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A Man Without a Country by [Kurt Vonnegut, Daniel Simon]

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A Man Without a Country Kindle Edition

by Kurt Vonnegut (Author), Daniel Simon (Editor) Format: Kindle Edition

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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.

ISBN-13

978-1583227138
Publisher

Seven Stories Press
Publication date

January 4, 2011
Language

English
File size

857 KB
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his first book since 1999, it's just like old times as Vonnegut (now 82) makes with the deeply black humor in this collection of articles written over the last five years, many from the alternative magazine In These Times. But the pessimistic wisecracks may be wearing thin; the conversational tone of the pieces is like Garrison Keillor with a savage undercurrent. Still, the schtick works fine most of the time, underscored by hand-lettered aphorisms between chapters. Some essays suffer from authorial self-indulgence, however, like taking a dull story about mailing a manuscript and stretching it to interminable lengths. Vonnegut reserves special bile for the "psychopathic personalities" (i.e., "smart, personable people who have no consciences") in the Bush administration, which he accuses of invading Iraq so America can score more of the oil to which we have become addicted. People, he says, are just "chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power." Of course, that's exactly the sort of misanthropy hardcore Vonnegut fans will lap up—the online versions of these pieces are already described as the most popular Web pages in the history of In These Times. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Kurt Vonnegut’s black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America’s attention in The Sirens of Titan in 1959 and established him as “a true artist” (The New York Times) with Cat’s Cradle in 1963. He was, as Graham Greene declared, “one of the best living American writers.” Mr. Vonnegut passed away in April 2007.

Review

"Thank God, Kurt Vonnegut has broken his promise that he will never write another book. In this wondrous assemblage of mini-memoirs, we discover his family's legacy and his obstinate, unfashionable humanism."

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

As a kid I was the youngest member of my family, and the youngest child in any family is always a jokemaker, because a joke is the only way he can enter into an adult conversation. My sister was five years older than I was, my brother was nine years older than I was, and my parents were both talkers. So at the dinner table when I was very young, I was boring to all those other people. They did not want to hear about the dumb childish news of my days. They wanted to talk about really important stuff that happened in high school or maybe in college or at work. So the only way I could get into a conversation was to say something funny. I think I must have done it accidentally at first, just accidentally made a pun that stopped the conversation, something of that sort. And then I found out that a joke was a way to break into an adult conversation.

I grew up at a time when comedy in this country was superb—it was the Great Depression. There were large numbers of absolutely top comedians on radio. And without intending to, I really studied them. I would listen to comedy at least an hour a night all through my youth, and I got very interested in what jokes were and how they worked.

When I’m being funny, I try not to offend. I don’t think much of what I’ve done has been in really ghastly taste. I don’t think I have embarrassed many people, or distressed them. The only shocks I use are an occasional obscene word. Some things aren’t funny. I can’t imagine a humorous book or skit about Auschwitz, for instance. And it’s not possible for me to make a joke about the death of John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King. Otherwise I can’t think of any subject that I would steer away from, that I could do nothing with. Total catastrophes are terribly amusing, as Voltaire demonstrated. You know, the Lisbon earthquake is funny.

I saw the destruction of Dresden. I saw the city before and then came out of an air-raid shelter and saw it afterward, and certainly one response was laughter. God knows, that’s the soul seeking some relief.

Any subject is subject to laughter, and I suppose there was laughter of a very ghastly kind by victims in Auschwitz.

Humor is an almost physiological response to fear. Freud said that humor is a response to frustration—one of several. A dog, he said, when he can’t get out a gate, will scratch and start digging and making meaningless gestures, perhaps growling or whatever, to deal with frustration or surprise or fear.

And a great deal of laughter is induced by fear. I was working on a funny television series years ago. We were trying to put a show together that, as a basic principle, mentioned death in every episode and that this ingredient would make any laughter deeper without the audience’s realizing how we were inducing belly laughs.

There is a superficial sort of laughter. Bob Hope, for example, was not really a humorist. He was a comedian with very thin stuff, never mentioning anything troubling. I used to laugh my head off at Laurel and Hardy. There is terrible tragedy there somehow. These men are too sweet to survive in this world and are in terrible danger all the time. They could be so easily killed.

Even the simplest jokes are based on tiny twinges of fear, such as the question, “What is the white stuff in bird poop?” The auditor, as though called upon to recite in school, is momentarily afraid of saying something stupid. When the auditor hears the answer, which is, “That’s bird poop, too,” he or she dispels the automatic fear with laughter. He or she has not been tested after all.

“Why do firemen wear red suspenders?” And “Why did they bury George Washington on the side of a hill?” And on and on.

True enough, there are such things as laughless jokes, what Freud called gallows humor. There are real-life situations so hopeless that no relief is imaginable.

While we were being bombed in Dresden, sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.” Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it. At least we were still alive! He proved it.

