نمیدونم برای این چطوری باید ریویو بنویسم :دی

فقط اینکه در تمام مدتی که میخوندمش به ونه‌گوت فکر می کردم... به اینکه ایشون یه پیرمرد شیطون ِ بامزه بوده که اگه پیشش بودی هی میخواستی لپ ـش رو بکشی از بس گوگولیه :)))
[فوران بیش از حد ِ احساسات]

اصلا همه کتاب یه طرف و هفت صفحه آخر یک طرف دیگه :)
و البته تحلیل ِ زندگی ِ سیندرلا =))))
و یا حتی «شوخی کردم» هایش!

اون سه جمله خیلی محشر هم که لیلی گفت تو ریویوش! من دیگه تکرار نمی کنم! ولی واقعا عالی بودن

People may find fault with Vonnegut for his know-it-all, been-there-done-that tone in this memoir. People may not even find anything new or insightful in here since every person well-versed with current affairs and the nitty-gritties of international politics has at least a second-hand knowledge of America's present day troubles. But what people are certainly bound to appreciate is Vonnegut's mordant wit and his fine sense of humour.

یعنی واقعا وقتی با یک کتاب واقعا خوب، (آنقدر خوب که اگر داستان بود می گفتم شاهکار) روبه رو می شویم، اینقدر خوشحال می شویم از زنده بودنمان که حد ندارد... هر چه قدر هم نویسنده ای مانند وُنه گوت غر بزند که انسانیت چه چیز گندی است.

برای ونه گوت، یکی از مهم ترین چیزهایی که باعث شده امیدش را به بشریت از دست ندهد، گفته های مسیح بر بالای کوه، و کتابخانه ها است. آن خطابه بسیار زیباست، اما ونه گوت باید بداند دلایل دیگری هم برای امید به بشریت هست: یکی از آنها، وجود نویسندگانی مانند خود اوست.

Whilst this is not Vonnegut's best book it was great to spend some time with an old friend. The book consists of musings and reflections on the world, written when Vonnegut was an old man. The style is his unique blend of world weary pessimism and joy at the wonder of the world around us. Written in short pithy sentences. We even had a cameo appearance from Vonneguts old collaborator Kilgore Trout. So it goes.

God bless you Mr Vonnegut

reading this book is like sitting with an old friend on a couch on one lazy afternoon. you and your friend were into a pleasant and intimate talk. it just felt so good! you talked a lot; from nowhere to somewhere, from someone to no one. that's it!

then you parted. you kept that feeling of a very good chat with an old friend of you till days afterwards.

two weeks later.. after days of workload and rythm of life, you start to tell yourself:
hey, i had a nice chat with my old friend couple of weeks ago.
it was great.
but, uhm, what did we talk about?
it seemed to be something about our friends, those good old times, political point of view, a little bit about sex, families, screwing the world!, joking over ourselves,and whatever bits and pieces.
but was those exactly about?
uhm.. i, couldn't make it really clear. i am not so sure.


that's it!
probably i'm not making a fair judgement toward kurt vonnegut as i have never read ANY of his books before. reading the first book of vonnegut, who happens to be his writing about his retrospection, something like a memoir and thoughts of him, definitely making my way windy to him. it was a hilarious written book, though i have to say it's a not appealing and a bit witty for me.

A Man Without a Country is a collection of essays by Kurt Vonnegut covering everything from being a human being, technology, war, and points between. It is well worth a read if you are a Vonnegut fan. It was like sitting down and talking to a friend over a couple of cups of coffee.

"There is no reason good can't triumph over evil, if only angels will get organized along the lines of the mafia."

"Do you realize that all great literature-Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, A Farewell to Arms, The Scarlet Letter, The Red Badge of Courage, The Iliad and The Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, The Bible, and 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' -are all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? (Isin't it such a relief to have somebody say that?)"

"Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."

"The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. 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."

"I am, of course, notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other."

"Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."

"I put my big question about life to my son the pediatrician. Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: 'Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.'"

"And if you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, D.C."

"A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the battle of Waterloo."

“Humor is a way of holding off how awful life can be, to protect yourself.”

"So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and a Chicago paper called In These Times."
-Kurt Vonnegut

“Persuasive guessing has been at the core of leadership for so long, for all of human experience so far, that it is wholly unsurprising that most of the leaders of this planet, in spite of all the information that is suddenly ours, want the guessing to go on.”

Ovu kratku knjigu je Vonegut napisao u osamdeset četvrtoj godini i nevjerovatno je koliko je i tada bio pun života i volje za kritiziranjem.

Svojim prepoznatljivim britkim stilom piše o svemu što mu padne na pamet. Ima tu malo autobiografijskih zapisa, odličnih savjeta o pisanju uz grafikone, gdje je priložio i kratke osvrte na neka od najpoznatijih literarnih djela, ima i politike, pa malo savjeta kako se bolje nositi sa životnim nedaćama, a sve je prožeto njegovim prepoznatljivim humorom zbog kojeg se ova knjižica ne ispušta iz ruku dok se ne pročita.

Iako sam uživao u čitanju petica mi je prevelika ocjena jer mi se čini da je Vonnegut skupio ono što mu se u tom trenutku našlo na stolu i to poslao izdavaču.

Vintage Vonnegut. Essays about the state of our country, the environment and his life as a writer. So much venom against the Bush administration got a little old, especially as politics these days is so toxic, it makes anything that came before "the good old days".

