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mybooks_maryreads 's review for:
Mother Night
by Kurt Vonnegut
DID NOT FINISH
When I was younger-- like in high school and early college-- I went through a huge Kurt Vonnegut phase. He was assigned reading in a couple of cases. Freshman year of college I read this for a class, and I remember doing a huge collage project as part of my report on the book. I had to present it to the class, and my teacher seemed impressed by my analysis. She even asked to keep the collage.
Now, I can't get through a Vonnegut book. I made it pretty far into this one-- and maybe I will try to finish at some point before I forget the plot and characters. At least I reached the point where I rediscovered what I thought was profound when I was 19, which was this: "a pair of lovers in a world gone mad could survive by being loyal only to a nation composed of themselves -- a nation of two."
The main character is an American spy during WWII, seemingly on the side of the Nazis, who goes too deep undercover and can't really prove he's not actually a Nazi. Vonnegut focuses on the love he had for his German wife as transcending national boarders. At least that's what I've got so far, and what I remember from college. Now that I think of it, I was reading this around 1990, and it fit right in with the post-Cold War sentiment "the Russians love their children too." So, being a child of the Cold War is probably one reason why I thought Mother Night was so profound back then.
(I recently said to a 20-something coworker that I "grew up during the Cold War" and I heard myself say this and I was like - wow I sound old. I didn't even ask her if she knew what the Cold War was. LOL.)
Now, I can't get through a Vonnegut book. I made it pretty far into this one-- and maybe I will try to finish at some point before I forget the plot and characters. At least I reached the point where I rediscovered what I thought was profound when I was 19, which was this: "a pair of lovers in a world gone mad could survive by being loyal only to a nation composed of themselves -- a nation of two."
The main character is an American spy during WWII, seemingly on the side of the Nazis, who goes too deep undercover and can't really prove he's not actually a Nazi. Vonnegut focuses on the love he had for his German wife as transcending national boarders. At least that's what I've got so far, and what I remember from college. Now that I think of it, I was reading this around 1990, and it fit right in with the post-Cold War sentiment "the Russians love their children too." So, being a child of the Cold War is probably one reason why I thought Mother Night was so profound back then.
(I recently said to a 20-something coworker that I "grew up during the Cold War" and I heard myself say this and I was like - wow I sound old. I didn't even ask her if she knew what the Cold War was. LOL.)