Kurt VonnegutNew York: Random House, 2007.
$13.95/Trade Paperback
Kurt Vonnegut is up in heaven now. Those familiar with his career as one of the most important writers (of this or any other generation) probably do not need to have that explained to them. They know from reading Vonnegut’s books that he was at one time the Honorary President of The American Humanist Association. In at least four of his books, including his last one, A Man Without A Country, Vonnegut related a story involving the funeral of the great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who had held the title prior to Vonnegut.
The story, which I quote from A Man Without A Country, goes as follows:
We had a memorial service for Isaac a few years back, and I spoke and said at one point, “Isaac is up in heaven now.” It was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, “Kurt is up in heaven now.” That’s my favorite joke (80).
I would like to think that for everything he did for us a writer, keeping his favorite joke alive is the least we could do.
Make no mistake about it. He did a lot. The son of a famous Indianapolis architect, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. did not intend to become a writer until a good number of years into his life. It was after World War II—which saw Vonnegut’s participation as a soldier who experienced the bombing of Dresden—that he came back, got married and took up a job at General Motors in their publicity department. It was not a question of it being something he wanted to do for the rest of his life. It was just a means of supporting his wife and two children. Vonnegut said on many occasions that at the time he was not quite sure what he was going to do with all that glorious free-time known as the average human life span. As luck would have it, he had a knack of sorts for writing short fiction. And he was also fortunate enough to be alive at a time when a writer could still potentially make a living out of short stories.
Vonnegut sold a handful of stories to a handful of magazines, some of which still exist today (although you would never dream that they were once in the business of publishing something worth reading). It was enough to make it possible for him to quit his job at GM and devote himself to full-time writing. A few years and a few lucky breaks established Vonnegut’s reputation for crafting stories and characters that far exceeded the usual boundaries of the genre fiction market. He wrote dark comedy morality tales with serious philosophical intentions. Like any other great writer working within the limitations of something like science fiction or horror, Vonnegut understood the old cliché of the devil being the most alive in the details. Novels like Player Piano (1952, written from his experiences at General Motors) and Breakfast of Champions (1973, my favorite) delved heavily into the maddening and surreal worlds that we all have no choice but to endure. But they were never without a sense of humor or without characters that so often perfectly captured the boundless capacity for potential that has and always will exist in humanity. Besides his sense of humor, that was the one great constant in Vonnegut’s books, that no matter how bizarre, terrifying and disastrous the world had become, people still remained people, relentlessly confused creatures just trying to make sense of a time and place that had been a mess long before they themselves showed up.
In many of his books, the planet just was not able to put up with our crazed nonsense anymore by the time the last paragraph hit you in the chest (at a couple thousand miles per hour). But people almost always managed to remain at the end, anyways. This was the source of almost all of Vonnegut’s humor. The idea and belief that no matter how bad things got that people would somehow hang on anyway. It was almost always the ones who were able to keep their ability to laugh in the face of biblical tragedy throughout, even as everything fell apart and the lesser participants in the great experiment either went up in the fire or did everything they could to make sure the flames covered as much ground as possible.
As pessimistic as Vonnegut seemed to be—his real-life bouts with depression are well known—a true enthusiast for his work could tell you that he still maintained the belief that human beings could turn it around anytime they wanted. He often wrote of disaster brought on by our ability to be staggeringly greedy and stupid, but he never embraced complete and total hopelessness. Many of his best characters represented the noble few who Vonnegut felt could still make it happen at the eleventh hour.
Knowing this is probably what makes A Man Without A Country such an odd literary cocktail of beautiful, still quite funny insight and saddening personal prophecy brought on by decades of disappointment. At just a hundred and forty-five pages, collecting all of the essays Vonnegut wrote for the magazine In These Times, it is a fairly easy read. The worst thing you could do with this book would be to dismiss its potential and insights on the basis of its length. As you read, you realize that this is not just another book of general thoughts and experiences by a man who did his best work in the field of the unknown. These one hundred and forty-five pages are much more than that. They are the summation of everything Vonnegut has been trying to tell us over the last fifty or so years, which might account for his tendency to repeat himself, as some of the thoughts collected in A Man Without A Country have appeared in some of his other novels and essay collections. Do not let that trick you into this thinking this book is any less important than it actually is: more critical is to pay attention to how he repeats himself. His repetitions tie into the new material, and account for the great elements of sadness and defeat that you can almost hear in an aged, tired voice that could not belong to anyone but Vonnegut.