1. این کتاب داستانی نیست. برای اینکه راجع به ونه‌گات به اشتباه نی‌افتید و برای اینکه حداکثر بهره رو از این کتاب ببرید، توصیه می‌کنم اول «سلاخ‌خانه‌ی شماره‌ی پنج» رو مطالعه کنید.

2. ترجمه‌ی علی‌اصغر بهرامی (نشر چشمه) بسیار خوب بود.

Kurt Vonnegut has written some of my favourite English-language literature. In his fiction, he crafts surrealistic and touching works which accessibly portray what it means to be human, what we should do for one another and this world. Some of my favourite quotes about life and humanity come from Vonnegut's works: "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt," "And so it goes," and "Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why." Beautiful in its simplicity. Profound in its universality. A true master wordsmith.

'A Man Without a Country,' however, was nothing like Vonnegut's fiction. It was, rather, a novelistic embodiment of the tenant: "Never meet your heroes." In Vonnegut's case, what was waiting behind the curtain of his fictional worlds was an elderly cynic who believes the world is doomed and foreigners are primitive and women are his to ogle. 'A Man Without a Country' was a jaded, purposeless screed against anything Vonnegut disliked, printed because people (like me, apparently) will read anything with his name on it. There was no purpose, no real form to the chapters. The text meandered from Vonnegut's post-9/11 American fear and prejudice to his beliefs on writing style and anecdotes about his childhood. Woven within the entirety of it, however, was the voice of Vonnegut himself, unshaded by the literary distance afforded by his fictional works, bare and alone and unapologetic to a fault.

Some of Vonnegut's problematic statements include: "If you don't like it here, why don't you go back to your little tinhorn dictatorship where you came from," and "Please, for the sake of us all, get a shotgun, preferably a 12-gauge double-barrel, and right there in your own neighborhood blow off the heads of people, cops excepted, who may be armed." I haven't misquoted or omitted nuance. He wrote that. Unbelievable.

In 'Slaughterhouse-Five,' Vonnegut writes: “There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.” In the case of Vonnegut's works, when viewed as a depth of many marvelous moments seen all at one time, the existence of 'A Man Without a Country' diminishes the marvel of his collected works. No one is perfect, sure, but I expected far better from him. How very disappointing it is, to meet your heroes.

Ο Κερτ είν΄ ο τύπος στον οποίο πάντα καταλήγεις να κερνάς τον φραπέ (συγνώμη, τον φρεντοτσίνου) γιατί σου ‘χει φτιάξει νέο συκώτι, με το «δεχρωστώσεκανένακιορατά», προβοκατόρικο χιούμορ του.. Ποιος να ξέρει τι θα πρέπει να ένοιωσε η καρδούλα του εκεί πέρα στη Δρέσδη, πέρα από αυτά που γράφονται στο νο 5..

Αγαπά τον Όργουελ, γράφει για τον αναγνώστη της διπλανής πόρτας - και καλά κάνει. Η γραφή του δεν είναι ακριβώς το στυλ μου, αλλά είναι τυπάκι..και μόνο το κομμάτι του για τη σύγχρονη, πυρηνική οικογένεια (σελ. 84) να υπήρχε, θα έφτανε.. 

Ο καφές κερασμένος, Κερτ.. Το τσίπουρο ήλθε  λόγω του κομματιού  για τους Λουδίτες:  

 «Είμαστε ζώα που χορεύουν. Και είναι τόσο ωραίο να σηκώνεσαι από κει που κάθεσαι, να βγαίνεις έξω και να κάνεις κάτι. Βρισκόμαστε εδώ για να κωλοβαράμε. Μη δίνετε σημασία σε αυτούς που λένε οτιδήποτε διαφορετικό» , σελίδα 97. Εγώ λέω κάτι διαφορετικό, αλλά μην μου δίνεις σημασία, Κερτ..

«Πραγματικά δεν ξέρω τι πρόκειται να απογίνω από δω και πέρα. Παραμένω εδώ έτσι, για τη βόλτα, για να δω τι θα συμβεί στο κορμί και στο μυαλό μου. Με εκπλήσσει που έγινα συγγραφέας. Δεν πιστεύω ότι μπορώ να ελέγξω τη ζωή ή τη γραφή μου. Όλοι οι άλλοι συγγραφείς που ξέρω νιώθουν ότι έχουν το πηδάλιο του εαυτού τους, ενώ εγώ δεν νιώθω έτσι. Δεν έχω τέτοιο έλεγχο επάνω μου. Απλώς γίνομαι.

 Το μόνο που ήθελα να κάνω ήταν να προσφέρω στους ανθρώπους την ανακούφιση του γέλιου.» σελ. 166.

Που ‘σαι μάστορα, κάν’ τα δύο τα καραφάκια..

This is the most human of Vonnegut's works--written when he was 82, shortly before he died. It's a thin volume that can be read in one sitting--and it gives new insight into this humanist writer who loved his country and the world so much that he spent most of his life FURIOUS at how stupid people could be. Each short essay begins with a quotation from Vonnegut, and the plot diagrams in chap. 3 on "creative writing" are hilarious. But this thin volume is full of anger as well as humor--Vonnegut's fury at our treatment of the earth and of each other comes through even more than the later works of Mark Twain, with whom he is sometimes compared. The poem at the end, "Requiem", ends with:

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.