R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut

I was out of town on vacation last week (pictures forthcoming) and didn't get to post about the sad news that one of my favorites writers, Kurt Vonnegut has passed away. Boing Boing has a nice collection of tributes. We'll miss you Mr. Vonnegut.

Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair

I started off my Literary Lollapalooza weekend with a trip to the 2006 Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair at Seattle Center.

Ever seen a $75,000 book? I can now officially say that I have. In fact the show featured numerous books with sticker prices in the five digit range. Perhaps more amazing though was browsing through the countless bookshelves of autographed first edition copies of works by the likes of Raymond Carver, Saul Bellow, Allen Ginsburg, Harry Crews, and Kurt Vonnegut. There's something both exhilirating and daunting about picking a book up off a shelf and opening the cover to find that it's worth $700+. In the end, I couldn't actually bring myself to buy anything with the knowledge that I can find a $5 or less version of each with a little patience and a few trips to the local Half Price Books. After all even a cheap unsigned third edition copy provides the same amazing reading experience provided by a great book.

Galapagos

"It's evolution baby!"

Book #16 on my '06 list was Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos.

Galapagos is a story about a small group of travellers who journey to Ecuador to board the Bahia de Darwin for the "Nature Cruise of the Century". Little do the guests know that the Earth is about to undergo a major war and economic crisis (as societies realize that money is really just meaningless paper that's of little real worth) that will leave them as the last human survivors and the future progenitors of all mankind. The tale is told by the ghost of Leon Trout (son of the Vonnegut's infamous Kilgore) and set one million years in the future (1,001,986). Over the million years humans (d)evolve from the big-brained civilized beings we are today into small-brained seal-like creatures who subsist on fish and are preyed upon by sharks.

To me Galapagos reads as a critique of the way we coexist with our environment today. Despite our big brains and technological advances we continue to erode away at the very environment which nurtures us. A nature cruise is a perfect example of a well meaning attempt to connect with our environment, that in actuality would only result in more pollution and further disruption of the relatively undisturbed Galapagos. In Vonnegut's story evolution works it's magic reducing (or improving depending upon how you look at it) our cumbersome big brained species into a small-brained sustainable species that isn't capable of wreaking the kind of havoc that we do today. Sometimes evolution works in mysterious ways.

Vonnegut pulls it all off in his typical humorous form. Despite the depressing underlying theme the book is never preachy and doesn't feel at all heavy handed. Instead Vonnegut focuses on building the characters and setting the scene, letting you fill in the details for yourself. As an example, here's a snippet from the book which I think illustrates Vonnegut at his finest:

"Even dogs had names back then. Donald was the dog...and Donald was harmless. He had never bitten anybody. All he wanted was for someone to throw a stick for him, so he could bring it back, so somebody could throw a stick for him, so he could bring it back and so on. Donald wasn't very smart to say the least. He certainly wasn't going to write Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. When Donald slept, he would often whimper and his hind legs would shiver. He was dreaming of chasing sticks."

I would definitely recommend this one, though that's true of pretty much every Vonnegut book I've read.

Mother Night

Book #9 on my '06 reading list was Kurt Vonnegut's 1961 novel Mother Night.

Mother Night is the story of Howard W. Campbell Jr., a fictional Nazi propaganda radio host living in exile in New York City roughly 25 years after the war. Campbell serves as the narrarator of the story, retelling his travails as he awaits trial as a war criminal. As the story unfolds we find that Campbell, one of the most hated vitrolic Nazi sympathizers was actually serving as a double agent, using his radio show to relay secret communications back to the American government. After the war the U.S. refuses to confirm or deny Campbell's status as a spy, leaving him out to dry.

As the protagonist of the story Campbell presents an interesting duality. On the one hand he could be considered a hero for his efforts in helping the U.S. win the war, but on the other hand how can a man who lived as a Nazi and inspired so much hatred be a hero? This is the question that Vonnegut leaves the reader and Campbell to ponder as he awaits his fate.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one, although it's quite different from the other works I've read by Vonnegut. Although there is still the typical Vonnegut wit dashed throughout, the tone of the book is a little sadder/heavier. In a lot of ways I'd say it's a more mature work than his other novels, though often the beauty of Vonnegut is his ability to be a little immature and come at things from a different angle than we're used to seeing.

