Reading Kurt Vonnegut's latest work, A Man Without A Country, makes one thing clear. Vonnegut believes the title is self-descriptive.
Vonnegut was one of this country's leading novelists. I say "was" because he has not written a novel for years (with the exception of 1997's forgettable Timequake) and does not plan another. A Man Without A Country is not a novel. It is a slim collection of essays, speeches and summaries of interviews from over the last several years. They are more accurately characterized as the musings of a man in his early 80s reflecting on where his country sits in the waning years of his life. It is not a pretty commentary.
It is apparent Vonnegut is not in today's American mainstream, if he ever was. Vonnegut is a humanist. ("We humanists try to behave as decently, as fairly, and as honorably as we can without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife.") Vonnegut is a socialist. ("Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.") He is a self-described Luddite and a man with a dim view of what humankind has done to the world and the resulting effect on man's future. He also is not afraid to speak his mind on any of these points despite the fact many of his positions will not make him a popular figure in today's America.
Vonnegut was and is best known his use of humor and satire in his writing. Elements of it appear in this collection. Yet his wit may be even more sardonic then ever, often requiring him to tell readers when he is being serious and when he is not. Yet even Vonnegut appears to realize that his days of humor may be numbered.
The biggest truth to face now—what is probably making me unfunny now for the remainder of my life—is that I don't think people give a damn whether the planet goes on or not. It seems to me as if everyone is living as members of Alcoholics Anonymous do, day by day. And a few more days will be enough. I know of very few people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren.
Along the same lines, in comments that tie in to headlines of the last month, he he compares our dependence on fossil fuels to that of a drug addict.
When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any more of those. Cold turkey.
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - TDC
Vonnegut is truly a sad human being. He is one hell of a writer (or at least he used to be), and I have enjoyed nearly all of his earlier works, but after watching him on Real Time with Bill Maher recently, one could grasp what fighting for utopianism and seeing its disintegration had wrought him:
You know, after two world wars and the Holocaust, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and, well, the Roman games and the Spanish Inquisition, and the burning of women in public squares …. we are a disease on the planet. And I think we ought to become “syphilis with a conscience” and stop reproducing.
One might chalk it up to gross hyperbole or satire, but I think that Vonnegut has become so disillusioned, that he truly sees no hope for mankind. It almost a pity to see such a brilliant mind spiral down a hole like he has. His whole life spent defending and propagating a lie that has been so completely pissed on by individuals he loathes and feels is so superior to.
And just to clarify, Vonnegut no more fought for the “freedoms of America” than He, like most of the old left, was an active part of the Moscow contrived “popular front” against fascism. They were for peace, and even cooperation with Germany when it was expedient of Stalin, and they wanted blood after Barbarosa. Like Zinn, and Seeger, Vonnegut fought to save the prize jewel of the great scientific socialist experiment and a better tomorrow: the Soviet Union. Please don’t kid yourself.
2 - Dwayne Hoover
Kurt Vonnegut has always suffered from mental illness. It runs in his family. He writes about it with great clarity in Palm Sunday. Now past 80 and having barely survived an accidental fire in his daughter's house, I think KV has delivered his swan song. I expect to read someday that he has committed suicide. I also found him to be increasingly pathetic in his attacks on America. He obviously learned nothing from World War II, except to obsess over Dresden. I wonder if he would have seen things differently had he instead been on the Bataan death march instead.
3 - Temple Stark
>>Vonnegut was and is best known his use of humor and satire in his writing.
Man there's an understatement.
I also saw him on Real Time and he had an extreme POV, that few will share. But he's 80 now. I see him more as anti-consumerism than anti-American, though he certanly doesn't like President Bush.
Thanks for clearing up that it's not quite a novel Tim.
And he's right on the fossil fuel addiction.
4 - Dwayne Hoover
Yet considering the fact Vonnegut is a World War II vet who proudly fought
I seriously doubt that he fought proudly. "Reluctantly" would be more accurate.
5 - Victor Plenty
When a veteran disagrees with your ideology, you trash his service to his country. Thanks for this textbook demonstration of the cowardly tactics that pass for moral values among today's right-wing attack poodles, Dwayne.
6 - miriam
Bush an "unelected" president? Where was KV in November 2004? Bush won.
7 - DrPat
Whatever his politics now, Dwayne, Kurt Vonnegut volunteered for military service in WWII. The experiences that fed the creation of Slaughterhouse Five came from his time as a prisoner of war.