Review

'Thank God, Kurt Vonnegut has broken his promise that he will never write another book. In this wondrous assemblage of mini-memoirs, we discover his family's legacy and his obstinate, unfashionable humanism' Studs Terkel 'Vonnegut's A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY is pure late Twain, darkly funny, never less than enraged at corruption and greed, and overflowing with compassion for the powerless. We've never needed him more' Russell Banks 'The verve for life amid stunningly depressing news, and that backhanded, refreshingly brutal, but infinitely whimsical way of viewing the world around him, continues to stand out in every odd word Vonnegut puts to paper.' The Onion 'Like his literary ancestor Mark Twain, his crankiness is good-humoured and sharp-witted, and aimed at well-defended soft spots of hypocrisy and arrogance.' New York Times Book Review --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000QUELZ4
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Seven Stories Press (January 4, 2011)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 4, 2011
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 857 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 162 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 081297736X

Customer Reviews:
848 ratings

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Kurt Vonnegut

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Kurt Vonnegut was a writer, lecturer and painter. He was born in Indianapolis in 1922 and studied biochemistry at Cornell University. During WWII, as a prisoner of war in Germany, he witnessed the destruction of Dresden by Allied bombers, an experience which inspired Slaughterhouse Five. First published in 1950, he went on to write fourteen novels, four plays, and three short story collections, in addition to countless works of short fiction and nonfiction. He died in 2007.

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I wonder what Kurt Vonnegut would say about today's world of Obama-mania?

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 3, 2012

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Kurt Vonnegut's comedic wit will surely be missed. His book "A Man Without a Country" says it all. He argues that the Bush administration's justification for committing an act of manifest destiny upon Iraq is hilarity at its most paramount. One statement that he makes on pages 77 will have you laughing out loud. Just make sure you don't disturb your neighbors. "Speaking of plunging into war, do you know why I think George W. Bush is so [-----] off at Arabs? They brought us Algebra. Also the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which Europeans had never had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.".....Well, I thought it was funny.

Vonnegut also discusses the Mexican-American War and what Abraham Lincoln thought about it. As a matter of fact in the 1840's slavery was illegal there. So I guess that justified an invasion... right? The truth is the war was a land grab for California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming. And rightwing Americans have the audacity to say that Latinos are illegal!

This book is great! Each quote is elegantly witty, yet enlightening. For example: "No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful." And he's right considering Black people created the music that is the very milieu of American culture today and the world's for that matter. Vonnegut states "African Americans gave the whole world when they were still in slavery, a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues." All I can say is that a little Jimi Hendrix goes a long way.

On page 56 Vonnegut alludes to the notion that technology has become our Achilles heel, breeding an insalubrious environment. "Today we have contraptions like nuclear submarines armed with Poseidon missiles that have H-bombs in their warheads. And we have contraptions like computers that cheat you out of becoming" someone special. "But it's you who should be doing the becoming, not the (dang) fool computer. What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do." In other words don't let the elites' idea of progress rob you of your humanity.

Overall, Vonnegut laughs in the face of the "American Drug War," which he compares it to prohibition of the 1920's and early 1930's.
He also says, "Now let me give you a marketing tip. The people who can afford to buy books and magazines and go to the movies don't like to hear about people who are poor or sick." I find that quote to be the truism of the century. A case in point: Vonnegut points out that the so-called Christian right argues for the Ten Commandments to "be posted in public buildings," but "for some reason, the most vocal (extreme right-wing) Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes" of Christ Jesus. None of them have ever demanded "that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes be posted anywhere." It's funny how the Evangelical ultra right-wing never quotes Jesus or adheres to his teachings. What a wonderful world we would live in if they embraced Christ principles.

Matthew 5:5
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth."

Matthew 5:7
"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy

Matthew 5:9
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God."

As Vonnegut explains, Jesus' words are "not exactly in the Republican platform." It definitely can't be found in the Tea Party's or the Christian Right's doctrine. If Jesus were here in the physical sense he would be tarred, feathered and branded a socialist. And "doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?" said Vonnegut facetiously of course.

His diatribe about the Republican Party during the George W. Bush presidency is on point. He diagnosis them (including the Christian Right aka white supremacists) as having psychopathic personality disorder, "and what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And they are waging a war that is making billionaires out of millionaires, and trillionaires out of billionaires, and they own television, and they bankrolled George Bush and not because he's against gay marriage" either! These Republicans only stand for cutting healthcare, cutting taxes for the rich, Building trillion-dollar missile shields, taping everybody's telephones, suspending Habeas Corpus indefinitely, and eviscerating our Constitutional rights as a free republic according to Vonnegut.

I also like what he had to say on page 24 that art is the very catalyst that makes the world a bearable place to live in because it is our raison d'être. "Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem, do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something." Plus, it will keep you sane and well grounded in this insane world we live in.

This book is a powerful polemic that is simultaneously cynical and quixotic. The truth is Vonnegut's diatribe is socialistic since he believes in Marxism. "A Man Without a Country" is one of the most compelling pieces of truth telling literature you will ever read, and it is so relevant considering today's political paradigm is pretty dire.

