"Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization."
Kurt Vonnegut was no stranger to getting his feelings out there in his fiction.
Slaughterhouse-Five is the most obvious example, using protagonist Billy Pilgrim's experience as a survivor of the horrific bombing of Dresden as a stand-in for Vonnegut himself, who was a prisoner of war during that life-altering event. Being present for that atrocity forever scarred Vonnegut's perception of humanity, and the repercussions can be felt whenever you pick up one of his books. Truly, he was a man with a complicated, tortured perspective on the rest of the world. He had seen humanity at its worst, yet still seemed to believe that it was possible for man to redeem himself if he would just try. Yes, Vonnegut's canon is packed with the disgust for civilization that he mentions in the above quote, but it is also marked by a starry-eyed hopefulness. William Golding, author of "Lord of the Flies," struck the same chords in his fiction, and he took home a Nobel Prize for his troubles.
"Armageddon in Retrospect" is a collection of previously unpublished works by Vonnegut, almost exclusively from the period of his life after he returned home from WWII and before he struck it big as a novelist. The exceptions are a speech that he was meant to deliver in Indianapolis in late April, 2007, but which had to be delivered by his son, Mark, instead after Vonnegut passed away earlier that same month, and a letter that he wrote to his family to explain what had happened to him since he had been taken prisoner (namely, that he had survived that dreadful firebombing in Dresden and would be returning home, although many of his compatriots had not been so lucky). The letter is nothing short of astonishing. Devoid of almost all emotion, it resonates powerfully - a truly timeless document, but one that is especially meaningful in a time when there are American soldiers overseas and fighting rages on. The speech, on the other hand, is notable as the last piece of writing the great Vonnegut would produce, but for anyone who read
A Man Without a Country it will sound a little too familiar.
The bulk of "Armageddon" is comprised of short stories, and splendid stories they are, if a slight touch uneven. "Great Day," "The Unicorn Trap," and, unfortunately, the title story, "Armageddon in Retrospect," are stumbles, but only minor ones. Luckily, the good stories do more than their share to balance things out. With two exceptions, all of the stories deal directly with the wages of war and the soldiers who survive the ordeal. All of them examine the inherent corruptibility of man, and the things some people are willing to do to survive. More than one story features a character who cozies up to his enemy in order to make his situation more comfortable, and uses that position to exploit his comrades in POW camp. The best of the bunch, "Happy Birthday, 1951," is a poignant look at an older man who is trying to teach a young boy the value of peace, but who cannot compete with the glamorous appeal of tanks and guns to sway the boy's interests.
"Armageddon in Retrospect" feels like the most personal of Vonnegut's works on the market, perhaps because in its twists and turns you can feel the personal struggle of its author to reconcile what he has seen of the realities of mankind's present and past with what he hopes is in store for the future. If at times he angrily remarks "When does all the hate end? Never," he also has the power to envision a soldier who has just arrived in Europe, untainted by the fighting that had gone on, who singlehandedly restores the faith of a cabinet-maker whose experiences during his city's occupation have left him with little hope for the future. If we could just get away from war's influence, Vonnegut seems to be arguing, we might just be all right in the end.
With all of these weighty contemplations, it is a wonder that Vonnegut was able to hold on to his whimsical touch, but thankfully he never lost that attribute. Everything he wrote was imbued with a keen eye for the absurd, the fantastic, and the satiric. And for evidence of this look no further than the author photo gazing out from the back of the book's jacket, featuring an aged Vonnegut waving to the camera with a goofy expression on his face (half serious, half amused), framed by voluminous flowers and a garden gnome riding a pig (seriously). It amuses me, but it is also rather sad, because in the context of this book's publication it feels like he is waving goodbye. I never met Kurt Vonnegut, but I will miss him terribly. At least, with "A Man without a Country" and "Armageddon in Retrospect" the great author got the goodbye he deserved.
Grade: A
PS My personal favorite when it comes to Vonnegut is
Mother Night, so be sure to snap that one up post haste.