8 - Victor Plenty
I defend Vonnegut's military service even though I disagree with his views. I know many people who dream of a bright future for their grandchildren, and are working to make it possible. Not everyone has surrendered to the far-left siren call of blind long term despair, nor or to the far-right siren call of blind short term greed.
9 - ss
KV once said christians went wrong the second they made Jesus the son of god.
According to KV, if Jesus had been only a man the message of christianity would have been that we are all capable of the divine and we all count.
By making Jesus the son of god the message in the story of the crucifiction was transformed into
'Do no harm to those with powerful connections.'
No wonder half this thread hates him, he was right.
10 - DrPat
"half this thread hates him"?!?
I'm not sure how you get that from any of the comments here, ss. People here have called Vonnegut sad, sick, extreme, unaware, and despairing -- but not hateful or hated.
11 - ss
Hate was too strong a word. Your right.
The only problem I ran into with Vonnegut (who I haven't read for years)is after two or three books, they all started to sound the same.
Like Jimi Hendrix, he created a personal style that was truelly unique, but ultimately repetative.
However... Dead Eye Dick does come to mind reading this thread, because it was basiclly a rant against a small town that rushed to judgement and was to close-minded to even question that judgement, let alone allow for the possibility that they were wrong.
And I do hear a lot of that in the speculation on his military record and personal attacks coming from people who disagree with his ideas.
Not that I think the automobile will 'kill the planet', myself.
But his take on the pettiness of close minded bougies was accurate.
And in evidence on practically every post on this thread.
12 - Dave Nalle
That Bill Maher show with Vonnegut was interesting because it also had George Carlin on it, and they are both examples of the same phenomenon. Both are classic 60s leftists who were full of ideals and principles and were unable to accept how abyssmally those principles were betrayed by the Johnson administration in particular, and turned bitter and disillusioned and never recovered. Some from that period rethought their ideology and moved in new and positive directions, but others like Carlin and Vonegut became petrified in a horribly embittered version of a 1969 mindset and haven't been able to escape from it. It's a sad commentary on what an excessive devotion to ideology over pragmatism will get you in the end.
Dave
13 - Pat Cummings
This book review has been selected for Advance.net. You’ll be able to find this and other Blog Critics reviews at such places as Cleveland.com’s Book Reviews column.
14 - Dwayne Hoover
Both are classic 60s leftists who were full of ideals and principles and were unable to accept how abyssmally those principles were betrayed by the Johnson administration in particular,
dave ... what I do not understand about the 60s Left is how they could have felt betrayed even after all the Great Society programs were implemented, the largest federal social package since the New Deal.
15 - Bandini
Vonnegut volunteered for WW2, was captured at the battle of the bulge by the Germans and held in Dresden yet because he's a leftist the neocon right denigrates his service.
why do the right wingers hate Americans?
16 - Victor Plenty
If you look more closely at recent history, you'll understand most of the '60s left felt betrayed because nearly every Great Society program was systematically sabotaged to undermine its chances of success.
Even the ones that did enjoy success despite the sabotage suffered deep cuts anyway at the hands of later right-wing presidential administrations. Revisionist historians of the far right redefined the Great Society as a "failure" after they had slashed it to ribbons, ignoring the very real progress our country had made toward greater economic equality during the late 60s and early 70s.
People like Vonnegut feel betrayed because, as they see it, the America they fought to save from fascist corporatism in World War 2 has now been captured by corporatists working from within and claiming to be patriots.
17 - Dwayne Hoover
Every Great Society program should have been sabotaged. The government had no logical purpose committing funds to socially engineer the destinies of poor people. LBJ's biggest mistake was thinking he could re-work FDR's New Deal magic. The GAO estimates put the "war on poverty" in the trillions of dollars and what do we have to show for that investment after forty years? We still have poverty and we still have racial prejudice! Forty years and no results! And the leftists bitch about no results after only two years in Iraq!
"Fascist corporatism"? What the fuck is that, comrade?
Only those who have no stake in corporate machine bitch about it. I am sick of this "have not" whining. Work your ass off and dip your bread into some of that gravy. If you fail, it's no one's fault but your own. Don't expect the government to guarantee your individual prosperity.
18 - Victor Plenty
Thanks for standing up in favor of deceit, dishonesty, and personal attacks, Dwayne, and showing everybody just how worthless real moral values are to the power-hungry factionalists of the far right.
