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A Man without a Country: a barometric read

“There is no reason good can’t triumph over evil, if only angels will get organized along the lines of the Mafia.”

This is one of a number of epigrams by the author peppering his new book. This one begins the book with optimism. Anyone familiar with Vonnegut will not be surprised. What will surprise will be the emerging pessimism and unbridled, unamused outrage that concludes the book. From a different direction.

	A man without a Country Kurt Vonnegut Hardcover: $23.95, 146pp Paperback: $9.99 Publisher: Seven Stories, 2005 ISBN: 13-978-1-88322-7138

The highly successful London production My Name Is Rachel Corrie has become ensnared in Israeli Lobby resistance, and its arrival at the New York Theater Workshop has been “postponed.” It is a dramatization of Rachel’s journal entries from before and during her sojourn in Palestine. Then she was crushed by an Israeli soldier’s bulldozer while resisting destruction of a Palestinian’s home. The Israel lobby thinks the truth will make them look bad.

One of the early entries in Rachel’s journal exclaims with sass: “I decided to be an artist and a writer and I didn’t give a shit if I was mediocre and...if I starved to death and...if my whole damned high school turned and pointed and laughed in my face.” I include it because it echoes the sort of wisdom which has typefied Kurt Vonnegut’s writing from the beginning, from HIS early entries.

So it goes.

A Billy Pilgrim gets caught in the Slaughterhouse. A young woman gets crushed defending a friend’s home.

So it goes.

“Here is a lesson in creative writing,” Vonnegut writes in this his latest book, written in spite of himself — a promise not to publish any more books breached. Bush made him do it. Bush be praised for provoking Vonnegut to write this book of outrage and warm wisdom.

“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way to make life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow....”

A chapter on Ned Ludd enters the picture. An eclectic mix that entertains from various directions all headed the same way. Describing his Luddism, he hauls in Twain. Huckleberry Finn was the first novel written on a typrwriter. This sort of detail, seemingly extraneous on one level but a logical part of the weave on another, has influenced writers like Tom Robbins and a broad diaspora of writers who love that detail that makes no sense on the surface but complete sense in the heart of things. And the sheer fun of establishing the tenuous but important connection.

It’s appropriate for Studs Terkel to have the final say on the back of the dustcover, about Vonnegut’s “obstinate, unfashionable humanism.” To recommend this book is to recommend a person who will feed your soul.

People like Kurt or Studs or Rachel are people to pay with close attention.

Now, the reality here is that having written as much and as long, as spoken as much, stood for the same fundamental human things for so long, there is little here that is new. Except this: first, it IS more Vonnegut, always a good thing; it is, as it progresses, increasingly consumed in pure anger and the humor declines; and it is a barometric read of a very human being’s disbelief and outrage that such putz’s as Dubya, et al., having taken away the country he has loved his entire life. The strain in his voice is the cry of an old man lamenting the loss of his Heimat, as the Germans (and German-Americans like Vonnegut) say. The Homeland ain’t secure, it ain’t even home anymore. And the land’s a brownfield, too. Just look at New Orleans.

A Vonnegut polemic, like a Twain polemic, is practically guaranteed to get you on your feet, shaking your fist (mentally, spiritually) and believing in the need and possiblity that this crap will not stand! The media’s massage notwithstanding.
Speaking of which, your Laughing Horse Book Collective has lost its lease and is in very dire straits. They need your help. If you’re looking for a quality, no-holds-barred, progressive-minded book or zine, call Laughing Horse and get it there. (503-236-2893). Always a marginal operation, it appears unavoidable that they will have to dissolve or find some place that will take the collective in, and that takes money to make the move. Money the Collective doesn’t have. Things are that dire. So, as Vonnegut would say, “for heaven’s sake..for your soul’s sake”, support Laughing Horse before it’s gone.

“That’s the end of good news about anything” concludes Vonnegut. “Our planet’s immune system is trying to get rid of people. This is sure the way to do it.” An epigram he wrote early Wednesday morning, Nov. 3, 2004. The day after a day that will live in infamy.

His fatalism in late life, as he notes, is in line with Twain and Einstein’s resignation about the future of humankind. “And Twain didn’t even see WWI.”

And what would Einstein make of bunker-busters and DU-tipped armaments?

A Man without a Country is available at Laughing Horse Books, a collective without cheerful prospects.

Jay Thiemeyer is a local writer and poet. He is an advocate for the homeless who knows that every day is Katrina Day for some folks. He encourages people to support affordable housing, not PDC giveaways to developers; support universal healthcare, not giveaways to drug corporations; and support peace not mercenaries trained with our tax dollars.