A Table for Fortune by William T Vollmann review – a hugely ambitious 3,000-page portrait of America’s decline
According to the Guardian, William T Vollmann's 3,000-page novel A Table for Fortune is an epic, 15-year endeavor to engage with the past and present of the United States on both institutional and personal levels. Published in four simultaneous volumes, the work combines a family story with an insider history of the CIA to demonstrate the consequences of the quest for liberty and American exceptionalism. The Guardian review notes that the book investigates the last 50 years of US foreign policy, centered around 9/11, framing the agency's daily culture as a dark workplace comedy with granular detail and sardonic humor. The central character is an analyst codenamed DAVE, recruited in 1967. The third and fourth volumes follow a parallel narrative involving his son Matthew, who grapples with cognitive deficits and seeks the soul of America following revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib. Ultimately, the novel offers a profoundly sorrowful diagnosis of the US state as it approaches its semiquincentennial, wrestling with individual freedom versus the role of the state.