Mr. Vollmann wanders the globe like a man-child, it seems, or an outsider artist, gathering grim experience while remaining po-faced and curiously innocent. His sentences can be boring, but he himself rarely is.

Last year, out of the blue, he published a book of photographs of himself as a cross-dresser. He also wrote last year about getting his hands on his F.B.I. file and discovering that the United States government thought he might have been the Unabomber. These sorts of things never happen to Michael Chabon.

Mr. Vollmann’s new book, “Last Stories and Other Stories,” is his first volume of fiction since “Europe Central” (2005), which won a National Book Award. Not that he’s been idle. In the meantime, he’s published several dense slabs of nonfiction, including books about poverty, train-hopping and Japanese Noh theater, and a somewhat less slablike book about Copernicus.

I met William when he read Imperial in Sf then invited us all to drink with him across the street, in lower Haight. With more time I would finish Imperial and read the other 100 books I have bought in recent years, re-read another 100 from my undergrad days, and straighten my files. Or re-edit this blog, approaching 1,000 posts and 500,000 words.

Only 7 so far review this on leading site while 30 have done since 2010

edit to add:
SACRAMENTO — As far as writers go, William T. Vollmann is a man’s man. In pursuit of a story, he has roughed it with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and survived a land mine explosion in Bosnia. He singed his eyebrows off and nearly froze to death exploring the magnetic North Pole. In Thailand, he rescued a teenage girl from sex slavery by kidnapping her from a pimp.
Related

William T. Vollmann Navigator
A list of resources from around the Web about William T. Vollmann as selected by researchers and editors of The New York Times.

BOOKS BY WILLIAM T. VOLLMAN
‘Uncentering the Earth’ (2006)
‘Europe Central’ (2005)
‘Rising Up and Down’ (2004)
‘Argall’ (2001)
‘The Royal Family’ (2000)
‘Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs’ (1993)
‘Fathers and Crows’ (1992)
‘An Afghanistan Picture Show’ (1992)
‘Whores for Gloria’ (1992)
‘The Ice-Shirt’ (1990)
‘The Rainbow Stories’ (1989)
‘You Bright and Risen Angels’ (1987)
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Right: William T. Vollmann
‘I looked like this horrible Elizabethan courtier.’ – William T. Vollmann
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William T. Vollmann.
So it may be surprising that Mr. Vollmann, the absurdly prolific author and National Book Award winner, is also a devoted cross-dresser. He has developed a female alter ego named Dolores, whom he refers to in the third person.