A MAN WITHOUT a COUNTRY by Kurt Vonnegut





Originally published in 2005

Published when Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was 82, A Man Without a Country is a series of short essays from a man who is pretty embarrassed by his country with the election and re-election of George W. Bush - thus the title. (One can only imagine Kurt Vonnegut's reaction to the election of Trump!)

But, very little of the book directly deals with politics. He wanders from topic to topic - this sounds like it should be a mess, but each of these essays flow right along, breaking every rule that your English teachers taught you about having a proper opening paragraph, a clearly stated thesis, etc. 

But, then again, your English teacher wasn't Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut, by the way, strongly recommends against the use of semi-colons. I absolutely agree. 

If you haven't read Vonnegut, brace yourself. He is angry, sarcastic, insightful and brilliant. He writes about a wide variety of topics. Some are dated, like the comments about the fights over placing the 10 Commandments in courthouses and on courthouse lawns. Or, is it out of date? Those same people have just moved on to fight to be able to discriminate against the LGBTQ community and advocate the QAnon conspiracy theory. Same goofiness, new topics.

Vonnegut discusses a wide variety of topics, including:

-What topics are off-limits when it comes to humor;
-Eugene V. Debs;
-Socialism;
-The power of the Sermon on the Mount (Vonnegut was an avowed atheist, but he dearly loved the Sermon on the Mount);
-Carl Sandburg;
-War;
-The importance of art and the importance for regular people to get in there and give it a try;
-Women, men and divorce (it made sense to me - very insightful);
-and more. So much more. He meanders, and it works. 

About when you think that Vonnegut is irredeemably cranky - a curmudgeon that even other curmudgeons think is unnecessarily grumpy, Vonnegut hits you with a thought that is so sweet and so pure that you just stop reading and think, "Wow!"

He did this to me towards the end of this book. He was talking growing up and tragedy and his annoying Uncle Dan. Then, you turn the page and there is an entire page about his Uncle Alex whose "...principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when they were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'" And he urges us to do the same. 

Pretty good advice from a man who was earlier complaining that he was going to sue because the cigarette warning labels were wrong - they had promised to kill him and he was still here.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: A MAN WITHOUT a COUNTRY by Kurt Vonnegut.


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