Tuesday, October 18, 2005

 

Book Review: Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut

Writing Style-5.2
Originality-4.1
Plot-0.2
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-0.003
Overall- -1

Shew lord… this book caused me to lose a ton of respect for Vonnegut. I loved Slaughterhouse, Mr. Rosewater, and Breakfast of Champions. Didn’t much care for Player Piano, but it was okay. I read a collection of essays called something weird like Wampeters, granfalloons, and something or other and I recall thinking that it was a bit pompous and that I didn’t want to read any more of his essays. And then… Bluebeard, I wisht I never knew ye.

A-killa and I were put in a Vonnegut mood a couple of weeks ago when we saw him pimping his new book, “Man Without a Country”, on the Daily Show. He was hilarious. At one point he was talking about how we’re teaching Iraq about democracy and he said something like, ‘We need to let them know that after 100 years you’ve got to give up your slaves, after 150 years you have to give women the right to vote, and that there is generally a lot of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the beginning.’

So, I had this turd of a book sitting around pretty much left forgotten. I guess I picked it up on the cheap somewhere down the line. I decided to give it a go.

I was immediately taken aback by the forward, which reads:

“Tremendous concentrations of paper wealth have made it possible for a few persons or institutions to endow certain sorts of human playfulness with inappropriate and hence distressing seriousness. I think not only of the mudpies of art, but of children’s games as well—running, jumping, catching, throwing.
Or dancing.
Or singing songs.”

So, basically, the whole point of the book, as far as I can tell, is that art that doesn’t deal with war is a waste of time. Wow, how egotistical do you have to be to write this book? Hey, Picasso, Beethoven, Mozart, Bob Dylan, Coltrane, Bach, Van Gogh, Shakespeare (at least most of his plays), Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie guess what, Kurt Vonnegut thinks you’re all a bunch of phony, stupid, masturbatory losers. (Apparently no better, or more important, than Shaquille O’Neal or Alex Rodriguez.)

Alright, he doesn’t go so far as to attack all these folks specifically(except for Picasso), he mainly goes after Jackson Pollock and his friends. But still, it’s not much of a stretch when you are totally dismissing aesthetics and psychology and putting war commentary and realism on a pedestal as the highest form of art that these persons’ work starts to slip down the sewage drain that is Vonnegut’s mind. Surely you can see how it becomes a slippery slope. I mean where does Mr. Vonnegut draw the line?

And secondly, and I say this with the utmost respect for the novel, but really, when you get right down to it, how much more do you think Slaughterhouse Five has decreased the world’s penchant for fighting wars than one single Pollock splatter? I mean really, common on. It’s not exactly Uncle Tom’s Cabin or the Bible or the Communist Manifesto or anything.

And I haven’t even touched on the irony that a NOVELIST is commenting on how worthless modern art is at the same time as he is WRITING A BOOK ABOUT HOW WORTHLESS MODERN ART IS!! This is exactly the kind of irony that a younger Vonnegut probably would have gotten a kick out of.

And then getting back to the fact that he also attacks pro athletes. Now, I agree, some of them make a lot more money than what they deserve probably. But again, you could start down a similar slippery slope that if pro athletes are worthless and that war is bad and we should work on stopping it, then everyone who isn’t lending a hand to stop war is worthless. Sort of like that Colorado professor calling the people in the World Trade Center “little Eichmanns” because they weren’t actively working on getting their government to stop stupid foreign policies. I mean I work for the federal government, and I understand that our government does some pretty evil shit, but for fuckssake, what am I supposed to do about it? Does that make me a “little Eichman”? I mean, I’m just a guy trying to get through this shitty life and I gotta eat and I’d like to stick around at least for the sake of reading books, and writing some songs, and watching some football. We can’t ALL be Jesus Christ, okay. Give me a break.

Unless you hate modern art stay well away from this book.

Mr. Vonnegut, I SAID GOODDAY SIR!

Comments:
His new book is really good. I think you would like it. You will have to get it on Amazon because it isn't in stores.
ERin
 
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