Kurt Vonnegut's A Man Without a Country

We all have our favorite authors, those voices we go return to repeatedly for insight, wisdom, and when necessary, comfort. My constant readers from here know that one of those voices for me is Ray Bradbury. However, he isn't the only author who I hold in that regard. Another such figure is the writer Kurt Vonnegut.

My Vonnegut Selection

Source: Amazon

Recently, I finished listening to the audiobook version of Slaughterhouse Five, but even before that, I had been reading--as in out of a real book--another work of his, the last book Vonnegut published before he passed in 2007: A Man Without a Country.

Some of you reading this might recall that last week, I quoted twice from this book. I hadn't finished reading the whole thing through at that point (although it isn't a massive volume). What struck me most about Vonnegut's writing in this particular compendium was the amazing contrast between his outlook--which informs permeates the somber tone of most of his writings--and the clear message he was attempting to communicate throughout much of the book. 

A Man Without a Country isn't a novel, the form for which Vonnegut is best known and beloved. It's a collection of essays, short, personal pieces of nonfiction, written in his inimitable way. Vonnegut's fiction, much like the work of any great writer, varies in the stories it tells, but it's unifying forces are his voice, lugubrious, yet humorous and matter-of-fact, and his themes, preoccupations with WWII, the darker side of human nature, and the future (among others).

Yet, beneath the melancholy, there is nearly always a plea for humanity always, or at least more often than not, to act under the influence of the better angels of our nature. Along with that, there's also a desire Vonnegut hold for us all, and that is that despite the hardships we face in life, we should also endeavor to enjoy ourselves. Those messages come through quite strong in the pieces included in A Man Without a Country. 

Vonnegut's essays in the book typify what's so wonderful about the form. Gore Vidal, Vonnegut's direct contemporary and a fine essayist himself, personally defined the essay as, "An attempt to get through to another person," because, "It's the last form where one mind can talk directly to another mind, without being mediated by television or by somebody else in the print medium." 

One of Vonnegut's most regularly employed literary techniques was metafiction, a self-conscious attempt to make the reader aware that they were reading something. Vonnegut would interject himself into the narrative and tell you that he was telling you a story. Both Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse Five (especially in its first and final chapters), rely heavily on this technique. However, in this book, the pretext of fiction is stripped away, and instead, Vonnegut just sits with the reader to share his thoughts and, every so often, drop a little wisdom. 

Just as Vonnegut was an atypical novelist, his essays follow the same suit. To an unaccustomed reader, some of the pieces seem almost like several smaller essays strung together willy-nilly, a small tapestry of tangents and digressions. Like his fiction, though, Vonnegut's voice and his preoccupations unify them all, regardless of whatever sideroad they wonder down. And that despite the strange turns of subject, sometimes from paragraph to paragraph in the same piece, his humor and his pleas for betterment and joy shine through.

For example, in his essay "I have been called a Luddite," Vonnegut recounts his old routine, back in the time when he used a typewriter rather than a computer. 

After finishing a piece, he would take his hand-corrected typed pages down to the nearest stationary store, where he'd buy a large manila envelop. From there, he'd take his packaged pages to the nearest post office, have the weighed and properly stamped, and finally he would address and mail it to his typist friend, Carol. Along the way, he'd talk to people--the kind of small talk and chit-chat one can engage in with a near total stranger. At the piece's close, he then writes:

"I have had one hell of a good time. Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different," (62).

Despite him decrying the modern, internet-based world (of which, we're now all part of), Vonnegut is nonetheless imploring his readers--to shamelessly quote the movie Zombieland--"enjoy the little things." Even though, in the end, we're all going to die, before we do, we should relish the time we have, the moments we lives through, and the memories we create. 

Vonnegut repeats that same sentiment in the final essay of the book, "I used to be the owner of an automobile dealership." He recalls the adage his Uncle Alex's often expressed. "So when we were drinking lemonade under and apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Ale would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is,""(132).

At his core, Vonnegut was a pessimist. After the hell he endured as a POW during WWII and the heartache of many personal family tragedies, he saw life as a chore, something that one had to endure. Still, he acknowledged that there was joy to be had in the wake of the struggle. One can find it in the small things in life: idle conversation, everyday occurrences, the pleasurable company of those who we love, and in art. It is for those things that we miserable human beings should live and should seek while we can and enjoy them when while we can.

If you'd like to hear extracts from the books, please take the time to watch the video below, featuring Vonnegut giving a lecture at a University in Ohio.