Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | 921 VONNEGUT | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | 921 VONNEGUT | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
A New York Times Bestseller
A Man Without a Country is Kurt Vonnegut's hilariously funny and razor-sharp look at life ("If I die-God forbid-I would like to go to heaven to ask somebody in charge up there, 'Hey, what was the good news and what was the bad news?"), art ("To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it."), politics ("I asked former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton what he thought of our great victory over Iraq and he said, 'Mohammed Ali versus Mr. Rogers.'"), and the condition of the soul of America today ("What has happened to us?").
Based on short essays and speeches composed over the last five years and plentifully illustrated with artwork by the author throughout, A Man Without a Country gives us Vonnegut both speaking out with indignation and writing tenderly to his fellow Americans, sometimes joking, at other times hopeless, always searching.
Author Notes
The appeal of Kurt Vonnegut, especially to bright younger readers of the past few decades, may be attributed partly to the fact that he is one of the few writers who have successfully straddled the imaginary line between science-fiction/fantasy and "real literature." He was born in Indianapolis and attended Cornell University, but his college education was interrupted by World War II. Captured during the Battle of the Bulge and imprisoned in Dresden, he received a Purple Heart for what he calls a "ludicrously negligible wound." After the war he returned to Cornell and then earned his M.A. at the University of Chicago.He worked as a police reporter and in public relations before placing several short stories in the popular magazines and beginning his career as a novelist.
His first novel, Player Piano (1952), is a highly credible account of a future mechanistic society in which people count for little and machines for much. The Sirens of Titan (1959), is the story of a playboy whisked off to Mars and outer space in order to learn some humbling lessons about Earth's modest function in the total scheme of things. Mother Night (1962) satirizes the Nazi mentality in its narrative about an American writer who broadcasts propaganda in Germany during the war as an Allied agent. Cat's Cradle (1963) makes use of some of Vonnegut's experiences in General Electric laboratories in its story about the discovery of a special kind of ice that destroys the world. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) satirizes a benevolent foundation set up to foster the salvation of the world through love, an endeavor with, of course, disastrous results. Slaughterhouse-Five; or The Children's Crusade (1969) is the book that marked a turning point in Vonnegut's career. Based on his experiences in Dresden, it is the story of another Vonnegut surrogate named Billy Pilgrim who travels back and forth in time and becomes a kind of modern-day Everyman. The novel was something of a cult book during the Vietnam era for its antiwar sentiments. Breakfast of Champions (1973), the story of a Pontiac dealer who goes crazy after reading a science fiction novel by "Kilgore Trout," received generally unfavorable reviews but was a commercial success. Slapstick (1976), dedicated to the memory of Laurel and Hardy, is the somewhat wacky memoir of a 100-year-old ex-president who thinks he can solve society's problems by giving everyone a new middle name. In addition to his fiction, Vonnegut has published nonfiction on social problems and other topics, some of which is collected in Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons (1974).
He died from head injuries sustained in a fall on April 11, 2007.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In his first book since 1999, it's just like old times as Vonnegut (now 82) makes with the deeply black humor in this collection of articles written over the last five years, many from the alternative magazine In These Times. But the pessimistic wisecracks may be wearing thin; the conversational tone of the pieces is like Garrison Keillor with a savage undercurrent. Still, the schtick works fine most of the time, underscored by hand-lettered aphorisms between chapters. Some essays suffer from authorial self-indulgence, however, like taking a dull story about mailing a manuscript and stretching it to interminable lengths. Vonnegut reserves special bile for the "psychopathic personalities" (i.e., "smart, personable people who have no consciences") in the Bush administration, which he accuses of invading Iraq so America can score more of the oil to which we have become addicted. People, he says, are just "chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power." Of course, that's exactly the sort of misanthropy hardcore Vonnegut fans will lap upAthe online versions of these pieces are already described as the most popular Web pages in the history of In These Times. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Guardian Review
