BuzzFlash Reviews
September 14, 2005
A Man without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS
We
are always honest with our BuzzFlash readers, and we have to tell you,
we ordered this on a whim. We read a review on Sunday, September 11,
in the Chicago Tribune, and we thought, "Vonnegut is back!
Hop to it. Order the books." Officiallyto be released on September
15th, the Tribune review clearly indicates that Vonnegut, now
82, hasn't lost any of his sardonic or wry caustic humor.
Many of these writings first appeared in the progressive Chicago-based magazine, "In These Times," over the past few years.
Here is what the Tribune reviewer had to say about "A Man Without a Country":
He's direct in saying what he thinks about the president and his pals ("George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, . . . plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, . . . the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences"), Americans' dependence on oil ("We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial"), the war in Iraq, ("our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on"), the damage we've done to the environment ("we . . . have now all but destroyed this once salubrious planet as a life-support system"), and the future of our country ("there is not a chance in hell" it can become "the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of").
Because Americans now present themselves to the world as "proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war-lovers," because "our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race," and because we have "dehumanized our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class," Vonnegut calls himself "a man without a country"--except, he says, for librarians (who have "staunchly resisted" censors and government snoops seeking library records), and (not surprisingly) In These Times magazine.
But in fact, there are other sources of illumination in Vonnegut's mostly dark world. He likes big families ("A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys."), music ("It makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it."), the arts generally ("They are a very human way of making life more bearable" and "a way to make your soul grow."), the clerk who sells him stamps at his post office near the United Nations ("Sometimes her hair will be all frizzy"). Sometimes she will have ironed it flat. One day she was wearing black lipstick. This is all so exciting and so generous of her, just to cheer us all up, people from all over the world."), and making people laugh.
Those BuzzFlash readers who are Vonnegut fans know that he mixes bafflement with the human condition, with humor and a faint hope of decency -- that even if the human spirit can't always triumph, it should be allowed to.
The Tribune reviewer notes, "But there is still humor in Vonnegut's writing, as well as tenderness (see the piece about extended families, and the one about his being a Luddite) and even hope, implicit in a simple admonishment to everyone: 'Be honorable.'"
"Be honorable," not a bad motto to live by, Kurt Vonnegut, not a bad motto at all.
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS