I have just now finished reading The System of the World, the third volume in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle . 886 pages in a little over 30 days. I guess I had some free time, after all.

Briefly, an interview with Neal Stephenson, author of Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, et.al, over on Slashdot. The reader comments are every bit as entertaining as Stephenson’s answers to the interview questions.

Over the weekend I picked up an issue of NFG Magazine, published in Toronto, showcasing Edgy Writing. A lot of small, independent magazines (and a great many literary journals) tend to be full of writers who miss the forest for the trees, writing technically proficient but boring stories. NFGs stories seem to suffer less from this trend than most, perhaps partly because they have a section called 69 which contains dozens of 69-word stories, aimed at readers with “attention spans of less than 22 seconds”, and partly because, well, the Writing tends to be Edgy.

A writer would have to be amazingly accomplished to become boring in 69 words.

Normally this is the kind of thing I would read in the bookstore, spill coffee on it, and put it back in the magazine rack. I bought this one because it contained an interview with an author whose work I started reading over twenty years ago: Michael Moorcock . When I joined the Science Fiction Book Club back in 1984 the collected Elric Saga was the first book on my list, sight unseen and words unread. I devoured the entire thing in a long July weekend of adolescent obsessive/compulsive behavior, and spent the rest of the summer wishing I was a thin, red-eyed albino with a vampiric sword.

From there I moved on to the chronicles of Corum, and a few random stories about the Eternal Champion. All in all, probably about a dozen of Moorcocks’ 60-plus books.

Now I see that he has a website: Moorcock’s Weekly Miscellany . It is not updated all that often, but it is well-done and contains a wealth of information on a writer who doesn’t get as much attention as he deserves.

This may be old news, but I heard today that Oprah Winfrey picked, for the Oprah Book Club, Anna Karenina. My first reaction was What, is she trying to weed out the weak ones? I say this only because, when I read it seven years ago, it took me six months to get through it.

For a good time, read the customer comments at the bottom of the page. For an even better time, count how many don’t actually talk about the book.

There is an interesting discussion over at Kuro5hin : What books have influenced your life ?

Most of the comments are intelligent but (as always happens when strangers discuss books) there is some literary dick-wagging, and some trolling/flaming. What can you do?

Anyway, here is my (incomplete) list of Books Which Have Influenced My Life:

The Tao Te Ching – my first introduction to non-Western ways of thinking.

Wolf, by Jim Harrison – I never knew writing could be so powerful and so personal at the same time.

Notes From a Bottle Found On the Beach at Carmel, by Evan S. Connell – The first poem/book of poetry which really hit me.

No Boundary, by Ken Wilber – put into perspective all the disparate pieces of philosophy bouncing around in my head.

The Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks – the first “serious” fantasy/science fiction novel I read; kind of made it permissible for intelligent people to enjoy genre fiction.

The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman – did the same thing for comics.

Finite and Infinite Games, by James P. Carse – kind of turned the way I thought about things inside-out.

That is all I can think of at the moment. So what about you ?

I just finished volume I of Rising Up and Rising Down, and I am now about 50 pages into volume II, which is the first volume of Justifications, i.e. when it is permissible to use violence.

The first section is “Defense of Honor”. In it Vollmann divides the idea of honor into two cross-referenced groups of two: Inner honor – the way a person holds his actions in relation to his conscience; outer honor – the way a person is perceived; individual honor – or honor as a person, and collective honor – honor as part of a greater whole or group.

I am not far beyond these definitions, but already Vollmann has quite an impressive list of players: Joan of Arc, Napoleon, the Afghans, rape victims, the families of rape victims, Yukio Mishima, the Samurai, Japanese twentysomethings, Martin Luther King, the Light brigade, King Xerxes and the Spartans at Thermopylae… the list goes on. In each case, he examines the violence committed and then compares the act to the justification given for the act and asks “Was this truly justified, or merely apologized for?”

Needless to say, this is an uncomfortable book to dig through. Vollmann writes beautifully, but the topic is, ultimately, so very ugly.

I have scrounged up a few links that may be of interest to folks who may have an interest in Rising Up and Rising Down, which becomes more astonishing with every page.

An interview with William Vollmann, October 2000.

Another interview , done in Fall of 2002.

Letter from Afghanistan , published in the New Yorker, May 2000.

New York Observer review of Rising Up and Rising Down.

An Oral History of Rising Up and Rising Down.

In other news, today was the first day of the Kendall Class, and, well, I choked. I missed my cue, forgot my lines, and had technical problems with the fvcking overhead projector, so for most of the half hour I was greeted with blank stares.

So much for impressing the locals.

Rising Up and Rising Down by William T. Vollman.

Rising up: A just act of violence.
Rising down: An unjust act of violence.

5. The most illuminating way to perceive the shoddiness of your own ideals is to witness someone else practicing them.

Apophthegm A remarkable saying; instructive sentence.
Bilbo A rapier, a sword.
Cucullate Having the shape of a hood.
Eighteen Twice nine.
Frale A basket made of rushes.
Glaire The white of an egg.
Grumous Thick, clotted.
Guaiacum A physical wood.
Malversation Mean artifice; misconduct in office; prevarication.
Mammock A shapeless piece.
Marasmus A consumption.
Mesentery That round which the guts are convolved.
Neoterick Modern, novel.
Neal To temper by a gradual heat.
Negro A Blackmoor.
Phleme An instrument to bleed with.
Phlogiston A chymical liquor extremely flammable.
Phrenzy Madness, frantickness.
Phthisick A consumption; a wasting of the body.
Piaster An Italian coin, about five shillings sterling, or 110 cents.
Tabefy To waste by disease.
Ultramundane Being beyond the world.

Taken from the following, c. 1804:

Ever wonder what happened to Bill Watterson? This guy did , and tried to find him in his hometown.

For you whose formative years didn’t happen in the 80s, Bill Watterson is/was the creator of one of the two most brilliant newspaper comics ever, Calvin and Hobbes . The other one, of course, was Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed .

Remember when comics were funny and smart? Me too. Vaguely.