Why should not old men be mad? Well, not mad, so much, as rambling. This is forgivable. Kurt Vonnegut is now well into his 80s. Even in his 40s he was never known for the tight, plot-driven nature of his fiction - in fact, it was when he started rambling that his career really took off. So if this book, subtitled A Memoir of Life in George W Bush's America , sort of leaps about from subject to subject, I don't think we should mind. In fact, it is all rather charming. "Do you know what a twerp is?" he asks. "When I was in Shortridge High School in Indianapolis 65 years ago, a twerp was a guy who stuck a set of false teeth up his butt and bit the buttons off the back seats of taxicabs. (And a snarf was a guy who sniffed the seats of girls' bicycles.)" Or this: "I am going to sue the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company, manufacturers of Pall Mall cigarettes, for a billion bucks! Starting when I was only 12 years old, I have never chain-smoked anything but unfiltered Pall Malls. And for many years now, right on the package, Brown and Williamson have promised to kill me. But I am now 82. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats." Well, I am glad he has cleared that up - and also, you might think, the mystery of who provides the inspiration for Grandpa Simpson's speeches in The Simpsons . But it is not all geriatric whimsy. In fact, while Vonnegut gives the impression of being a senile old buzzard unable to concentrate on anything for more than a paragraph, he is, in fact, quite on the ball, and blessed, moreover, with a finely tuned sense of moral outrage. The style, too, is deceptively simple - see how he slips in the words "chain-smoked" above, much funnier than a simple "smoked". It is a style which manages to get attention paid to itself. It sits up and hollers and doesn't give a damn about the proprieties, or who may be listening in. Which is all to the good. Vonnegut had said that, after Timelines (1997), he would not be writing again - but that was before Bush and his crew stole the 2000 election. It is his rage and despair at this that has started him off again. That, and the resultant absurdities: he quotes a letter from a correspondent who has been forced to have his shoes X-rayed before getting on a plane. "I feel like I'm in a world not even Kurt Vonnegut could have imagined . . . Tell me, could you have imagined it?" (No, replies Vonnegut, but he reminds us of the practical joke played by Abbie Hoffman, who "announced that the new high was banana peels taken rectally. So then FBI scientists stuffed banana peels up their asses to find out if this was true or not. Or so we hoped.") What gives A Man Without a Country cohesion, and worth, is not only the humour - of which there is plenty - but the socialism. You don't get many American socialists these days, but Vonnegut has no problem with the S-word, which he does not use in a strict doctrinaire sense, but essentially as an extrapolation of human kindness. Using the necessity of kindness as a first principle from which all others follow does mean that your world-view will have a certain degree of clarity. Take the way he notes, for instance, that "for some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. 'Blessed are the merciful' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers' in the Pentagon? Give me a break!" Vonnegut has said these things before, it has to be admitted. You will also find him repeating his dictum that "we are here on earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different" and revisiting the bombing of Dresden. Even the definition of "twerp" found its way into his interview, in 1976, with the Paris Review. But so what? There are some things that are worth saying again and again. To order A Man Without a Country for pounds 7.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875. Caption: article-Lezard.1 Why should not old men be mad? Well, not mad, so much, as rambling. This is forgivable. Kurt Vonnegut is now well into his 80s. Even in his 40s he was never known for the tight, plot-driven nature of his fiction - in fact, it was when he started rambling that his career really took off. So if this book, subtitled A Memoir of Life in George W Bush's America , sort of leaps about from subject to subject, I don't think we should mind. In fact, it is all rather charming. "Do you know what a twerp is?" he asks. "When I was in Shortridge High School in Indianapolis 65 years ago, a twerp was a guy who stuck a set of false teeth up his butt and bit the buttons off the back seats of taxicabs. (And a snarf was a guy who sniffed the seats of girls' bicycles.)" Or this: "I am going to sue the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company, manufacturers of Pall Mall cigarettes, for a billion bucks! Starting when I was only 12 years old, I have never chain-smoked anything but unfiltered Pall Malls. And for many years now, right on the package, Brown and Williamson have promised to kill me. But I am now 82. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats."
