A Man Without a Country
2005
- american authors
- biography
- politics and government
- vonnegut, kurt, 1922-2007
- authors, biography
- united states, politics and government, 2001-2009
- memoir
- american novelists
The story
***A Man Without a Country*** is Kurt Vonnegut’s hilariously funny and razor-sharp look at life ("If I die—God forbid—I would like to go to heaven to ask somebody in charge up there, ‘Hey, what was the good news and what was the bad news?"), art ("To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it."), politics ("I asked former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton what he thought of our great victory over Iraq and he said, ‘Mohammed Ali versus Mr. Rogers.’"), and the condition of the soul of America today ("What has happened to us?"). Based on short essays and speeches composed over the last five years and plentifully illustrated with artwork by the author throughout, A Man Without a Country gives us Vonnegut both speaking out with indignation and writing tenderly to his fellow Americans, sometimes joking, at other times hopeless, always searching.
What it’s like
Loose, short essays set on the page like a sketchbook, with the author's own rough ink drawings scattered between them: crude faces, doodled figures, the look of marks made quickly at a kitchen table. The voice is conversational and clipped, like an older man talking on a porch at dusk, with jokes that land between blunt, angry sentences about war, government, and the state of the country. The mood is wry and rueful, moving from mordant laughter to tenderness and then to something close to despair, with a stubborn hope underneath. Pacing is brisk and digressive, each piece only a few pages long, so it suits a slow Sunday or a late evening, read in small sittings and set down easily. War and violence come up as subject matter and remembered history, discussed bluntly but never described graphically, so the register is political rather than frightening. Good for readers who want sharp, funny, humane commentary on American life and art, and who enjoy an elder's frank, affectionate exasperation.
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