It is almost heartbreaking at times to see that kind of thing in a writer as fearless as the Vonnegut of Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) or Cat’s Cradle (1963). That a man who saw the unnecessary bombing of Dresden that claimed roughly 135,000 lives, the death of his mother by suicide, and the deaths of his brother and sister by cancer could be robbed of his faith by George W. Bush and crippling fossil fuel addictions is not an easy thing to witness. What does it say for the rest of us when the last word by one of the icons of satiric literature surrenders his title as one of the most realistic-optimists cements a belief that nothing we do will matter one way or another?
A Man Without A Country is a doomsday epitaph in the strongest and most disheartening senses of the term. This is most obvious in chapters four (“I’m going to tell you some news”) and eleven (“Now then, I have some good news”). In both chapters, Vonnegut launches an unflinching and scathing attack on the crimes we have committed against each other. Vonnegut finds the worst to be our pitifully greedy desperation to keep the crude oil gravy-train going against its inevitable results for as long as we possibly can. Although Vonnegut still cannot keep himself from making a humorous observation or two, the most startling thing about these chapters is that they offer no belief that we can turn things around. Vonnegut makes it abundantly clear that he has given up on such thoughts. This sentiment appears throughout, but it is at its most blunt (and, quite frankly, uncomfortable) in those two chapters. In other words, if you are looking for a fairytale, you may want to turn elsewhere.
But that does not mean that the book is all broken dreams and Armageddon eyesores. Several of the book’s essays are clearly meant to illustrate Vonnegut’s wanting to tell us that there are still things worth enjoying in the world. Chapter six (“I have been called a Luddite”) is a great example of this, wherein Vonnegut admits his continued love affair with the personal routines that he loves so much, even when they involve ancient and lost practices like employing a typist for the final draft or going across the street to buy an envelope and postage when he could most certainly do both of those things from the comfort of his home. He knows that, and he also wants us to know that he does not care. Because even at eighty-two years old, he would not trade the adventure of getting out into the world to talk to people and indulge in the little things that should make life worth living. Even though Vonnegut does not see us getting out of this disaster of a planet alive, we should not take that sad future as a reason to stop living.
“We are here on earth to fart around,” he writes. “Don’t let anybody tell you any different.” (62)
Other essays are on the things that make life a little easier and are not only just plain fun to read, but are also important as little slivers of light in the eternal darkness Vonnegut predicts we are headed towards. These bits of optimism are the parting gift of a man who still appreciated intelligent people and moments worthy of our gratitude. He was a man who clearly still cared, on some level, even if it was the fact that he cared too much—as all intelligent and compassionate people are doomed to do—that most likely crushed his optimism in the end.
In 2007, at the age of eighty-four, despite being a chain-smoker of Pall Mall cigarettes for seventy-two years, Vonnegut died after sustaining a blow to his head in an accident. Although his best work was well behind him, the loss was immediate and powerful. It was like losing a very smart, very serious, and very funny friend long after you had gotten used to having them around, even to the point where you might have fooled yourself into thinking they would be around forever.
I suppose this highlights the saving grace of A Man Without A Country, or even literature in general. The legacy a gifted artist leaves behind is that of one who never wavered in what they set out to do and whose work stands to remain important and relevant even when the superficial makeup of the times changes and the artists themselves are long gone.
Though Vonnegut did not live long enough to see the world made better by the people who wanted something worth holding onto for their grandchildren, the overall scope and intention of his novels and essays should not be discounted. These books are meant to terrify, but they will also enlighten. They are a hilarious and even touching calls-to-arms to anyone who is intelligent enough to know that if anything is going to get done around here, they will at least partially have to do it themselves.
As downbeat as A Man Without A Country can be, I almost think Vonnegut does not completely believe his closing remarks. Knowing the other incredible work he left behind, I think a better way to sum up his last book is to call it a “dare.” A Man Without A Country may well be a final joke from one of the greatest and grimmest comedians since Mark Twain. I almost think Mr. Vonnegut left the world hoping like hell that we would prove him wrong.
Hi ho.
