In the introduction, which is all I generally ever read of these things, if that, even after sqaundering the 25 bucks, which I did, the author tells a charming story. It seems that Alfred Schopenhauer (1788-1860), by all accounts, an all-around hateful uphocking of subhuman phlegm, wrote a little vignette about porcupines based on horribly corrupted translations of Vedic and Buddhist texts, on which he in turn based his hugely influential and oddly popular philosphy of constipated pessimism and total despair. Total, that is, except for Art. What the fuck is it with these people and Art? But that's not part of the story. [more...]