"Hello, welcome," said the smiling man, dressed for comfort in a black T-shirt, jeans and camouflage cap from the Broadway Bait, Rod & Gun shop.
William T. Vollmann, the National Book Award-winning novelist, journalist and moralist, unlocked the gate set into the chain-link fence that surrounds his writing studio – a former Mexican restaurant – and politely ushered two visitors inside. The building is in Mansion Flats, adjacent to Alkali Flat.
In print and in life, Vollmann is an advocate for the have-nots of the world. So it is not ironic that he would elect to set up shop in this neighborhood – an area prone to "transient crimes."
Though, as Sean Wright, president of the Alkali and Mansion Flats Historic Neighborhood Association, pointed out of the Sacramento neighborhood, "We have (everyone from) multimillionaires to working-class people to low-income people on subsidized housing. (Perhaps) the (well-off) choose to live here because the situations can be more genuine than in many of the so-called high-class neighborhoods."
Vollmann's sprawling "writing room" is crowded but comfortable. There are two bathrooms, a shower, washer-dryer, gas range, stove, refrigerator and sink, making it convenient not to go anywhere.
All the walls and parts of the ceiling are plastered with art (some of it literally painted on) and with photographs shot by Vollmann on his world travels.
"Why not?" he said, using a favorite phrase. "That's the nice part of having your own space."
Vollmann pointed out some of the photographs. "Here's a Congolese insurgent with his friend (an automatic weapon)," he said. "Here's a portfolio of mothers and their children all over the world. Here's my little girl with her pet lizard."
Vollmann, 50, stepped into the kitchen and held up a bottle of 12-year-old Macallan single-malt scotch and offered to pour.
"I don't drink any whisky that's younger than my daughter," he said. "She's 10. It'll get more expensive. When she's 30, it's going to be a problem."
One would expect a writer of Vollmann's standing and prodigious output to be wired. Instead, he was mellow, accommodating and funny.
"The secret is I don't use the Internet, I don't have e-mail or a fax machine, and most of the time I keep the phone in the closet so I can't hear it ring. I have a little laptop I write on."
Vollmann's latest title is "Imperial" (Viking, $55), a typically long (1,300 pages) examination of the people, politics and sociology of the Imperial Valley. Vollmann invested more than a decade assembling it.
A companion book, "Imperial: Photographs by William T. Vollmann" (Powerhouse, $55, 200 pages), shows dramatic black-and-white images of some of the people and places he encountered in Mexico during his many trips south.
One of Vollmann's key contacts for the book was Stella A. Mendoza, who is on the board of the Imperial Irrigation District and helped guide him through the local politics of water supply and demand.
What was Vollmann like to work with?
"He's very intelligent and paid a lot of attention to detail," Mendoza said. "He came to my house and we had coffee. I wouldn't call him relaxed, but he's very easy to talk to. I would consider him my friend – but he has a god-awful haircut."
Has she read the book?
"Parts of it. He was able to capture the culture we have here," she said. "What he wrote is the truth."
Vollmann has written millions of words in novels, story collections and nonfiction works – 20 books in all. He is known for devoting years to wide-angle subjects such as the history of violence, and poverty in underdeveloped nations. He took what for him was a break to publish "Riding Toward Everywhere" (2008), about traveling around America by hopping freight trains ("I'm going out next weekend," he said. "Why not?"). He won the National Book Award for "Europe Central," but his other books have collected a host of major literary honors, as well.
At present, Vollmann is working on books four and five of "Seven Dreams," the last of his septuplet "about our continent over the last thousand years, and the encounters between Native Americans and Europeans."
Coming, too, will be a novel about transgender people, a collection of erotic love stories, a book about abortion, a study of rape cases as they've played out in courtrooms, and "Kissing the Mask," a critical study of Japanese Noh theater, due in bookstores next year.
How is it possible to sustain this output?
"I work a little every day, I enjoy myself and try not to get too worried about it," he said in his characteristic mild monotone. "Working on more than one project at a time is the secret. If you start to feel bored doing one thing, do another thing. Since I choose my work, what excuse could I have for not wanting to do what I do? I'm so happy to be a free person. I hate being told what to do. "
Though critics have a difficult time categorizing Vollmann's bibliography, there is one theme that runs through his work: the vision of the grandiose. No subject remains small once Vollmann is on the case.
"I get excited about something and I really want to understand it, and it takes a while to understand something," he explained. "I just do my best and see where it leads."
That philosophy has led him to exhaustively long books in an era of the short attention span. Who reads his stuff?
"Older, more conservative people who like 'The Seven Dreams,' and younger people who enjoy the books about the prostitutes and so forth," he said. "I write because I want to. Someday I'm sure the publishers will pull the plug, but in the meantime I'll do what I want to do."
Vollmann's reputation when he conducts fieldwork is that of the venturesome, gregarious anthropologist. But when it comes to his privacy on home ground, he is known to be extremely protective and reclusive.
"I'm a free spirit and I do whatever I feel like doing," he said. "But why should my family and friends be dragged into any (consequences)? Most of all, I'm concerned about my little girl."
So much of what Vollmann writes about touches on the edges of society. He has an apparent fascination with prostitutes, and an interest in drug addicts, alcoholics, skinheads, the homeless, the deranged – inhabitants of the netherworld.
"(The fringe people) are the people with the most interesting stories," he explained. "This would be a better planet if we all thought about how we can help each other. I don't think much of the human race in general, but people in particular are usually pretty great."
Controversial, self-effacing, insatiably curious, drawn to the dark side – such descriptions attempt in vain to quantify a most complex literary artist.
What does he see as essential to his psyche?
"Feeling that I'm living my life to the fullest, and that means being of service to others. I don't want to be mean to people or be selfish or cause harm."
What else?
"Taking risks, trying to discover what's beautiful. There are so many beautiful things. Riding on a freight train at night and looking up at the stars, realizing what a vast and gorgeous universe we live in."
Call The Bee's Allen Pierleoni at (916) 321-1128. Researcher Sheila A. Kern contributed to this report.