Review of William Vollmann's "Poor People"

I've written a review of William Vollmann's Poor People for the spring issue of The Quarterly Conversation. Here's an excerpt:

In the U.S., the "poverty line" for 2006 was set at $9,800 per year of income for a single person, or $20,000 for a family of four. But it is misleading to judge poverty in this way: surely some people can live comfortably below those income levels, and some--those with significant medical problems, for example--couldn't pay for the necessities of life even if they earned substantially more. And doesn't $20,000 go a lot farther in, say, North Dakota, than it does in New York City?

The United Nations offers a more flexible definition:

Poverty: a human condition characterized by the sustained or chronic deprivation of the resources, capabilities, choices, security, and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living and other civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights.

An improvement, certainly, but any definition of poverty can only bring more questions: What is "adequate"? What are these other "rights"?

Even if these questions can be resolved, definitions still don't describe the condition of being poor; they only circumscribe its boundaries. The U.N. also attempts to describe the "dimensions" of poverty: short life, illiteracy, exclusion, lack of material means. But of course, some poor people aren't illiterate, some wealthy people are excluded or live short lives, and some people with few material goods are quite content with their lives.

Read the rest. You might also be interested in reading the New York Times review of Poor People. Janet Maslin comes off with a different impression of the book:

The trouble with Mr. Vollmann's interest in whores is that it is apt to uncover hearts -- or whatever -- of gold. (''As an American streetwalker once remarked to me: I'm literally sitting on a gold mine.'') In other words, for all its ostensible daring and exploration, this is a book full of foregone conclusions. Strip away the theory, and you have a glorified travelogue, one that prides itself as much on geographical as intellectual adventure.

I'd disagree that Vollmann has a disproportionate interest in prostitutes. What he's doing, I'd argue, is exposing the parts of society that have been marginalized, offering them equal treatment to the rest of us. If Maslin is uncomfortable with all this, maybe it's because she's uncomfortable with poverty itself. And isn't that Vollmann's point?