The man, the legend, the writer who puts himself in crazy situations to get the best material, will read from his new book, Riding Toward Everywhere, at Book Soup tonight @ 7pm.

Marc Weingarten for the LA Times says it best:

"As one of our more intrepid cultural interpreters, William T. Vollmann has traveled with the mujahedin in Afghanistan, smoked crack with hookers and camped out at the North Pole. So it's not surprising to find him riding the rails. In "Riding Toward Everywhere," an account of his adventures as a slumming hobo -- expanded from a January 2007 essay he wrote for Harper's -- Vollmann improvises his way across the United States with a series of clandestine hitches courtesy of the transcontinental train system."

Some have said this book is a great place to fall in love with Vollmann (it's one of his shortest books ever!), others say these stories are tedious and don't represent Vollmann at his finest. We say: who really cares about this one book when you can meet the man in person?

If there's one thing a Vollmann reading guarantees, it is this: you never know what the man will say, but you can be sure it will be fascinating and will be unlike anything else you'll hear all week.