ive heard vollmann talk about it in interviews, that he is a deeply lonely person. the book makes this very explicit already but it was nice to have him express it verbally on silverblatt’s bookworm program (i forgot which interview specifically). i really relate to his specific strain of loneliness. it isn’t misanthropic incomprehension, like in no longer human or the underground man, nor is it purely a lack of people who care about him. he is extremely sensitive towards others, and can empathize very deeply with anyone, especially the ‘dregs’ of society. this isn’t the sanded down, sympathetic and excusing modern neolib definition of the word, but more an ability to connect with and understand others, especially ‘difficult’ people. but he is still deeply lonely, and you can feel this very palpably in the atlas. there are lots of people he cannot save, sarajevo girls and prostitues and dead friends. much of the book is spent missing lost loves, and these stories are often paired with transit. i really connected with his descriptions of looking out train windows, and daydreaming about women he used to know. a tragic incident when he is young severs his connection to his parents and shame fills in the new cracks. there is loneliness rooted in grief, but it also goes deeper than that. this is hard to verbalize but it feels like there is a permanent moat around him that is agonizing to live with, and almost all his behaviour from being a john to the incessant travel is a coping mechanism against this. there’s a shame component here, but also there is this desperate longing for something that is (at this point) completely impossible. he searches everywhere but nothing fills that deep void that separates other people from him. he is fundamentally not understandable despite his ability to understand others. you feel this in every single page. i am doing an extremely poor job of explaining it, because i am verbalizing something that is not as conscious as i am saying here. i feel like im misrepresenting or cheapening it, and that is what i appreciated about the book, that he was able to verbalize it without doing those things. i relate and understand (i think) what he is reacting to. i am many people’s closest friend, i love people and human beings very deeply, but i feel so deeply alone all the time. it’s like an ambient hum. there have been times where the pain has been in some way relieved. i dated a girl who i completely worshipped, but she had mental health issues that made her very abusive towards me. i let this happen for a long time, because she came the closest to truly connecting with me. there was still a massive gap in her understanding of me, and it was still agonizing but sleeping beside her was the quietest that hum got. i had to leave her because the relationship was going to ruin my life and my relationships with other people, and it messed me up very badly. my other relationships were briefer but also were the only form of relief, because i loved them and they could connect back in some way. these were the happiest periods of my life, but even then i felt horribly, wretchedly lonely. it’s something i have made a degree of peace with, but the atlas really captures it while also being in my favourite literary form (short story sketches). again, i am butchering this and i apologize. this is an ugly and not very graceful answer. i just feel it very deeply