Overall, this book is part polemic, part memoir.

ENJOY, I highly recommend it.

12 people found this helpful

Last But Not Least

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 10, 2022

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Not to be ignored. Vonnegut predicts here our nation’s last few years without any willful intention detectable by this reader. Uncanny and darkly amusing.

One person found this helpful

Maravilhoso! Perfect! Must read book!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 7, 2022

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I did not read this book. I devour!
Love it!

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Everything Was Beautiful

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 28, 2005

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Reviews like the one below by the 23-year-old who never had read Vonnegut before this current volume remind me of Mr. V.'s statement (I paraphrase, perhaps grotesquely) that the cumulative effect of the Vietnam-war protests and of '60s activism in general was that of a banana-cream pie hurled off a stepladder: here is unquestionably the Greatest of contemporary American novelists, whose work and vision as a whole provide clarity, wisdom, and guidance with humor and love for both the survival of the species and for America--yet he remains largely ignored and neglected by the current American demos, for whom democracy is named, and reviewed by only 24 or so while the latest potboiler gets 345 Amazon reviews the very day it's published.

Certainly Vonnegut himself is well aware of these vagaries of fame and influence.

But let me heartily proclaim the obvious--that we truly should declare Mr. V.'s birthday a new national holiday (strapping it firmly to the one, for some, it already is on 11/11); schoolchildren should compete in Vonnegut Declamation Contests, vying to repeat from memory the longest and most salient passages from his works; we should have Vonnegut Festivals, Seminars, Television sitcoms, toothpaste, bottled water--even a Vonnegut Party in national, state, and local elections, which might well take the place of the corrupt and anemic Democrats.

Alas, it seems we are repeating the past as the Old Reliables (Studs Terkel, John Leonard, and company) trot out their appropriate praises; some teevee interviews are conducted; the bored Harvard and Yale crowds clap politely; the schoolchildren continue with their videogaming and baby-producing; and New Orleans is reduced to a new Love Canal, Iraq civil-wars, the wealthy bolt their gated enclaves, and the rest of us, debt-torn and grief-fatigued, stew in our own juices.

Look: if you haven't done so recently, go back and reread (or first-read) SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, CAT'S CRADLE, HOCUS-POCUS, GALAPAGOS, GOD BLESS YOU MR. ROSEWATER, and MOTHER NIGHT (among others: but start with these).

Think about what the man is saying. Look around you. Maybe turn off your television for a moment of silence.

Here is the real deal, folks.

This is our guy. Ignore him at your peril.

Let's get those "Sermon on the Mount" plaques up in every corporate lobby.

Let's get tap-dancing. There's not much time left for a party.

431 people found this helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Yeoman

Something Old, New, Borrowed and Blue

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 12, 2020

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The cover of this slim volume incorrectly describes it as being 'A Memoir of Life in George W. Bush's America'.
It is actually a collection of 12 essays on topics that, as all Vonnegut readers will be aware, have concerned the author throughout his life. Politics, environment, literature, religion and technology are among the subjects touched upon here. This does involve a degree of repetition and rehashing from previous works (some of it pretty close to verbatim) but the well versed KV devotee must forgive this as there are some new golden nuggets within. The essays on creative writing and political 'guessers' were new to me and worth the price of the book on their merits alone.
There is a valedictory feel to the book and it was first published only 2 years before his death in 2007. Sadness somehow pervades. Best of all ? A wonderful and brief (what else from Kurt?) 'Requiem' for the planet that effectively shuts up shop.
Goodbye Karl, Goodbye Blue Monday.

One person found this helpful

reg_sinclair

A Crazily Random Masterpiece

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 11, 2020

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Heard Kate Nicholls - I think that was her name - waxing lyrical about this book to Mariella Frostrup on Times Radio and, like her, read it in a day. A wonderful contemplation of reality, it's absurdity, and what really matters in this world. Very amusing and extremely thoughtful. Everyone should read this.

Mel Powell

Short but all Vonnegut in his own words

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 31, 2014

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I have enjoyed reading k Vonnegut for years so I came to this with an expectation that I would enjoy what he had to say about whatever it was he was saying it about. I did. Not really a memoir but a collection of his observations and opinions on what a crummy lot we humans are. Not just that, but it's what it all boils down to essentially. So, depressing and funny at the same time. As you would expect. Bit short for the price but then can you really put a price on original thinking?

3 people found this helpful

Prof. A.

Weakest of all his books

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 18, 2022

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If you like Vonnegut's work and want to remember him as a great writer I'd avoid reading this.

Simon Jardine

Lovely to revisit Kurt

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 1, 2020

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I loved his work in my youth and read almost everything he wrote. I was sad at his passing in 2007.
Sometime science fiction writer, always off the wall, ludicrous but hilarious observer of life in all its varied forms!

One person found this helpful

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