Books come in various sizes. Some are quick reads. Others are gigantic, monumental works that bear something in common with the Great Wall of China or possibly the Panama Canal. They can take a long time to construct. These books require mountains of time and patience to read. When we complete one of these volumes, we feel a genuine sense of accomplishment.
Four months ago, I began reading “Imperial” by William T. Vollmann. It is over 1,300 pages long. I felt like a weight lifter even picking it up. Vollmann is one of our most prolific writers. He produces numerous books the way some of us produce household waste: fast, impressive stacks of it.
His book “Europe Central” won the National Book Award a few years ago. I was pleased it won — I chose it as my favorite novel that year. It is another immense Vollmann volume.
“Imperial” is Vollmann’s history of the poorest county in California. Imperial County is on the border with Mexico. “Imperial,” the book, is hard to describe. Words don’t seem adequate somehow. It is majestic and immense and rather dumbfounding.
Vollmann kept returning to this project while he continued to work on his other books. He imagined “Imperial” would be a novel, but he couldn’t figure out how to make it so. So here it is finally in utterly sprawling splendor. I read it somewhat in the manner that Vollmann wrote it, coming back to it whenever I finished reading another book.
“Imperial” is a massive tale of ambition, hardship, foolishness and greed. Have you heard of the Salton Sea? This giant body of water in Imperial County is a monument to some stupendous notions that were eventually proven idiotic and destructive. “Imperial” is the story of how the waters of the Colorado River were diverted to transform this desert into an agricultural miracle.
That precious water transformed Imperial County into one of the largest producers of crops like lettuce and cotton. They never thought they would run out of water. The Salton Sea is the end result of this foolhardy belief — it is an environmental disaster.
Vollmann spent a lot of time on both sides of the border, what he refers to as Northside and Southside. He takes his readers on a boat trip down a polluted underground waterway. He searches for a network of secret tunnels. He looks at old photos and tries to get the locals to speak to him. Vollmann doesn’t drive nor does he speak Spanish. But he’s curious and quite eccentric.
Throughout the book, he repeats the mantra that guided the early settlers to this eventual disaster. They believed that “water is here. We need to have no fear that our lands will not become better and better as the years go by.”
They squandered that water. Crop overproduction ruined prices. Imperial County is now salty and poor.
Of course, one book wasn’t enough. Vollmann’s impressive photography is collected in a companion volume, “Imperial — Photographs by William T. Vollmann.”
About the Author