William T. Vollmann has spent years building a novel that traces American foreign policy from the Cold War through the War on Terror, and now he is explaining why it took so long. The book, A Table for Fortune, is about September 11th, but it splits into two parts that Vollmann says cannot be joined. One is a novel of ideas, the other a novel of feelings, and he admits the whole thing is fiction that pretends to be true.
The Split Book
The first part of A Table for Fortune follows a CIA analyst through five decades of desk work, a memo-based narration that Vollmann describes as “densely cerebral.” He says the analyst’s semi-plausible career can be justified only by the patterns revealed. The second part turned out to be a novel of feelings, and Vollmann worked in enough daylight to carry readers through several sentences and into an under-subsection.
He promises that the book will be relieved by “sparkles of archival fascination” and “S E C R E T loomings of geopolitical substructure,” along with “a few fun doings” of the spook and his sister-in-law Lorene. Vollmann insists the two parts must exist together, even though they resist each other.
Why He Could Not Escape It
Vollmann says the subject was hateful but he could not escape it. He made friends with Juan Tomas, a poet from Equatorial Guinea, who spoke at a colloquium:
“It is the duty of the poet to speak out not because he is a poet but because he is a member of the community.”
Vollmann applies that logic to himself: “I must speak out not because I can speak but because I am an American.” He admits he is nobody excepting an American, and he felt obligated to figure out where we came from and where we seemed to be going.
Fiction That Pretends to Be True
Vollmann says he tried to represent the flow of decisionmaking over the interval as accurately as his unCLASSIFIED misinterpretations permitted. Some of his judgments were acid, he says, merely because ACIDITY SELRES. He wonders how we got to September eleventh and crawled into so many sloughs after it, and his answer points to lessons not learned, expediencies of power, and consciences disabled on all sides.
He thanks Fortune that this is a work of fiction, so his mistakes can pass themselves off as imagination. He also notes that the causes and effects of many specific events remain in controversy. Did the Soviets invade Afghanistan out of fear of Muslim insurgency, Iran-cognizant Realpolitik, or lust for a port on the Persian Gulf? What mortal can chart the ever-altering relationship between the Red Army Fraktion and the Stasi, or between Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein?
Venusian Guesswork
The CIA sections resemble a 1940s science-fiction novel about Venus. Vollmann did his best to extrapolate from what little he knew, necessarily erring in most of his Earthbound suppositions about Langley. He will never be able to VERIFY or INVALIDATE his pathetic guesses about the “blue” elevators or the East Germany Desk’s name in 1968.
He is grateful to the CIA-affiliated people who helped him see a few kilometers deeper into Venus’s never-clearing mist. Despite loathing torture, assassinations, invasions based on dishonest premises, longterm S E C R E T surveillance of harmless citizens, betrayals of allies and dependents, and a general lack of accountability, he is not against the CIA or the intelligence community as such. He wishes the CIA and FBI had prevented September eleventh and is grateful they tried.
Too Long for Some Readers
Vollmann notes that Tolstoy “needed an editor.” He has been told that War and Peace is too long, and that the hundred-page essay at the end about the insignificance of heroes in relation to the historical current they ride is a stretch. Recently, several of his fellow judges on a literary panel declined to read submissions that were more than two hundred pages long.
Vollmann decided that remembering the crimes of Cheney’s America was his duty. He promises to guess carefully at medium-probable motives for the fictional character named Cheney, and he perceives only acts and effects when trying to understand Bush Two’s stubborn negligence before September eleventh, his pranks of “enhanced interrogation,” or Obama’s S E C R E T drone strikes.
The Overreach
What troubles Vollmann about the American case is overreach by the Executive branch, particularly in the darkness. He points to the suppressed but leaked Pike Report, in which a domineering White House coerces a protesting CIA into another long, needless bloodbath.
His opinions about the War on Terror need not hide themselves. He is grateful the CIA and FBI tried to prevent September eleventh, even as he loathes their methods. He is not against the CIA or the intelligence community as such, but he is troubled by the overreach that allowed those crimes to happen.
Key Facts Box
- Book: A Table for Fortune
- Subject: American foreign policy from 1966 through 2022
- Focus: September 11th and its aftermath
- Structure: Two parts — a novel of ideas and a novel of feelings
- Length: More than two hundred pages, with an under-subsection promised
- Status: Published, with acknowledgments listed
Vollmann’s honesty is the heart of this story. He admits his book is fiction that pretends to be truth, and he explains why he had to write it that way.
Source material: “William T. Vollmann on Trying to Excavate American Foreign Policy From the Cold War to the War on Terror,” Literary Hub.
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