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.

16. How much does seven hundred and eight pounds, exceed thirty-nine pounds, fifteen shillings and ten pence halfpenny?
Ans. £668 4s 1½ d . (p. 47)

4. In 61 Ells English, how many quarters and nails?
Ans. 305 qrs. , 1220 na. (p. 70)

8. How many barley-corns will reach round the globe, it being 360 degrees?
Ans. 4755801600 (p. 71)

50. A factor bought a certain quantity of broadcloth and drugget, which together cost 81 l , the quantity of broadcloth was 50 yards, at 18s. per yard, and for every 5 yards of broadcloth he had 9 yards of drugget; I demand how many yards of drugget he had, and what it cost him per yard?
Ans. 90 yards at 8 s. per yard. (p. 107)

3. In 9 firkins of butter, each weighing 2 qrs. 12lb gross, tare 11lb. per firkin, how much neat?
Ans. 4 C , 2 qrs. 9 lb (p. 116)

Daboll’s
SCHOOLMASTER’S ASSISTANT ,
Being a Plain Practical System
of
ARITHMETIK
adapted to the United States
By Nathan Daboll
with the addition of the
Farmers’ and Mechanicks’
BEST METHOD OF BOOK-KEEPING ,
designed as a
Companion to Daboll’s Arithmetick
by Samuel Green

Ithaca:
Printed and published by Mack and Andrus
By Permission of the Proprietors
1828

1. Across the ocean from Europe, there was a place called North America,
2. Which was discovered by an Italian explorer in the employ of the queen of Spain,
3. Colonized extensively by the Spanish and the French,
4. Developed into a rich nation by the labor of African slaves supplied by the Dutch,
5. And thus became the largest English-speaking nation on earth,
6. Namely, the United States of America.
7. The inhabitants of the United States decided to call themselves Yankees,
8. For some reason,
9. And eventually noticing that the rest of the world was there,
10. Decided to rule it.
11. This is their story.

The Book of Damn Yankees
(Otherwise known as the Book of Manifest Destiny)
Chapter I
Verses 1 – 11
of The Boomer Bible , by R.F. Laird

Readers of McSweeney’s already know this: William Vollmann’s new book Rising Up and Rising Down will be released in a couple of weeks. I have read very little of Mr. Vollman’s work; before today, actually, no more than an excerpt of Rising in McSweeney’s 9.

So today I went out to Schuler Books and Music and picked up a copy of The Ice-Shirt. Using the first few chapters therein, and a quick re-read of the McSweeney’s excerpt, I will decide within the next week or so if owning Rising is worth $120.00. A 3,500 page, seven-volume treatise on violence, seventeen years in the making. It would be an awesome, monstrous thing to have in the house, but would I ever read it?

Only time will tell. Right now I have another new book to read, this one a third the length of Quicksilver, which I finished this past Saturday, and will review as time permits.