BuzzFlash Reviews

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From an online reviewer:

This is a terrific collection by one of the great commentators on human condition in the time since WW II. As always Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. uses wry humor to rip into those warmongers who always send someone else to die. The anthology contains nonfiction such as the letter he sent to his dad in Indianapolis in which the GI Grunt explains he is fortunate to escape the firebombing of Dresden in 1945 and "Wailing Shall be In All the Streets" where he discuses his POW job of burying the dead in Dresden. The short story fictions are also haunting as the title story advocates that good can never win over evil because good needs evil to exist, just like the world can never be at peace for that "Great Day" that would lead to war. The author makes the case that violence is in the human DNA for even the very young look to fight. This anthology is a fitting final tribute by the late great author who throughout displays his droll sense of the paradox that makes up the "Guns and Butter" of life and death on planet earth.

Publishers Weekly:

When Kurt Vonnegut died in April 2007, the world lost a wry commentator on the human condition. Thanks to this collection of unpublished fiction and nonfiction, Vonnegut's voice returns full force. Introduced by his son, these writings dwell on war and peace, especially the firebombing of Dresden, Germany. The volume opens with a poignant 1945 letter from Pfc. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. to his father in Indianapolis, presenting a vivid portrait of his harrowing escape from that city. The fiction, full of his characteristic humor, includes stories about time travel and the impossibility of peace in the world ("Great Day") and, in the title piece, a kind of mock Paradise Lost, Dr. Lucifer Mephisto teaches his charges about the insidious nature of evil and the impossibility of good ever triumphing. In his final speech, Vonnegut lets go some of his zingers (jazz is "safe sex of the highest order") and does what he always did best, tell the truth through jokes: "And how should we behave during the Apocalypse? We should be unusually kind to one another, certainly. But we should also stop being so serious. Jokes help a lot. And get a dog, if you don't already have one." So it goes.

From the publisher:

The first and only collection of unpublished works by Kurt Vonnegut since his death—a fitting tribute to the author, and an essential contribution to the discussion of war, peace, and humanity's tendency toward violence.

Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of twelve new and unpublished writings on war and peace. Imbued with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humor, the pieces range from a visceral nonfiction recollection of the destruction of Dresden during World War II—an essay that is as timely today as it was then—to a painfully funny short story about three Army privates and their fantasies of the perfect first meal upon returning home from war, to a darker, more poignant story about the impossibility of shielding our children from the temptations of violence. Also included are Vonnegut's last speech as well as an assortment of his artwork, and an introduction by the author's son, Mark Vonnegut. Armageddon in Retrospect says as much about the times in which we live as it does about the genius of the writer.


BuzzFlash Note: Like most posthumous collections, this is a mixed bag, but one filled with many delights for Vonnegut fans. It's a little gift from the grave, a grim droll irony that wouldn't be lost on Vonnegut.

From another online reviewer:

The suggestion that some of these stories are not as strong as others is the worst form of nit-picking and critical snobbery. Kurt Vonnegut was [and is] a treasure. Every word he wrote was delivered with the honest intentions of a man who always seemed to be trying to tell us all something more important than what he feared most were prepared to hear. Listen, as you read, to the beating heart and sage wisdom of a true original trying to find hope in the hopeless. Vonnegut's unassuming yet richly detailed rage for truth was far beyond the 'being clever for clever's sake' golden malady that suffocates most critics of modern literature. It's good to have another hug from a dear old friend, the kind we all needed.

Kirkus Reviews:

From the now-silent typewriter of the mordant humorist (A Man Without a Country, 2005, etc.), an uneven posthumous collection of fiction and nonfiction once again plumbing the madness and soul-destroying inhumanities of war. Following an introduction by the author's son Mark, the book opens with a 1945 letter former POW Vonnegut wrote to let his family know that he was alive. It is a masterpiece of understatement and concealment suffused with the rage that animated Vonnegut's writing to the very end. The second piece, one of the highlights of the volume, is a speech he did not live to deliver. It's irreverent, sardonic and elliptical. "If Jesus were alive today," he notes, "we would kill him with lethal injection. I call that progress." Next is an angry, detailed account of the Dresden bombing, the last nonfiction piece in the collection. Vonnegut blasts American pilots-they killed countless women and children, he asserts-and excoriates military strategists whose goal was to knock out the railroads, which were running two days after the bombing. The remainder of the collection is comprised of ten short stories, most dealing with war and violence, some with the experiences of POWs. The best of them, "Happy Birthday, 1951," is a touching but wrenching cautionary tale of the fascination of the very young with the machinery of war; its final image of a little boy on a ruined tank is almost unbearably poignant-and hopeless. The other stories are previously unpublished for good reason; they are repetitive and predictable, little more than discarded shavings from the rich sculptures of Vonnegut's major works. In places, we hear that unique, vigorous voice; in others, only the sad but certainecho of "nothing gold can stay."



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