God Bless You, Kurt Vonnegut

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Wow. This obviously isn't Vonnegut's most famous novel. I'm not qualifies as a literary critic to say whether it's one of his best. And I've only just started reading it, so I'm not ready to say whether it's my favorite of his yet. But I will say this, it has to be the least subtle. What I mean by that is that is is a scathing satire of class and political and moral hypocrisy in America, and he doesn't hold any punches. Because of that, I am loving it!

Witness this exchange between Senator Lister Rosewater with his daughter-in-law Sylvia, discussing the mental health of his son, Eliot:

"I loved Eliot on sight."
"Isn't there some other word you could use?"
"Than what?"
"Than love."
"What better word is there?"
"It was a perfectly good word- until Eliot got hold of it. It's spoiled for me now. Eliot did to the word love what the Russians did to the word democracy. If Eliot is going to love everybody, no matter what they are, no matter what they do, then those of us who love particular people for particular reasons had better find ourselves a new word." He looked at an oil painting of his deceased wife. "For instance- I loved her more than I love our garbage collector, which makes me guilty of the most unspeakable of modern crimes: Dis-crim-i-nay-tion."

Yeah, if you read and believe anything Jesus said in the New Testament, we are all called to love our neighbor indiscriminately and unconditionally- and as Vonnegut shows through his vagabond billionaire protagonist, Eliot Rosewater, if you genuinely follow Christ's example, people with think you're certifiably insane.

This book is a better satire of Christians and Christianity and how un-Christ like they can be than Monty Python's Life of Brian.

I don't understand why it hasn't been made into a movie yet. Kevin Kline would've mad a great Eliot Rosewood. Tony Shalhoub could be Mushari the lawyer.



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Book Report: Mother of all Spy Thrillers (sort of)

"I had hoped, as a broadcaster, to be merely ludicrous, but this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate."

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I think I noted in one of my updates that although it was written in 1961 and on the surface deals with issues from WWII and the Cold War- much of what Vonnegut challenges us to consider in this book are acutely poignant today. Fear, anger, insecurity, self-importance, nationalism, racism, politics and hypocrisy, these are themes Vonnegut expertly balances and dances with like a plate-spinner on the Ed Sullivan Show.

As usual, he makes us laugh at things that could easily make us cry. I think that this novel does a better job of featuring the insanity and absurdity of politics, espionage, and war than Heller's 'Catch-22.'

'Mother Night' is about William Campbell Jr. an American living in Germany before WWII when he is recruited by the U.S. to transmit vital information to the Allies. His cover, was to become one of the leading NAZI propagandist. Unfortunately for him, only three people know his true mission- two of whom die before the end of the war (one of whom was President Roosevelt). Consequently, the Israelis want to put him on trial for his war crimes. In between he gets tangled up with some Soviet agents after a Russian looter plagiarize his entire pre-war career's worth of plays and novels.

To say this is a "mad-cap" comedy would be an understatement. I couldn't help thinking of Mel Brooks' 'The Producers' toward the end when Campbell is being sheltered by neo-NAZI nut jobs near the climax of the book.

At one point Rev. Dr. Lionel J.D. Jones D.D.S., D.D., the publisher of a right-wing extremist newspaper indignantly tells an FBI agent that instead of breaking up the meeting of his "Iron Guard" youth meeting, they should be joining his movement:

"Why bother us? Everything we do is to make the country stronger! Join with us, and let's go after the people who are trying to make it weaker!"

"Who's that?" said the G-man.

"I have to tell you? said Jones. "Haven't you even found that out in the course of your work? The Jews! The Catholics! The Negroes! The Orientals! The Unitarians! The foreign-born, who don't have any understanding of democracy, who play right into the hands of the socialists, the communists, the anarchists, the anti-Christ and the Jews!"

"For your information," said the G-man in triumph, "I am a Jew."

I thought that I could've been reading about a present-day "Tea Party" rally- the only people he didn't mention were the Gays and the Mexicans. In some ways, as funny as 'Mother Night' was, it's also as unnerving as '1984' because it's so prophetic.

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Book Review; Slaughterhouse 5

Category:	Books
Genre:	Literature & Fiction
Author:	Kurt Vonnegut

One of America's most prolific 20th century authors, Kurt Vonnegut was also a WWII POW. He and about a hundred other American soldiers were being used as forced labor in a German meat processing plant when the city they were in was bombed by the allies. For some reason, the shelter they were in under the hog confinement was spared. They were the only people to survive the Bombing of Dresden in 1945. 135,000 people were killed as a result of this air attack using conventional weapons. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan only killed 71,379.

Slaughterhouse 5 was published in 1969 at the height of American involvement in Vietnam and is often considered a powerful antiwar book, along the likes of Josef Heller's "Catch 22" and Richard Hooker's "M*A*S*H."

Slaughterhouse 5 follows a character Vonnegut invented, who was one of the hundred Americans who survived Dresden along with him. "Billy Pilgrim" is a Forrest Gump sort of character. Billy is an under trained, unarmed chaplain's assistant sent over during the Battle of the Bulge, caught behind German lines, first sent to a concentration camp in a prisoner train, then to the meat processing plant in Dresden. That would be enough to give anyone Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but twenty years later he is the only person to survive a plane crash on his way to an optometry convention. Billy sustains a major head injury in the crash. Somewhere between WWII and the sixties suburbs Billy believes he is abducted by aliens and "un-stuck" from time.

As a result, the book follows Billy Pilgrim as he jumps from memory to memory in the war, the prison camp, and various other misadventures back home. You can imagine homeless Vietnam vets suffering from PTSD and having LSD flashbacks, but Billy is a clean-cut, conventional, soft spoken, upstanding member of the Rotary club.

If you're a science fiction fan, you'll probably love this. If you're opposed to the war, you'll probably find plenty of reason to like it. If you're just interested in a classic and influential work of American literature, Vonnegut makes you care about Billy and the people around him to stick with the abrupt changes in settings and time. He also makes you relate to the other characters around Billy- even the Germans, even the alien abductors, so you can relate to everything that's going on even when it's either tragic or surreal. We've all met people like Billy's wife, the soldier who saves his life, the English officers, and General "Wild" Bob.

TV Journalist Linda Elerbee has had a tag-line that she uses at the end of her reports for at least the last thirty years, turns out she may have copied it from Vonnegut. I never know what it meant until I read this book, it's actually a pretty sad and somber sentiment, "and so it goes."

This is a fast, funny, easy read that really makes you think. It is black humor, but it is a lot lighter than say "Night" by Elie Wiesel, but it certainly makes you think and even if it doesn't turn you into a pacifist, it will probably make you at least a little more empathetic to people around you. I hope.

And if you're ever in Cody Wyoming, just ask for Wild Bob!"

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