As I have noted in this space before, one of the (many) great things about the Library of America is that owning their volumes enables one to easily read an author’s work in the order of publication. Read that way, Kurt Vonnegut has been an amazing surprise. Many authors have written books that are all part of a longer storyline. Vonnegut’s books seem like they are all on different topics, but they are surprisingly the parts of a longer argument. Every book reads like a reaction to the … [Read more...] about Vonnegut Hits Rock Bottom
Kurt Vonnegut
Drinking Deeply from The Breakfast of Champions
On the cover of a book sitting on my desk right now there is a picture of St Augustine painted by Justus van Gent in the 15th century. On a book cover on the other side of my desk there is a pentagon, with a smaller pentagon in it, which has an image that I think is two people reading books, but it is hard to tell. A third book has a copy of a Claude Lorrain (17th century) painting, Imaginary View of Delphi with a Procession. I haven’t read this third book yet. And so on. Nothing in that … [Read more...] about Drinking Deeply from The Breakfast of Champions
How to Love Your Neighbor
In Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut demonstrated the absolute absurdity of everything, that the world is just one meaningless act after another. (A review of Cat's Cradle is here.) What then? His next novel presented a challenge. Does he simply double down on the meaninglessness of everything or is there some way out of this trap? That novel was God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Vonnegut’s universe is still meaningless. But, a meaningless universe creates a … [Read more...] about How to Love Your Neighbor
I Am Who You Perceive
“This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don’t think it’s a marvelous moral; I simply happen to know what it is: we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” That is Kurt Vonnegut in the introduction to Mother Night. The story is about an American spy in Nazi Germany, who pretends to be a Nazi because, he is, after all, a spy, but the American government can’t acknowledge that he is working for the government because he is, after all, a … [Read more...] about I Am Who You Perceive
The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent
The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut’s second novel, is marvelously fun.Quirky beyond belief—a seemingly wild random ride that ends up all linking together in the end. The basic plot is perfectly circular. It is the type of story that my wife, who hates looping time travel stories, would hate. (By the way, the recent Doctor Who invention of “Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey” was a hysterical dodge to avoid the inherent problem of maintaining continuity in a 50 year long science fiction series … [Read more...] about The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent