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Book Title: The Rifles
The author of the book: William T. Vollmann
City - Country: No data
Loaded: 2155 times
Reader ratings: 7.4
Edition: Penguin Books
Date of issue: April 1st 1995
ISBN: 0140176233
ISBN 13: 9780140176230
Language: English
Format files: PDF
The size of the: 19.86 MB

Read full description of the books:

Ice. Cold.

Cold. Cold. Cold.

A place so cold that I have not been; and I'm guessing you have not been either.

Sir John Franklin went there four times, trying to find the Northwest Passage.

The Inuit went there because they were not wanted below the Arctic line.

The Author went there, I guess, for the existential experience.

Some fared better than others.

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If you've read any of Vollmann's Seven Dreams series, you will know that this will be equal parts interpretative, self-indulgent, and illuminating. That's art, right?

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So the Esquimaux are coaxed north. And Franklin ventures again through the same place. Vollmann invents characters, spirits really, who shift through time. Franklin, long dead, listens to King Crimson and drinks Seven-Up. The author, pretentiously re-invented as Captain Subzero, impregnates 19th century Inuits. And in case you aren't paying attention - (I was) - Vollmann explains himself:

Ask yourself: are you behaving differently at this very moment because someone not yet born for a century or more will someday think about you? You cannot prove the contrary. - What's the difference anyway whether it's so? Ice-floes, no matter how white, and water, no matter how blue or grey, eventually reach the same color in the distance.

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So the Author become Franklin; Franklin becomes the Author; and Reepah becomes this Inuit female who has a purchase on them all.

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. Goo goo goo joob g'goo goo goo joob goo goo.

That's the point of this, I think. The Walrus? Hmmmm.

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Then the Author travels north. To that same place. Alone. Intrudes himself on the novel. I wished he hadn't called himself Captain Subzero, but that's Vollmann.

He's kind of stupid there; almost dies there. What's the point?

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The point is the cold. The Cold.

I know it's cold up there. You know it's cold up there. But . . .

From time to time, he'd unmitt a gloved finger and scrape away what he could. If he squinted, that eye would freeze shut, and then he'd have to pick and pull at the frozen eyelashes before it could open again; then he'd need to blink vigorously half a hundred times to dissolve the gluey white ropes of half-congealed tears that latticed his vision.

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Who calls themselves Captain Subzero? Why intrude yourself on a so-so novel?

Because we don't know how cold it is.

Men went there, again and again for glory. They died of leaden meat, but cold, too. Three years there, compared to Subzero's eleven days.

Men and women went there, forced there. And somehow survived.

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Vollman went there. And found a poem:

In the sand, another button.

In the sand, a Bible.

In the sand, a red tin unopened, stamped with Goldner's patent.

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Cold. Cold. Cold

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Read information about the author

William Tanner Vollmann is an American novelist, journalist, short story writer and essayist. He lives in Sacramento, California with his wife and daughter.