{"id":3867,"date":"2019-04-05T14:55:44","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T14:55:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2019\/04\/05\/d-g-myers-on-kurt-vonnegut\/"},"modified":"2019-04-05T14:55:44","modified_gmt":"2019-04-05T14:55:44","slug":"d-g-myers-on-kurt-vonnegut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2019\/04\/05\/d-g-myers-on-kurt-vonnegut\/","title":{"rendered":"D. G. Myers on Kurt Vonnegut"},"content":{"rendered":"

I admit to never having read any Kurt Vonnegut. But I have just read a gushing article<\/a> in The Atlantic<\/em> about his Slaughterhouse-Five, <\/em>now 50 years old. So I thought I'd see what D. G. Myers has to say about Vonnegut.  Some excerpts from No on Vonnegut<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The Library of America has made the weird and unpardonable decision to release<\/a> an omnibus volume of fiction by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. The volume covers ten years of writing from 1963 to 1973, the period during which the novels Cat\u2019s Cradle<\/em>, God Bless You, Mr Rosewater<\/em>, Slaughterhouse-Five<\/em>, and Breakfast of Champions<\/em> and the story collection Welcome to the Monkey House<\/em> were published. Although I have been unable to confirm the exact contents, Vonnegut\u2019s books are short enough that the Library of America volume is likely to include all five.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is no possible justification for Vonnegut\u2019s enshrinement in the Library of America, which exists \u201cto preserve the nation's cultural heritage by publishing America\u2019s best and most significant writing in authoritative editions. . . .\u201d Even one of his champions\u2014James Lundquist, in a 1977 single-author study\u2014classifies his fiction as \u201c \u2018naive\u2019 literature because [Vonnegut] makes so much use of expected associations and conventions for the purpose of rapid communication with its readers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n

Until 1969, his most famous book was Cat\u2019s Cradle<\/em>, a silly fable that college students all over the country seemed to be reading in unison. Then came Slaughterhouse-Five<\/em>, his novel about the Allied firebombing of Dresden during the last year of the Second World War. As in all his books, Vonnegut was careful to spell out the Message: \u201cI have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee.\u201d It is difficult to understand how anyone could experience the rush of moral knowledge while reading that sentence, but perhaps a certain kind of young reader feels something like personal unification\u2014a delirious sense that his rebellion against the adult world is finally taking the firm shape of settled conviction\u2014when swallowing Vonnegut\u2019s books.<\/span><\/p>\n

A recent critic calls Vonnegut, who lived through the firebombing of Dresden as a POW, \u201cthe war\u2019s second most famous survivor,\u201d after Elie Wiesel. (Francine Prose based an entire novel<\/a> on the empty posturing behind such a claim.) Perhaps, though, this remark provides the key to his fiction, if not a reason to reprint it in an authoritative edition. The survivors of massacres and holocausts are indemnified against ordinary criticism, but also against the ordinary expectations\u2014of subtlety, memorable characterization, layered prose\u2014that readers bring to a work of literature.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I admit to never having read any Kurt Vonnegut. But I have just read a gushing article in The Atlantic about his Slaughterhouse-Five, now 50 years old. So I thought I'd see what D. G. Myers has to say about Vonnegut.  Some excerpts from No on Vonnegut: The Library of America has made the weird … Continue reading “D. G. Myers on Kurt Vonnegut”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}