Imperial by William T. Vollmann

elchrist · Last edited by elchrist on 01 Oct 2004 04:03 PM; edited 1 time in total

In a recent interview with Canadian magazine Maisonneuve, writer William T. Vollmann describes how he's been working on a new book about our border while incognito at (Mexicali) maquiladoras, boating on the New River and exploring the mythical Chinese tunnels of Mexicali, Baja California.

NHB: Your publicist said you were travelling. Where have you just come from?

WTV: I’ve been working on a book about the California-Mexico border for about eight years now. I’m working on one chapter now about the maquiladoras—foreign-owned factories along the border that use cheap Mexican labour. The story was actually subsidized by Playboy, so I got a lot of pleasure telling this or that Mexican woman that she was going to be a Playboy centrefold. The magazine also bought me a James Bond–type camera. It’s disguised as a button and it has a little wire connected to a digital video receiver in a power pack. I was generally wearing that in my pants, but I found one Mexican woman who worked for a private eye who was somewhat well-endowed in the chest, so the digital video receiver fit in there just perfectly. We had fun times sneaking into the factories and taking video.

NHB: What’s the rest of the book about?

WTV: It’s a really long book. There are chapters about all kinds of things. There’s a chapter about the New River. The New River is meant to be the most polluted river in North America, so I went down it in an inflatable dinghy that I bought at Wal-Mart. There was this hideous black water, filled with raw sewage and all kinds of toxic chemicals—dead birds and dead trees and so on and so forth. In the city of Mexicali, I discovered these old remains of secret Chinese tunnels. I found some letters from the early twenties in there and I got them translated from the Chinese. There’s just so much to find out down there. I’ve really enjoyed working on it and I’ll be kind of sad when it’s done.

Excerpted from Violently Speaking by Nicholas Hune-Brown

I've been wanting to explore these ancient Chinese tunnels myself, since I first heard of them. I've always thought you needed to be part of the "inner circle" to gain access, but maybe all you have to do is ask.

spic-ole · Posted: 18 Sep 2004 11:44 AM Post subject:

I'll definitely be renewing my library card when this book comes out.

salieridelcai · Posted: 21 Sep 2004 11:32 AM Post subject:

Maybe they should open up the tunnels for everyone to see, turn them into a tourist attraction, with a little train and everything. This Vollman guy has been everywhere. Smoking crack in the Tenderloin District? That just sounds funny.

elchrist · Posted: 01 Oct 2004 04:08 PM Post subject: Imperial

Here's an excerpt from Mcsweeneys.net about the upcoming book titled "Imperial":

Imperial

Near the end of The Royal Family, detective Henry Tyler visits California's Imperial County. I had heard that Vollmann was at work on a nonfiction book about the Imperial Valley, and so I asked him what was happening with that project.

"I first started going down to the Imperial Valley at the end of 1996," he said. "It's really a fascinating place. I'm interested in a lot of things; the main one is seeing how Mexicans, illegal and legal, become Mexican Americans, and sometimes become Americans without the Mexican any more. The whole border thing is kind of tragic but very fascinating. To me there's an entity, a region that I call Imperial, which contains Imperial County, but extends into Mexico and along the California-Mexico border to San Diego and goes a bit north of Imperial County to include the entire Salton Sea, the Colorado Desert, and some other areas.

"There's a certain feeling about that region, and for a long time I couldn't figure out what it was. Then I started looking at ecological descriptions of the area, and I read some stuff about the Indians who used to be based there and realized that the boundaries of certain types of material cultures tended to correspond to this thing I called Imperial. Where people were conducting a certain kind of agriculture using a certain kind of tool, that was because the land encouraged them to do it that way."

The Imperial book will be a pictorial exploration as well as a place for Vollmann to explore in writing the area he's been coming to know. "I do a lot of 8x10 stuff," he said. "I want there to be lots of pictures. Maybe the book will get wrapped up in another year, another couple of years. It's nice to let it take a while so that I can describe Imperial changing over time."

elchrist · Posted: 06 Dec 2004 04:13 PM Post subject:

The upcoming issue of Playboy magazine is supposed to have a piece by William T. Vollmann on the maquiladoras along the border, primary Mexicali.

Here's your excuse to get caught red handed picking up a porno mag at the liquor store. You really were reading it for the articles.

elchrist · Posted: 14 Aug 2008 08:02 AM Post subject:

The book that everyone has been waiting for is scheduled for release on April 16, 2009.

It contains almost 1,300 pages.

verbal · Posted: 21 Aug 2008 10:52 AM Post subject:

People with a cause have always been drawn to maquiladoras. You butcher the word maquiladoras and people will listen.