VonneGUT!

Ed. note: This title should be said with German inflection.

It's been quite awhile! I figured since I won't have much to do this summer that I should get back to blogging. And I know reaing doesn't make for the most exciting blog posts ever but, what can I say? I don't sky dive or paint my toenails with that crackle stuff so reading it is!

After Europe I started my masters which has made me both work hard and be really lazy at the same time. I'm told this is normal. In terms of reading, I've been rather slow. I started Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer but I couldn't get past the middle. I then started The Darling Buds of May by H. E. Bates which I absolutely love but I haven't finished it yet.

I acquired some new Vonnegut this year at a used book store. I started with Hocus Pocus (1990). It's about a man who gets incarcerated for inadvertently aiding a bunch of prisoners escape from the prison where he works as a teacher. The whole book is written from the protagonist's cell. This isn't my favourite book of Vonnegut's but it is filled with great one-liners and the typical gallows humour we've come to expect.

Next I read Jailbird (1979). It starts off very similarly to Hocus Pocus so when I started reading it I was a bit wary that I was going to be reading an early version of the novel I wasn't too crazy about. Boy was I wrong! After every chapter I was enjoying the book more and more. Walter F. Starbuck was a member of Nixon's staff during the Watergate scandal. He starts the novel off in prison but the rest of the story is about his release and the crazy events that make up his first day as a free man. This is definitely one of his bests. I would put it up near Cat's Cradle in terms of wit and humour. Starbuck, like most of Vonnegut's protagonists, isn't really in control of how his life plays out. He adheres to social norms, does what he feels is right at the time, and somehow ends up as President Nixon's special advisor for youth affairs. Who knew? At 65 he gets out of prison--and that's when his life really gets interesting.

Here's a classic Vonnegut thought from Jailbird:

"...we heard a Gypsy violin crying somewhere--sobbing as though its heart would break. And when I hear that violin's lamenting in my memory now, I am able to add this information: Hitler, not yet in power, would soon cause to be killed every Gypsy his soldiers and policemen could catch."

Vonnegut was never shy about expressing his socialist, anti-war views. In Jailbird, Vonnegut's disdain for the fates of Sacco and Vanzetti is the book's main political statement. He writes as passionately and eloquently about politics and social responsibilities as Mark Twain ever did. I remember a couple times having to put the book down and just take a deep sigh at how stupid I suddenly found everyone else to be.

I'm now reading Timequake (1997) which is kicking my ass. Review to come. Watch out peeps.