This proved to be the last book which Vonnegut wrote and published before he died in 2007. He mentioned a novel that he was working on - but which he apparently was struggling with - in this book, as well as when I saw him for the second, and final, time in 2006. That novel, which he describes in this book as being about a comedian at the end of the world, was titled If God Were Alive Today and eventually did see posthumous publication in Vonnegut's We Are What We Pretend to Be. (By the way, just as a side note, I published a book review of that one well over a decade ago. Here's the link: Kurt Vonnegut's "You Are What You Pretend To Be" Book Review published on May 25, 2014: https://charbor74.blogspot.com/2014/05/kurt-vonneguts-you-are-what-you-pretend.html)
However, this was indeed the final Vonnegut book published while he was still around to talk about it. By that point, it had been a number of years since he had published any new material. the late 90's proved to be a busy time for him. He published a novel, Timequake, in 1997. In that same year, he also released Bagombo Snuff Box, which was a collection of essays, and L'Histoire du Soldat, a play. Two years later, he published God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, which is a very short book of fictional interviews which Vonnegut obtains from mostly well-known people in heaven. There was also a collaborative release called Like Shaking Hands with God: A Conversation About Writing which came out in 1999 with fellow writer Lee Stringer.
The late 1990's had indeed been a busy time for Vonnegut, in terms of numerous releases and such. Yet, I was not a big fan of Vonnegut yet at that point. In fact, I had only a passing knowledge of him. Probably knew next to nothing about him at the time. For all intents and purposes, I began to get into Vonnegut in 2001 or 2002, really. By 2003, I considered myself a big fan of his, and was trying to read everything that I could by him. Then by 2004, I pretty much had read everything that he had written, at least up to that book.
This book, then, was particularly special to me. It marked the first - and really only - time that a new book was released by Vonnegut before his death, while I was a fan and able to fully appreciate it. So it really meant something to me. I recognized just how much during my recent rereading, too. Some of the memories of his writing, of his humor, and yes, of his wisdom came back. Not for the first time, I missed him and wondered what he would have to say of the Trump administration, and of the state of the country, and the world more generally, if he were still around now to comment on it.
Still, there are similarities between the frankly terrible year which he published this book, in 2004, and our present day. That year, George W. Bush won another term in office, despite having provided people an overwhelming number of reasons why he frankly did not deserve to remain in the Oval Office. Right now, of course, we are dealing with Donald Trump, who also did everything possible during his first four years to illustrate how unqualified and unworthy he is to be in the Oval Office. He took a leading role in what, to me, felt like an attempted coup on January 6th, had promoted the idea of pushing back the elections in 2020 due to a national emergency that he had done everything to undermine beforehand (the coronavirus pandemic) and then, in 2022, even went as far to post on his Truth Social how parts of the Constitution might need to be suspended. So of course the American voters, in their infinite wisdom, saw all of that and decided to reward this man with yet another four years.
And many Trump supporters then turn around and wonder why so many people view them as either stupid bigots, excessively selfish and petty, or both.
Go figure.
SPOILER ALERT
SPOILER ALERT
SPOILER ALERT
Okay, so by now if you are still reading this, I have to imagine that you either are familiar with this story already, or perhaps you do not mind the spoilers. Please just don't say that you were not given advanced warning.
Now, let's get into the book.
Perhaps the most famous part of this book - I have seen it quoted a number of times on social media - is the part where he describes going out. At the time, he was living in New York City, near the United Nations. He is heading out of his apartment, ignoring his wife urging him to simply get envelopes and everything else that he needs, so that he does not have to run these errands. Then, Vonnegut describes in detail his everyday routine, including obtaining some things at a newsstand and then standing in line at a post office. He jokes that everybody pretended that he was not famous. At the end of this, he explains his reason for why he continues to engage in this: because we are here to fart around. And he urges the reader not to allow anyone to tell them differently.
Most of the book fixates on the state of the world as it existed in 2004. That was a bad year, although it might seem like good times compared to the times that we are living in now, over two decades later. Still, Vonnegut launches into attacks on the power of media (mostly television back then, but nowadays phones and social media would likely be his target). He attacks the Bush administration, which was the abusive power in the White House at the time. Again, it might seem like lightweight stuff compared to what we are seeing now under the Trump administration. But I personally feel that an argument could be made that America's descent into it's current state was a series of steps, and that the Bush administration and it's abuses made the excesses, decades, and even more over the top abuses of the Trump White House possible. Almost everything that he says of Bush back then is even more relevant now. All you have to do is replace Bush with Trump, for the most part. So it felt like this book was still extremely relevant, even if Vonnegut is speaking of a different time, and different people in charge.