It seems like everything I've been reading lately has been adapted into a movie, and it turns out that this one's no exception. The 1996 version of the film stars Nick Nolte and a pre-teen Kirsten Dunst.

For a more in depth description of Mother Night I'd recommend checking out this Wikipedia article.

A Man Without A Country

Book #3 of my 2006 reading list was Kurt Vonnegut's A Man Without A Country. I got this one via a gift certificate (thanks Mom and Dad).

Vonnegut is one of my absolute favorite writers so before I even attempt to review this one I should let you know that in my opinion the man is a genius. If he was a company I would own stock so consider this your full disclosure.

Okay, now that we've got that out of the way we can get down to the book at hand. At its heart it's a collection of short loosely structured essays in which Vonnegut muses on politics (he's a Socialist), religion (he's a Humanist), life (he's a Luddite), humor and whatever else happens to strike his fancy. Ever seen that 'He Who Wanders Is Not Always Lost' bumper sticker? They should slap one of those right on the front cover. If you're a Vonnegut fan you'll find it endearing and entertaining, if not you may just pull your hair out. The style is effective in that it allows Vonnegut to basically share everything that's on his mind. Consider it a brain dump from a wise old man.

One of the things that struck me the most about this book is Vonnegut's obvious thirst for knowledge. He's constantly dropping in little tidbits of information not because they're particularly germane to the discussion, but because they're interesting and fun to share. For instance did you know the word shrapnel was named after British Major-General Henry Shrapnel or that Confucious actually coined the term 'Do unto others as you'd have done unto you' 500 years before Jesus? The book is chock full of these kinds of things, leaving me thorougly convinced that a real-life conversation with Vonnegut would be absolutely fascinating. Perhaps something like talking to that kid from Jerry Maguire. God bless you Mr. Vonnegut.

Many of the essays in the book can be found on-line on In These Times.

Kurt Vonnegut's Homepage

Slapstick

Lucky book #13 was Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick. The book is vintage Vonnegut and is therefore by definition great. In fact, come to think of it, I don't think I've ever been disappointed by anything the man has ever written.

Slapstick is a novel about Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain (the last and tallest President of the United States) and his sister Eliza (inspired by Vonnegut and his sister Alice who he credits in the prologue as 'the person he has always written for'). Wilbur and Eliza are twin monsters (think giant Neanderthals) born to human parents who grow to resent their hideous offspring when they outlive their 14 year life expectancy. Despite the fact that the twins pretend to have no intelligence when in public it turns out that they are actually both quite intelligent in their own ways and when combined make up the most powerful intelligence force since Einstein.

The book is written in the first person as an autobiography of our hero Wilbur as he looks back and reflects on his life. As you can probably tell, the book is pretty difficult to describe, which isn't super surprising given the amount of territory it covers and the speed in which it does so. Some of the great ideas the book presents include:

• Human Miniaturization - The Chinese have perfected the science of shrinking themselves which allows them to build a much larger society that can subsist on the Earth's limited resources.
• Distributed Brain Processing - The Chinese learn how to harness the power of people's brains as a collective processing system. By breaking down the barrier of the brain as a single processing unit, mankind is able to reach new heights of intellectual achievement.
• Gravity Fluctuation - Vonnegut presents the idea that gravity has not always been a constant and that the pyramids of Egypt were built during a period of light gravity.
• Extended Families - As President, Wilbur rolls out a program which presents every American with a new middle name based on a noun and a number between 1 and 20. Everyone within the same name becomes part of an extended family which is meant to help fight loneliness and build a stronger communities.
• The Church of Jesus Christ the Kidnapped - Vonnegut introduces a new religion whose believers think that Jesus has been kidnapped by the Forces of Evil and that if we don't do everything we can do to find him in time he will destroy mankind. Followers of the religion are constantly searching for their savior as they go about about their day to day activities, including such activities as searching under their dinner plates, checking behind doors, etc.

Hi ho!