Kirkus Review
Very brief essays, displaying the indignant humanism, pacifism and generosity of spirit that made Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five a touchstone of the Vietnam War era. Whether called essays, stories or "an autobiographical collage," this illustrated collection reflects the author's alarm and disgust at what he regards as the subversion of the democratic process by, and the manipulative deceptions of, the current presidential administration. He also denounces the corrupt profiteering of its cronies. As a polemicist, Vonnegut is unsubtle but often funny, as when he blames the unhappiness of the modern individual on the decline of the extended family, observing, "A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahoes. The Kennedys." Occasionally, he is shrewd, as when he remarks that while "the most vocal Christians" want to post the Ten Commandments everywhere, no one is clamoring to put up The Beatitudes (Blessed are the meek . . . the peacemakers . . .) in courthouses. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of chaff that must be sifted away. In "Here is a lesson in creative writing," there is a slapdash reading of Hamlet, in which Vonnegut asserts of Polonius, "Shakespeare regards him as a fool and disposable." Vonnegut is at his best when he simply tells us about his enthusiasms: for socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs; for the 19th-century Viennese obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis, whose work saved the lives of countless mothers and infants; and for Abraham Lincoln. Vonnegut cites a speech Lincoln made while still a member of the House, denouncing the opportunism of then-president Polk in embarking on the Mexican war. "Trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory--that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood--that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy--he plunged into war." An invitation to survey our current circumstances as a nation. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Nothing on this audio package reveals it, but this book is a collection of essays that Vonnegut published over the past five years, mostly in the antiestablishment magazine In These Times. ItâÇÖs an unstructured mix of discursive reminiscences, thoughts about writing, and diatribes about the insanities of the modern world--particularly those of the Bush administration. ItâÇÖs a thin book, but as it may be the closest thing to autobiography that the author will ever publish, his many devoted listeners will welcome it. The print edition with VonnegutâÇÖs handwritten aphorisms and illustrations might suffice for most libraries; however, narrator Norman Dietz adds a nearly perfect sardonic tone that makes this audio program worth listening to for its own sake. Recommended for most collections.--R. Kent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Excerpts
Excerpts
1 As a kid I was the youngest member of my family, and the youngest child in any family is always a jokemaker, because a joke is the only way he can enter into an adult conversation. My sister was five years older than I was, my brother was nine years older than I was, and my parents were both talkers. So at the dinner table when I was very young, I was boring to all those other people. They did not want to hear about the dumb childish news of my days. They wanted to talk about really important stuff that happened in high school or maybe in college or at work. So the only way I could get into a conversation was to say something funny. I think I must have done it accidentally at first, just accidentally made a pun that stopped the conversation, something of that sort. And then I found out that a joke was a way to break into an adult conversation. I grew up at a time when comedy in this country was superb--it was the Great Depression. There were large numbers of absolutely top comedians on radio. And without intending to, I really studied them. I would listen to comedy at least an hour a night all through my youth, and I got very interested in what jokes were and how they worked. When I'm being funny, I try not to offend. I don't think much of what I've done has been in really ghastly taste. I don't think I have embarrassed many people, or distressed them. The only shocks I use are an occasional obscene word. Some things aren't funny. I can't imagine a humorous book or skit about Auschwitz, for instance. And it's not possible for me to make a joke about the death of John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King. Otherwise I can't think of any subject that I would steer away from, that I could do nothing with. Total catastrophes are terribly amusing, as Voltaire demonstrated. You know, the Lisbon earthquake is funny. I saw the destruction of Dresden. I saw the city before and then came out of an air-raid shelter and saw it afterward, and certainly one response was laughter. God knows, that's the soul seeking some relief. Any subject is subject to laughter, and I suppose there was laughter of a very ghastly kind by victims in Auschwitz. Humor is an almost physiological response to fear. Freud said that humor is a response to frustration--one of several. A dog, he said, when he can't get out a gate, will scratch and start digging and making meaningless gestures, perhaps growling or whatever, to deal with frustration or surprise or fear. And a great deal of laughter is induced by fear. I was working on a funny television series years ago. We were trying to put a show together that, as a basic principle, mentioned death in every episode and that this ingredient would make any laughter deeper without the audience's realizing how we were inducing belly laughs. There is a superficial sort of laughter. Bob Hope, for example, was not really a humorist. He was a comedian with very thin stuff, never mentioning anything troubling. I used to laugh my head off at Laurel and Hardy. There is terrible tragedy there somehow. These men are too sweet to survive in this world and are in terrible danger all the time. They could be so easily killed. Even the simplest jokes are based on tiny twinges of fear, such as the question, "What is the white stuff in bird poop?" The auditor, as though called upon to recite in school, is momentarily afraid of saying something stupid. When the auditor hears the answer, which is, "That's bird poop, too," he or she dispels the automatic fear with laughter. He or she has not been tested after all. "Why do firemen wear red suspenders?" And "Why did they bury George Washington on the side of a hill?" And on and on. True enough, there are such things as laughless jokes, what Freud called gallows humor. There are real-life situations so hopeless that no relief is imaginable. While we were being bombed in Dresden, sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, "I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight." Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it. At least we were still alive! He proved it. Excerpted from A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
| 1 As a kid I was the youngest | p. 1 |
| 2 Do you know what a twerp is? | p. 7 |
| 3 Here is a lesson in creative writing | p. 23 |
| 4 I'm going to tell you some news | p. 39 |
| 5 Okay, now let's have some fun | p. 47 |
| 6 I have been called a Lddite | p. 55 |
| 7 I turned eighty-two on November II | p. 65 |
| 8 Do you know what a humanist is? | p. 79 |
| 9 Do unto others | p. 95 |
| 10 A sappy woman from Ypsilanti | p. 105 |
| 11 Now then, I have some good news | p. 115 |
| 12 I used to be the owner and manager of an automobile dealership | p. 125 |
| Requiem | p. 137 |
| Author's Note | p. 139 |
