I <3 Books

1987

One of the best writers I've ever read, always, and again here. Not Vonnegut's best book, but brilliant nonetheless. The insights, criticisms, and commentaries, are one after another. The book is funny. Vonnegut's writing is like none other. The sentences, paragraphs, and structure is so basic, but brilliant. The book was almost a comment on Vonnegut's own writing. His take on abstract art spends a lot of time discussing whether abstract artists can actually draw, and does it matter whether they can or not. Vonnegut's sentences are so simple that the argument can be applied to him. He is a brilliant writer, but could he write like Steinbeck, or does it matter.

Romanticism of Americana is thick in the book. I still can't figure out if Vonnegut is criticising it, or if he truly is awed by American mythology. The cord automobile, the Chrysler building, hotels and restaurants in New York, are as much a part of his books as the characters or stories. Teen literature, wealthy summer home owners, artists, art collectors, such a random selection of targets, but so easily mocked and made to seem absurd.

Vonnegut's writing on WW2 is an invaluable part of the history of that war. He has a take on it that few other writers have, expect maybe Dalton Trumbo, but he wrote before that war, and he points out tragedies, and absurdities that are so real, but so awful to accept as truth. War is absurd, absolute insanity, that's the only way to look at it, and it's hard to argue with him when he writes the way he does.