He urges people to read Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," in which de Tocqueville revealed certain defining trails of the American character at large. This includes how we Americans are more obsessed with money than people from any other country in the world. It feels like little has changed in two hundred years in that regard. And he gives a lesson about how pretty much all great literature basically comes down to how much of a bummer it is to be a human being.
Vonnegut gets a little bit into mythology, reminding us how the gods of Greek mythology punished Prometheus severely for giving fire to human beings. This he likened to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve and the apple of knowledge, which he described as "a clear case of entrapment." He has a point, doesn't he?
Anyway, he says that the gods were right to be so angry at Prometheus, because humans have abused this power of knowledge. We have, according to Vonnegut, "all but destroyed this once salubrious planet as a life-support system in fewer than two hundred years," citing our addiction to fossil fuels as proof. He then provides examples that show that no one nation or group of people is responsible, such as Englishman Michael Faraday building the first electric generator, and the German Karl Benz building the first internal combustion engine, and American Edwin Drake being the first to drill for oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania, as well as the Wright brothers building the first airplane, which of course ran on gas.
On this point, he goes a bit further. He talks about human beings using petroleum as a "destructive high." This part, about how much fun people have (perhaps without fully realizing it) with how empowering it is to drive cars really got me thinking when I first read this and heard Vonnegut speak of it two decades ago. Here is how he describes it, specifically, in this book (page 9):
"You put some of this stuff in your car and you can go a hundred miles an hour, run over the neighbor's dog, and tear the atmosphere to smithereens."
One largely forgotten chapter in history Vonnegut focuses on. He explains how socialism has become a bad word in the modern United States, but that this was not always the case. To that end, he discusses the writer Carl Sandburg and the politician Eugene Victor Debs, who actually garnered a decent amount of popular support. He also mentions Powers Hapgood, who helped to organize into unions for better pay and working conditions, as well as leading the protests to the infamous hanging of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in 1927.
Of course, he talks about other things than the sorry political state of the world. He delves a bit into his family history, the history of earlier German immigrants in the United States, and provides hilarious lessons on the "curve" of story telling, which comes early on in the book. He also explains how his Uncle Alex used to feel that people needed to recognize when they are having a good time, and used to say, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
That was something which resonated with me back in 2004, when I read this book, and when Vonnegut expressed that same sentiment in the commencement speech he gave that year at Lehigh University.
Vonnegut also explains how he struggled quite a bit writing his iconic World War II book. Up to that point, all of the war stories had focused on machismo, on "real men" doing heroic things like they showed in movies starring "The Duke" John Wayne and Frank Sinatra. But while he was over for dinner with a war buddy, that buddy's wife seemed disgusted with their war stories and told them that they had just been children back during the war. And this he credits with getting past whatever was preventing him from writing "Slaughterhouse-5," which of course became the work he is best known for. Once he realized that they had been children, he was able to finish his book relatively quickly thereafter, describing his experience of being in Dresden when that city was infamously firebombed, which I believe was the single worst overnight massacre in European history.
He also wonders why so many writers seem deathly afraid of technology. Many quickly labeled him as a science fiction writer, simply because his writings prominently referenced modern technology. But he feels that this is wrong. In fact, he likens the phobia that many writers have with incorporating technology in their works to the absence of sex by writers of the Victorian era. That feels like a pretty decent point, seeing how dominant technology has clearly become for the vast majority of us in our modern society. After all, I am writing this blog entry, and you are reading this. Both of us are using modern technology in this regard, are we not?
Speaking of writing, here was a brilliant summary of the power of words, of writing, by Vonnegut in this book (which can be found on page 133):
"The imagination circuit is taught to respond to the most minimal of cues. A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo."
Isn't that a rather amazing, yet short, description of the magic of writing?
Wow.
This is a good book. Simply stated, it is a fun read. Also, it is quite short. I did not rush in my recent rereading, so it spanned a couple of days. However, I was taking my time. My suspicion, though, is that you could probably read this in one sitting, and at the very least one day, if you are so inclined. You certainly don't have to, but you probably could.
And you should read this book, for that matter. It is an entertaining book that might just get you to think. There are a few laughs here and there, as well, which is typical of a Vonnegut work. Any fans will surely appreciate this last published book before his death in 2007. There have been posthumous works published since, but this is the final one that was current to the times. Also, I cannot emphasize enough how relevant it feels now. All you really have to do is replace the names of then (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell) with the names dominating the American political landscape today (Trump, Vance, Bannon, and Miller).
Highly recommended!
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