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A review by buer
A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut
2.0
Above all else A Man Without a Country feels tired. I don't think that tone went unnoticed by Vonnegut, but I also don't think it was necessarily unintentional.
Vonnegut's novels are known for their acerbic wit couched in plain-spoken humor. This book, composed a series of short essays (which feel more like journal entries because of their casual tone)contains only hints of his signature style. The same stories that he has always told are recycled into new material and he seems just as tired of it as anyone else.
He makes no pretenses of his exhaustion. In fact, he mentions several public figures (politicians, medical professionals, writers, comedians, etc.) who lost their touch as they aged because eventually life started to wear on them harder than it used to. Their contributions were not appreciated enough and their faults were over-dramatized, and eventually they all killed themselves or stopped practicing their arts or simply quietly faded away.
And it feels like that is exactly what Vonnegut wants to do.
The world he sees his grandchildren living in is not what he wanted to give to them. His lighthearted approach to all the terrible, terrible things he experienced both in war and away from is clearly flickering as he tries to figure out how to deal with a world that is just as poorly equipped to deal with selfish billionaires, crooked politicians, climate change and more as it was to deal with the struggles of his day.
And it's not funny anymore.
"Humor is a way of holding off how awful life can be, to protect yourself. Finally you get just too tired, and the news is too awful, and humor doesn't work anymore...It may be that I am no longer able to joke - that it is no longer a satisfactory defense mechanism...There may have been so many shocks and disappointments that the defense of humor no longer works. It may be that I have become rather grumpy because I've seen so many things that have offended me that I cannot deal with in terms of laughter."
The back of my copy of A Man Without a Country quotes Studs Terkel as saying, "Thank God, Kurt Vonnegut has broken his promise that he will never write another book."
I disagree.
It's not a great book. It was a fast read, but not a compelling one, and in the end it just made me sad to see someone once so fiery suddenly so exhausted. All the more so, because I don't think it's because he was old when he wrote it. I think we might just live in a world with enough seemingly insurmountable problems that it is very easy to be tired of it all.
Vonnegut's novels are known for their acerbic wit couched in plain-spoken humor. This book, composed a series of short essays (which feel more like journal entries because of their casual tone)contains only hints of his signature style. The same stories that he has always told are recycled into new material and he seems just as tired of it as anyone else.
He makes no pretenses of his exhaustion. In fact, he mentions several public figures (politicians, medical professionals, writers, comedians, etc.) who lost their touch as they aged because eventually life started to wear on them harder than it used to. Their contributions were not appreciated enough and their faults were over-dramatized, and eventually they all killed themselves or stopped practicing their arts or simply quietly faded away.
And it feels like that is exactly what Vonnegut wants to do.
The world he sees his grandchildren living in is not what he wanted to give to them. His lighthearted approach to all the terrible, terrible things he experienced both in war and away from is clearly flickering as he tries to figure out how to deal with a world that is just as poorly equipped to deal with selfish billionaires, crooked politicians, climate change and more as it was to deal with the struggles of his day.
And it's not funny anymore.
"Humor is a way of holding off how awful life can be, to protect yourself. Finally you get just too tired, and the news is too awful, and humor doesn't work anymore...It may be that I am no longer able to joke - that it is no longer a satisfactory defense mechanism...There may have been so many shocks and disappointments that the defense of humor no longer works. It may be that I have become rather grumpy because I've seen so many things that have offended me that I cannot deal with in terms of laughter."
The back of my copy of A Man Without a Country quotes Studs Terkel as saying, "Thank God, Kurt Vonnegut has broken his promise that he will never write another book."
I disagree.
It's not a great book. It was a fast read, but not a compelling one, and in the end it just made me sad to see someone once so fiery suddenly so exhausted. All the more so, because I don't think it's because he was old when he wrote it. I think we might just live in a world with enough seemingly insurmountable problems that it is very easy to be tired of it all.