100 Notes on Violence

An author's statement

In recent years I have found myself less and less able to tolerate images or text about violence. Even though I want to be informed and realistic, I found myself turning off the radio, closing the newspaper, walking out on movies. Especially when the violence was aimed at children, I just could not take it.

100 Notes makes use of multiple sources, and so is not merely a subjective account of violence and its effects, but also a research project. For example, I quote from such authorities on violence as Elie Wiesel, Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag, Dostoevsky, William T. Vollmann, and Georges Bataille. I also include information from books and websites on issues such as childhood depression, child abuse, and gun control. I have also sourced material from many stories told to me in person, over email, or discovered in fiction and film. Included as well are events from the news.

As a balance to the book’s admittedly disturbing material, I include very short lyrics that I think of as lullabies. These “lullabies” are purposefully unadorned. They often rhyme and make use of simple rhythms and vocabularies. They are meant to speak toward the need for protection and comfort, and I suppose they heighten the sense of fear that is driving the work.

Running throughout the material are lines of poetry from Whitman and Dickinson. The choice of these poets is probably obvious. They represent the two ends of the spectrum of American Poetry: the one populist, political, opulent, the other private, inward, philosophical. 100 Notes engages both of these modes. It is at once a private investigation into fear and violence, and a movement outward toward the larger community, an attempt to represent the fears and violent acts of that community.

This is, for me, not a book about other people’s violence. Rather, it is an investigation into the violent experiences and tendencies that we all harbor. As the wars have carried on, I wanted to turn the focus domestic: toward our country, streets, and homes —“Everyone’s life is riddled.” I embarked on this project in a sense to confront (not comfort) these fears and resistances, and to examine a collective culpability that in no way excludes myself.