The narrator is an American who broadcasted propaganda for the Nazis during the war. His hate speech about Jews over the radio was credited with inspiring a significant fervour among Germans. Long after the war he's arrested by the Israelis as a war criminal. He claims he was a double agent working for the Americans. This is a brilliant dark satire. It investigates the nature of guilt and the extent to which truth can be found in what we say about ourselves.

Before this, I'd never read anything by Kurt Vonnegut.

From this day forward, consider me a fan.

It's strange, really, how some books fall into your life at exactly the right time. I don't know how it happens. If we somehow unconsciously know that this is the book we need and pick it up and let it take us places. Perhaps. All I know is this particular book came into my life at the most opportune moment. I say opportune, because I just recently acquired the skills to really understand this book, or at least to add some depth to it.

I just finished A Philosophy of Evil, and it deals with a many similar themes to this one, that is, the many shades of evil, and the most destructive variation of them all: banality. Indifference. Some people simply, no matter what you do or how it's presented, don't see that what they've done is a bad thing. Can you blame them for it? I say yes, but it is difficult to truly punish them. Does it make them truly evil? No, but it makes them dangerous. They lack a moral compass. These people are the worst. Some might say it's best to not know that you've been evil. I beg to differ. I would always say it's preferable to know, to posses the ability to decide for yourself and reflect on your actions, even if it doesn't always turn out to your liking.

That said, this is an outstanding book. Kurt Vonnegut is a rare talent, and I understand now why I've been hearing his name all over. This is not a look into the mechanics of war, but rather the mechanics of a man at war. And to do that with wit and an undercurrent of intelligence and sarcasm...

Yes, I am definitely a fan.

"You are the only man I ever heard of," Mengel said to me this morning, "who has a bad conscience about what he did in the war. Everybody else, no matter what side he was on, no matter what he did, is sure a good man could not have acted in any other way."

Poor Howard Campbell, Jr., an American living in Germany, is recruited to spew on air Nazi propaganda that is laced with coded information for the Allies.

"You'll be volunteering right at the start of the war to be a dead man. Even if you live through the war without being caught, you'll find your reputation gone - and probably very little to live for," he said.

"You make it sound very attractive," I said.

Now reviled worldwide, he has become a man without a country, hiding in an attic apartment in Greenwich Village.

Some authors can take themes like war, injustice, cruelty and suffering, and turn them into good fiction. Only Vonnegut can craft these horrors into something you actually enjoy reading; novels that don't make you feel completely devastated at the conclusion, but wryly amused and possibly even a bit hopeful.

My copy has this review by Rich Schickel:

"Over the years Vonnegut has advanced from diagnostician to exorcist, finding in intensified comic art the magic analgesic for the temporary relief of existential pain."

I can't possibly think of a better description than that.

And as always, Vonnegut offers some sort of warning that the reader would be wise to heed:

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.

I didn't need Vonnegut to tell me this, but he confirmed it anyway: Nazism is thriving in America. Except that few of the bigots and extremists in America equate themselves with Nazis, and this almost makes it worse.

Howard W. Campbell, Jr., the narrator attempting to wash his hands of his complicity in the Nazi war effort, later appears in Slaughterhouse-Five, the more famous of Vonnegut's WWII novels, but as with Eliot Rosewater and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, this--the full monty rather than a mere cameo appearance--is by far the superior. By sympathizing with Howard W. Campbell the reader is sympathizing with a Nazi, however much he may deny it, but still I would much rather sympathize with him, or with The Reader's Hanna Schmitz, than with a blind patriot like Bernard B. O'Hare--it isn't often that I despise a Vonnegut character. (I feel the same about Bernard B. O'Hare as I do about Frank Wheeler.)

"There are plenty of good reasons for fighting,' I said, 'but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive.”

— Именно заради това, което съм видял и преживял, вече е невъзможно да кажа каквото и да било. Загубих дарбата да говоря смислено. Дрънкам безсмислици на цивилизования свят и той ми отговаря със същото.

***

Мислете каквото си искате за безусловната вяра, но за мен способността да вярваме, без да задаваме въпроси, е абсолютното зло.

***

— И разстрелян.

— За плагиатство?

— За оригиналност — каза Уиртанен. — Плагиатството е най-незначителното прегрешение. Какво може да навреди, ако някой напише нещо, което вече е написано? Истинската оригиналност е тежко престъпление, което често изисква жестоко и необикновено наказание, преди да получи последния смъртен удар.

I love the ending even though it's quite simple. It makes you wonder if he freed himself or not.

I guess my only reading plan for the year is probably reading all of my amazing Vonneguts!

A person can be many things to many people, and they all can be perfectly true.

A book that explores the depths of grey morality that is humanity when we prefer to think of things and see them as black and white. Another wonderful Vonnegut book. He challenges the reader while keeping a sense of humor, no matter if it is dark and dry. I think we all know people that can justify the worst actions, but our protagonist is one that seems to be done with justifying, he is seeing that horrible actions in the name of good might be exactly what makes it possible for horrible things to happen/continue/escalate. Vonnegut has a simplicity and ease that makes all of his books easy and quick reads, even when the subject matter is heavy.

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

When we first meet Howard W. Campbell, Jr it is 1961 and he is sat in an Israeli jail awaiting trial for war crimes. The book is written in the form of his confession. Campbell is an American who in the years between the two World Wars moved and lived in Germany where he achieved some success as a playwright, writing plays that will feature his actress wife, Helga.

Throughout the war Campbell working for the Nazi party as a radio propagandist making daily inflammatory racist broadcasts. But unknown to the Nazis and the wider world, he had also been recruited to serve as an American spy, hesitations and speech mannerisms within his broadcasts contained coded information for the Allies.

He is highly successful. The Nazis never suspect him as being anything other than totally loyal, so much so that towards the end of the war, his father-in-law, the Berlin chief of police, informs him: "I realized that almost all the ideas that I hold now, that make me unashamed of anything I may have felt or done as a Nazi, come not from Hitler, not from Goebbels, not from Himmler -- but from you." Similarly whilst the Americans save him from hanging at the end of the war and allow him to relocate in New York, they can never admit that such a vilified figure actually worked for them.

Campbell describes the next fifteen years, alone in a New York loft apartment, as a purgatory worse than hell. He makes no real effort to hide his identity, even using his real name, which eventually leads to his address becoming known both to Israeli agents who want to take him back to their country and try him and to a neo-fascist group who want to venerate him as a hero.

Rather than the war years the real focus of this book are the events leading up to Campbell's 'capture'. Vonnegut's aim appears to be to portray the battle of personal identity, the difference between how we see ourselves and how the outside world sees us, and taking personal responsibility for our actions. However, employing his customary over the top and at times hilarious satire, he also attacks American racial and religious extremists, many of whom unfortunately still seem to present today. Vonnegut doesn't try to condone the Nazis or their actions, insteads he condemns extremism in ALL it's many forms.

"There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on his side."

American Howard W. Campbell Jr. finds himself on trial in Israel as a war criminal, but he was a spy for America during WW II. Do both roles cancel each other out...or are there differing types of 'guilt' (The Question of German Guilt/Karl Jaspers) that need to be qualitatively and quantitatively examined? Kurt Vonnegut forces us to look at this question and ask ourselves what we would have done.

This was my first book by Kurt Vonnegut and it will certainly not be the last one. It is written as a diary of an American who grew up and married in Germany in pre WWII and who went through war trying not to get involved, but ending up as a double agent. The story is not about espionnage though. Instead, it is about human conscience and it is a very well written one.
I have registered this book at BookCrossing and it will now travel to be read by another member.

БРИЛЯНТНА.

Дори за Кърт Вонегът, който сам по себе си е единствен и неповторим, тази книга е... уау.
A must read за всички.