A Man without a Country (Seven Stories Press)

Author: KurtVonnegut

Review: 2 / 5

Kurt Vonnegut’s latest book, “A Man without a Country,” is a compilation of an old man’s musings, sketches and, most prominently, rants.

It reads like pages ripped from his diary, with 12 vignettes covering his life, his writing and the state of the world.

He quotes Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain incessantly, with occasional quips from Jesus Christ, Confucius and a somewhat disturbed Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis.

I fervently believe that there are a great number of good things about “A Man without a Country.”

It is short.

It has huge margins and font size.

It has pictures and giant blue asterisks.

It reads faster than the CliffsNotes of a Dr. Seuss book.

With his increasing age (he is now 83), Vonnegut has become disillusioned and bitter. He flaunts this proudly, seeming to believe his depression is something for which to strive.

He defends himself by pointing to Twain and the creepy Dr. Semmelweis – both of whom shared his demoralized spirits as they grew older. It only makes me further question his desire to live.

In the midst of his whining and doomsaying, Vonnegut has the decency to admit that there are no “good old days” – that no time in the past was any better than things are now. Yet he contradicts himself, calling himself a Luddite (one who refuses to accept change) and advocating a return to the typewriter. He even goes so far as to cite the sob story of a typist now out of job because of the rise of the evil word processor.

I’ve heard all these rants before:

The burning of fossil fuels is killing the Earth (not quite – carbon dioxide emissions have an insignificant impact on the atmosphere, thanks to the carbon-silicon cycle).

Human beings aren’t fit to exist (until dolphins get opposable thumbs, I’d rather be alive and with some negligible amount of intelligence than be shoved off the evolutionary ladder).

Industrialization, capitalism, the Information Age – progress of any kind is going to kill us all (this belief is so ludicrous that no rebuttal other than common sense is necessary).

Semi-colons are pretentious and only show one’s level of education (now that’s just hate-mongering toward punctuation marks).

This book left me apathetic with a chaser of disdain.

These writings are what I would have expected from a jaded 16-year-old or Hunter S. Thompson after an ether binge.

This man is a living genius? He is noted for being a founder of great American literature.

There is something wrong with our basis of comparison.

I don’t deny that there are some severe issues with humans; as imperfect animals using a fraction of our brains, that is inferred.

I will deny Vonnegut’s pessimism and lack of hope. Yes, there are nut jobs out there, but we’ve made it through 3.5 billion years. By now we should know not to mate with the crazy ones.

Vonnegut clearly knows his opinions, and I am assuming he put thought and time into developing them. Whether he did, there’s no point trying to dissuade an 83-year-old man of anything.

My concern is for the trusting readers who will be tempted to accept his opinions as their own. To them I urge: Conduct your own research, form your own thoughts, put faith in your own powers of reasoning and, from those bases, form your own beliefs. Should they coincide with Vonnegut’s, good for you, and I encourage you to get some Valium.

If you insist on reading about humanity’s shortcomings, read James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Last of the Mohicans” or anything by Ayn Rand. Vonnegut’s book is only satisfying for self-styled cynics who continue trying to make their killjoy ways glamorous.