Kurt Vonnegut, How I Love Thee
I just finished Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut. I started it yesterday. I read it like lightning. I think my reading days are back. I've been watching too much tv lately. Anyway, it comes in a disappointing last place among the Vonnegut that I've read. It barely even felt like Kurt Vonnegut. In his earlier days, he wrote a lot about the Holocaust, since he was a prisoner of war in WWII, and as much as I love WWII literature, I just don't think it fits well with his voice, even though Slaughterhouse Five, about the Holocaust, is his most commonly read book by far. I mean, a sort of "post-Holocaust" tone comes across in just about everything he writes, and when he just writes about his experiences biographically, it's fascinating. Just not so much dressed in fiction. The Nazi theme in this book, combined with the fact that it's one of his very first and so of a less developed style, made it feel like nothing special. It's weird though, Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle were written right around the same time. Sirens of Titan was even before it, I think, and both of those were much more quirky and science fictiony and funny and hard-hitting and though-provoking and classically Vonnegut than this one was. Maybe I'm being too hard on him. Listen to me, playing like I'm a literary scholar.
For those among my readership so interested in Kurt Vonnegut, as I know there are many, I will list his books I've read, in order of favoriteness:
1. The Sirens of Titan
2. Cat's Cradle
3. Deadeye Dick
4. Breakfast of Champions
5. Bluebeard
6. Jailbird
7. Timequake
8. Slaughterhouse Five
9. Mother Night
I am just kidding. I don't know why anyone would care which of his books are my favorite. This was just a little amusing exercise for myself. He is the only author I really need a steady diet of in my life.
Here is one quote from this book I liked, though. "There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive."
For those among my readership so interested in Kurt Vonnegut, as I know there are many, I will list his books I've read, in order of favoriteness:
1. The Sirens of Titan
2. Cat's Cradle
3. Deadeye Dick
4. Breakfast of Champions
5. Bluebeard
6. Jailbird
7. Timequake
8. Slaughterhouse Five
9. Mother Night
I am just kidding. I don't know why anyone would care which of his books are my favorite. This was just a little amusing exercise for myself. He is the only author I really need a steady diet of in my life.
Here is one quote from this book I liked, though. "There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive."