The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 14 January 2013
by Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut was one of America's sharpest critics. After enduring the firebombing of Dresden in World War 2, the author could only cast a jaundiced eye at the behavior of mankind, while knowing that, deep inside, we are capable of great goodness. As a social critic, by way of his witty and surreal novels, he was wildly popular with the youth movements of the 60s and 70s. He earned an elder-statesman quality in his old age, but he was a reluctant hero. He touches on this in the second of the two previously unpublished stories found in this slender volume.
The first piece, Basic Training is a coming-of-age story, of sorts, in which an orphaned young urban boy, an aspiring piano player, is exiled to the hardscrabble farm of a former army general who controls his family with an iron fist and a rigid timeclock. Haley is a frail young man with aspirations. The General is a rigid old man who likes to punish the young people in his charge by taking their dreams away from them. The story comes from a youthful Vonnegut, too. He was always in touch with some adolescent yearnings, and yet there is a conventional tone to the piece that would sound new to people familiar only with his later work. But it is mature in its view of human nature and the various character flaws we inherit from our families and our environments.
The second work, If God Were Alive Today is a novella-length excerpt from the book Vonnegut was working on at the time of his death in 2007. Gil Berman was a stand-up comedian, but he was brilliant enough to have been a scientist or a doctor. He dropped out of Columbia and worked the comic stage instead, bringing biting wit and sharp observations about his country and how it has disappointed him. The story is about the people around Gil, and who populated his background. The rich orthodontist father who committed suicide. The mentally-ill mother. The crazy wife and forgotten daughter. Gil's view on the world (and presumably Vonnegut's) is bleak and bitter. But it is sharply observed, as always. One cannot help but think that the author might have further refined this story. Even so, notes of autobiography peer through the tale. In the end, it is somewhat heartbreaking, and yet revealing, to see here the train of thought in the author at the time of his death.
The two pieces together bracket Vonnegut's long career. The contrast reveals the long transition between sincere and observant storyteller to the Twain-like social critic, certain that mankind could do better and bitter that we just don't. It is a fascinating contrast, and one that illustrates the trials of observant maturity. One hopes that Vonnegut will, like Mark Twain, enjoy a long and valued memory in our culture.
Also by Kurt Vonnegut: [Timequake]