I just finished A Man Without a Country by Vonnegut, a Christmas gift from someone who is finely tuned to dropped hints.
It’s a waif of a book at one hundred and fifty pages. Seriously, it could be read inside an hour, but I advise against this. Vonnegut’s sardonic wit should be read carefully to absorb its full effect. There are some laugh-out-loud passages here, twelve short essays the curmudgeon has written over the past few years.
He hits topics as various as what it was like to drive a Saab before they become yuppie mobiles, sure-fire jokes to tell at a funeral for a humanist, and his assessment of the intelligence of our national leaders. As for the latter, let’s just say he assesses the IQ of our commander-in-chief not much higher than his height (the president’s, not the author’s) expressed in inches, measured, of course, while in his bare feet.
Speaking of plunging into war, do you know why I think George W. Bush is so pissed off at Arabs? They brought us algebra. Also the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which Europeans had never had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.
Each essay is perfect for that ten minutes before bedtime. Kurt will tuck you in and sing you a lullaby. Problem is you’re liable to have nightmares. Vonnegut is a pessimist who has entered grumpy geezerdom. He claims to have in his company such thinkers and creators as Mark Twain, Albert Einstein and Hungarian obstetrician and medical saint Ignaz Semmelweis, men who in their latter years succumbed to a great pessimism regarding the human condition. These are men that Vonnegut believes gave up on humanity, and at his ripe age, he is announcing he’s going that way too. Is this really what Vonnegut is choosing for a swan song?
Yes, Vonnegut has seen humanity do some of its worst. In a shelter he rode out the bombing of Dresden during WW II. Just that experience (good companion reading is Slaughterhouse Five) might be reason enough to place your bet on another horse other than humanity.
He’s sorry for the shit that being handed down to future generations by his peers, and it’s honest sorrow folks. It’s hard to break through the bleakness to dig out true nuggets of brilliance here. What shines more is the way Vonnegut says it, not necessarily what he is saying, even though I find myself agreeing with just about everything. They are all laments we’ve read before: our addiction to fossil fuels, war millionaires metamorphisizing into beautiful little war billionaires with silky wings, the invalidity of recent elections, and so on.
Where Vonnegut hits the mark is when he cheers up, either in his celebration of the virtues of what he calls “freshwater middle America”, the heart of the country that brought us Abe Lincoln, poet Carl Sandburg and socialist Eugene V. Debbs, or his description of visiting the postal convenience center near the UN building in New York to send a manuscript to his typist. Yeah, can you believe it, actually mailing something?
I’m secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. She doesn’t know it. My wife knows it. I am not about to do anything about it. She is so nice. All I have ever seen of her is from the waist up because she is always behind the counter. But every day she will do something with herself above her waist to cheer us up . . . This is all so exciting and so generous of her, just to cheer us up, people from all over the world.
Here, Vonnegut seems to pop out of the prose. Ironically, this is taken from an essay called We are here to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different. It is when he is farting around that he is most accessible. Be warned by the pessimist in him, but love the old fart for cheering some of us up.