Read the details elsewhere. I just tell you this, out of strained charity, dear reader: In terms of literature, I believe this book is the greatest by a living writer (I do seriously urge you to send me any recs to the contrary) and that Chris Hedges's Death of the Liberal Class is the best non-fiction work by a breathing writer. To even read the funereal fly is to comprehend, with the immediacy of a switch blade knife, "Oh my God. Blown out of the water. Yes. Blown, blown out of the fucking anemic water." Where and whence, to consider the rest of the Vollmann cannon is to literally transcend our beloved Proust, Tolstoy - not necessarily (Thru translation((s)) anyhow) stylistic or linguistic or experimental prose-carvers, but Master Story Tellers. This must be one of the greatest novels I've ever read. I'm about positive, and I'll give it an hour or six of contemplation, but this one is the fucking glory of mankind, in tow with our most epic religious texts - from Job to Lamentations - and although I have known Vollmann for many years, though have read just half a dozen books, and fully-fleshed about four of them, this, in the words of Larkin, This Be the Verse. I am not comparing the works whatsoever, but saying, I suppose, This Be the Book. For what it's worth, a phrase I seldom, logically, turn: Genius. Undoubtedly. Although I have been graced to have read many, many pages of Rising, I intend in the very near future to spend a good two, three months w/ the McSwarney's Edicktion - thereafter to break into a seizure, be hospitalized, and emerge forth in a night-gown ready to continue annihilating the unfathomable reality of the sunset of American letters. Long Live William.
—Joseph Nicolello
Sometimes I hate William T. Vollmann. I have been reading at least one of his books since I first picked up Europe Central last October on a chance find at my local second hand bookstore, and I now find it hard to read anyone else. I just find him and his books so very interesting, and in this world, that means more to me than any form of perfection. The first line of this book could be read as a warning: “The blonde on the bed said: I charge the same for spectators as for participants, ‘cause that’s all it takes for them to get off.” Well, I did both throughout the reading of this book, and got charged accordingly. But I’ve got to be honest with this one: Vollmann knocked me around a bit, and it’s going to be a while before I can fully get my head around it. I’m not even sure if I could review this book properly if I tried, as what it has to say is so immense. I put this book down three times and read other things just to try to escape it, but do you really think I could stop thinking about old Henry Tyler, Maj, Domino, and the rest of the crew that haunt the Tenderloin? Hell no. The Tenderloin? They haunt me! There were parts that I just found myself slogging through vicious, degrading, hard-to-read ugliness, but as always, Vollmann’s writing and his empathy for his characters just pulled me through time and time again. I think my heart broke about 10 times during the reading of this magnificent beast, and I constantly went back for more. This isn't one of those books that just lingers in the back of your mind for a while afterwards, it burns itself onto your skin and into your mind. I'll remember this one until my final days, and I'm sure I'll read it many more times. It’s a beautifully told story of love, loss, and the life of those that carry the 'Mark of Cain’, those that live below the line most see as “society”. WTV gives a voice to the so-called 'dregs of society', the 'looked-down upon', and does it so well, so delicately, and with so much empathy, you’ll come out the other side a different person. At times it felt like ripping skin off bone whilst experiencing the most brilliant euphoria, with its unflinching depictions of degradation, pain, and sorrow, coupled with the dirtiest of highs. Scenes are at times hard to get through, the language depicted is coarse, but the writing is always beautiful, yet not always perfect. No book holds the rank of perfection in my eyes, but the best ones show their scars, and there are plenty of scars on show here. It could be WTV’s best, but I’ve still got quite a few to get through before I could start calling that one. I got so invested in this book and its characters that I didn’t want it to end. So much so, that I left the final 150 or so pages unread for some time, just so I knew there was more that I could turn to, more I could discover within. Leaving it and not knowing what happened burned me like the ideas and images had before it, but it was a good burning sensation you know, one that you enjoy like that paper-cut you just keep pressing against. Maybe I've become a little more like the characters in The Royal Family, or maybe I'm just more aware of that side of me and of society now. I've spent a little time in the darker corners of the world, in those places you shouldn't find yourself in, but there you are, staring down the desperation, and I've read few things that captures that grimy essence like Vollmann does here. I can't remember the last time I was dragged deep into a book like this, but I'm sure it was a very long time ago. Simply said: a beautiful masterpiece. Bravo, Mr. Vollmann. Bravo. There are few alive better than this man. Update: November 3, 2014Just delved back in over the last few days and re-read the last 200 pages (or so) of this magnificent beast, and yep, just as darn good as it was the first time. This will be one I'll read many more times.
—Russell
This detective novel set in San Francisco at the end of the last century provides a glimpse of the fear and madness the early christians must have lived from the bottom of their underground chapels. The Royal Family could be the moral code of whoever lives outside morality. And, in that regard, it’s an heterodox christian novel, close to the sadian moral that teaches devotion in damnation. The epigraphs, often taken from the apocryphal gospels, settles a subversive and non-canonical ethics by which the novel relates the passion of those who bears the mark of Cain. And it’s also a book about grief as a religious experience.
—Louis-Jean Levasseur
