Oh, God - what a world they try to lead them in.’ ‘ Oh, God - the lives people try to lead. Vonnegut probes beneath the ethical dilemmas of war into a deeper investigation on self-agency (or the lack of it), playacting and even love in a darkly comic novel that will haunt you to your core. In the middle of all this is Campbell, a man who thinks of himself as apolitical and frequently surrenders his agency to those around him, not even out of self-perseverance but out of something more akin to apathy. Mother Night is filled with Nazis and various white supremacist groups trying to keep the hate alive in the US, and a whole slew of spies mastermining long cons to achieve their aims.
The catch is, Campbell was an American spy using his vitriolic antisemetic broadcasts to hide secret codes to the Allied armies.
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Campbell, Jr written as he awaits trial in Israel for his work as a Nazi propagandist. ‘ We are what we pretend to be,' warns Kurt Vonnegut, ‘ so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.’ Vonnegut writes that Mother Night is ‘ the only story of mine whose moral I know,’ and launches into a metafictionally framed narrative purporting to be the memoir of Howard W. He did it with that that unique bittersweet sense of humor that allowed him to write about the horrors of something like the Holocaust and give it a tone of a very wise man shaking his head with a bitter chuckle at a dark, sick joke. Vonnegut’s gift was looking at the world with clear gaze and acknowledging that people were pretty much shit, but still having enough compassion and empathy to look for moments of dignity.
I had always felt alone in thinking that his was actually Vonnegut’s best book so I was happy to be validated by the comments of several other Goodreaders sharing the same thought. As he explains what happened before, during and after the war Howard repeatedly touches on the unasked question that haunts his life: Does pretending to be evil in the service of a good cause still make you evil?
Years after the war has ended, Howard recounts the story as he is being held in Israel awaiting trial for war crimes. However, Howard had actually been recruited before the war began to be an American spy who provided vital intelligence to the Allies via codes hidden in his frequent radio broadcasts. was an American citizen who grew up in Germany and became a prominent Nazi thanks to his virulent anti-Semitic propaganda. What better character for him to create to embody those views than a Nazi with good intentions? The thing I love best about Kurt Vonnegut is that he was both the ultimate cynic and the ultimate humanist. The novelist is known for works blending satire, black comedy and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat's Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973) Debs) and a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Vonnegut was a self-proclaimed humanist and socialist (influenced by the style of Indiana's own Eugene V. This acerbic 200-page book is what most people mean when they describe a work as "Vonnegutian" in scope. This event would also form the core of his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five, the book which would make him a millionaire. His experiences as an advance scout in the Battle of the Bulge, and in particular his witnessing of the bombing of Dresden, Germany whilst a prisoner of war, would inform much of his work. He attributed his unadorned writing style to his reporting work. He left Chicago to work in Schenectady, New York in public relations for General Electric. Army and serving in World War II.Īfter the war, he attended University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology and also worked as a police reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago. Vonnegut trained as a chemist and worked as a journalist before joining the U.S. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1943, where he wrote a column for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun. He was born in Indianapolis, later the setting for many of his novels. He was recognized as New York State Author for 2001-2003. Kurt Vonnegut, Junior was an American novelist, satirist, and most recently, graphic artist.
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