19 - Dwayne Hoover
The Left is also not without is shameless powerbrokers as well, using the so-called "poor and disenfranchised" as bargaining chips to squeeze money out of the federal, state, and local coffers and thus ensuring a loyal voting bloc. Creating a dependency class is a sure way to perpetuating power in a nation where "poverty" has also become big business. Does the name "Jesse Jackson" ring a bell?
But you knew that already, right, Victor?
20 - Victor Plenty
Back in comment 8 I stated my disagreement with both the extreme left and the extreme right, Dwayne. You're the one making the ludicrous claim that one is better than the other.
The left wants to shore up its power base among the poor by diverting government funds to benefit the poor. The right wants to secure its power base among the rich by diverting government funds to benefit the rich.
Both factions cheat the honest working class people who really pay for it all.
21 - ss
Duanne says:
'Forty years and no results!'
Ever see Murrow's documentaries on living conditions for agricultural laborers in the South (particularly) back in 1965?
I bet you have, but dismissed the people living in shacks with dirt floors and no running water as 'pinko propaganda'.
The problem today has more to do with access to the two key elements that allow people to improve their own situation, education and transportation.
Bush came in talking about standards in education, but his attention span in that area seems to have been sabatoged by a more faith based agenda.
Some of us saw that one coming.
No one is adressing the lack of personal transportation for the chronically poor. To poor to get a reliable car equals gonna stay that way in today's (meaning from around 1975 on) economy.
22 - MPARKIE
Dwayne, I believe that you and most of America is an unwitting victim of the Horatio Alger myth. You actually believe that if you work hard enough that you too can be successful. But let me guess, you are a white, middle aged, college educated male.
Try being a poor black woman, with no medical or dental care as a child because your parents were poor, so as a result your teeth have been pulled or are rotten. You are incredibly intelligent but everytime you interview for something people look at your teeth and assumed certain things about you (you know this is exactly what would happen too). How are you supposed to get ahead then. Or you have acne but no access to medical care so you suffer severe scarring, or you have no access to medical or vision care so the glasses you wear are old, thick and ugly and you go in for an interview. What about living in a family that does not value education and would make fun of you if you showed a love a books and art rather than trucks and hunting, how would you fare?
I just don't think that anyone who had anything growing up knows what it is like to truly grow up without.
I may be wrong in my assumptions about you Dwayne, but I don't think that you can judge people because they didn't "work as hard as you"
I think that a government's highest priority should be it people/ and I mean it poor. Not its rich, they can take care of themselves. And true, maybe some people are just lazy and useless, but that is a given in society, is that any reason not to take care of the other 90 percent?
I mean I guess the mindset of "if you work hard enough you can make a million" is just justification or a need to alleviate your guilt - over having too much and wasting too much. It is a justification for what you have and others don't have crap...sorry, I am babbling and I will leave now, I just cannot stand that crap about it you work hard enough you can do anything.
23 - Dwayne Hoover
The right wants to secure its power base among the rich by diverting government funds to benefit the rich.
if you know anything about business investments, you'd know that you only buy winning stock (the rich). The poor represent losing stock, because you'll never get a return on your investment. The rich invest in business infrastructure. The poor collect welfare, make babies they can't possibly support, and drag down the standard of living wherever they live.
Tell me, what major return on the investment has this nation earned by throwing trillions at poverty?
24 - Dwayne Hoover
I bet you have, but dismissed the people living in shacks with dirt floors and no running water as 'pinko propaganda'.
Guess what, people are STILL living in such conditions in this country, and they aren't just black, either.
Education and transportation? Ever drive the back roads through South Carolina from Rt. 95 to Myrtle Beach? Miles of two room shacks, many of which had newer cars parked in front of them. Some of the cars were Cadillacs! In urban areas, there is public transportation. I'm not buying this education and transportation inequity for po' folks. It's all crap.
Education? Anyone with a brain and some drive can get an education in this country. Public education is free. Higher ed is free via scholarships for anyone with drive and ambition.
Wake the fuck up and stop making excuses for the wretched underclasses.
25 - ss
Uh, Dwaynee-pooper
In comment 21 I said 'back in 1965'
I didn't say 'black in 1965'
Why did you feel the need to mention there are poor white people too?
What attitude or belief of yours suddenly needs defending when the discussion is poverty?
And why are we addressing the pressing issue of creationism being taught in schools if your area is, by your own description, full of poor white people?