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Loading... A man without a countryby Kurt Vonnegut
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Several of the blurbs for this book say it is as close as we will get to a memoir from Vonnegut. Honestly, if you have read Cat's Cradle, Slaughter-House Five, and his collections of lectures, speeches, etc. you have read everything in this book before. That doesn't mean it isn't worth reading. It is full of Vonnegut wit and misanthropy. It is fragmented, like his novels. It is funny, like his novels. The humor is to deal with the fear and hopelessness. He states that he has given up on mankind, and in particular, America. He strongly disliked the Bush administration, and he strongly believed that humans have destroyed the Earth. In typical Vonnegut fashion, he doesn't have any hope for us. To some degree it reads like a really depressed Al Gore- if Al Gore had a personality and was funny. I like Vonnegut's fiction. I liked it even more in my twenties when I was just as negative as he is, but I personally think you have to balance his cynicism with your own common sense and your own ability to think for yourself. (  ) wilsonknut | Nov 29, 2009 |  Fantastic book about the views of a great man at the end of his life. You can really see the frustrations that Vonnegut faced with the way that the United States was being run during his final years, and I'm sad that he felt that he was a man without a country. At least he had the librarians. Fantastic book, but it's a bit short, which means that it's hard to justify paying full price for it. Other than economics, it's beautiful (  ) Kunzelman | Sep 17, 2009 | A quick read, but a treasure. Not a bad book for those who have never read anything by the author before. Very quickly, you get a sense of who Kurt is, what he believes in, and the humorous stance he has taken in order to get "through this thing, whatever it is." (  ) Mieux | Aug 7, 2009 | Ashamed to say that I have not read any works of Vonnegut, but now that I have read this little gem, I am off to seek him out. Deceptively simple in construct and tone, this little book covers topics close to the heart of the man – destruction of the planet, divorce, the art of writing, music, politics and so on. Below the conversational style and intimate simplicity of the language, Vonnegut supplies some deeper philosophical reasoning and fist-shaking liberal viewpoints. He is sharp, humorous and quite uplifting. Yet he frequently rants and the mood of the tract varied between elation and sadness, negativity and hope, light humour and serious portents. Some quotations: I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex. “We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial.” “Foreigners love us for our jazz. And they don’t hate us for our purported liberty and justice for all. They hate us now for our arrogance.” “We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.” This does not take long to ingest and is likely to be one of those books you will return to - to pull out when you need a kick up the behind. ( )1  kiwidoc | Mar 13, 2009 | I watched a PBS interview with Kurt Vonnegut and they were talking about this book. I found him to be a very interesting and satirical man. I had never heard of him before and was intrigued by watching him. There were many times throughout the book that I thought to myself "that is exactly what I was thinking." I liked that he was not afraid to say what he felt and I got the feeling that he didn't care who heard him. This book lead me into my quest for reading all Kurt Vonnegut I can get my hands on. I am looking forward to reading much more in the future. ( ) Justjenniferreading | Mar 6, 2009 | 
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(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:54 -0400)
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