“All people are insane. They will do anything at any time, and God help anybody who looks for reasons.”



A bit silly, but I think the reason I was reluctant to read Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night was because it contains my favorite Vonnegut quote (“We are what we pretend to be…”). I liked the quote so well that I was somehow afraid that the novel would disappoint. From the outset I want to say Mother Night is fantastic! In the novel, it somehow seems like our protagonist, Howard W. Campbell Jr., is guilty of something, but what exactly? As an American working undercover as a propagandist for the Germans during WWII, was he too good a spy? Did he become what he pretended to be?

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

“...this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate.”

Another fantastic Vonnegut experience!!

As a deliberate contrast to Jonathan Littell’s 1000-page monster The Kindly Ones, I re-read this early Vonnegut masterpiece. The 1997 Robert B. Weide adaptation  with Nick Nolte is one of my favourite movies, and where the novel is structured in typical nonlinear fashion, the movie embellishes and adds colour to the novel in its linear form. The two mediums compliment each other perfectly, so if you haven’t seen the film version, do it soon! And if you haven’t read this brilliant novella, the confessions of Howard W. Campbell Jr, an American spy posing as a high-ranking American Nazi whose talent for writing propaganda makes him one of the most powerful fascists of the war, do it soon too! Some criticise Vonnegut’s writing for its Twain-like simplicity, but Vonnegut is a great economiser, and his novels demonstrate a perfect mastery of tone, rhythm and moral rightness, never shying away from the moving humanism that underpins his greatest work. This novella is so freaking wonderful it’s unreal. Read me!

Though it gifts us a few of his best quotes, such as “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”, I feel like Mother Night is only necessary reading for completionists. It often feels like a short story filled out to novel length, and lacks any of the fantastic or meta-textual elements of his other works.

"Vidi un compressore stradale così grande che cancellava il sole, la gente restava sdraiata per terra, nessuno che cercasse di scappare. Il mio amore e io guardammo meravigliati questa cruenta scena misteriosa. 'A terra, a terra!' gridavano tutti. 'La grande macchina è la storia!' Il mio amore e io scappammo e quel motore non riuscì a trovarci, corremmo fino in cima alla montagna, e ci lasciammo la storia alle spalle. Forse avremmo dovuto restare e morire? Ma qualcosa di dentro ci disse di no! Tornammo a vedere dov'era passata la storia e, mio Dio, quanto puzzavano i morti."
" 'Tu odi l'America, non è vero?' disse. 'Odiarla sarebbe stupido almeno quanto amarla' dissi. 'Non riesco a provare nessuna emozione: il terreno di per sè non mi interessa. Sono certo che si tratta di una grande lacuna nella mia personalità, ma non riesco a pensare in termini di confini. Per me quelle linee immaginarie non sono più reali degli elfi e dei folletti. Non posso credere che indichino veramente l'inizio e la fine di qualche cosa di importante per un essere umano. Le virtù e i vizi, il piacere e il dolore attraversano le frontiere a loro piacimento.' "

کتاب خیلی خوبی بود. داستانی جذاب و دنبال شدنی که در عین تلخی، مسئله بحران هویت رو خیلی خوب تداعی میکنه و آدم رو به چالش انتخاب بین خوب و بد و درست و نادرست وادار میکنه. تقریبا اکثر شخصیت های کتاب ماسک های شخصیتی رنگارنگی به چهره دارن که در خلال داستان کم کم صورتک پشت این ماسک ها آشکار میشه.
هوارد دبلیو کمبل در این خاطره نویسی هاش از شرایطی حرف میزنه که آدم ها ممکنه در زندگی باهاش رو به رو بشن و در این چالش ها و شرایط سخت هست که انتخاب میکنن کدوم مسیر رو انتخاب کنن و همین انتخاب، شخصیت و نحوه رفتار و زندگیشون رو چه بسا که تعیین هم میکنه.
گرچه داستان تلخ و گزنده است ولی زبان شیرین نویسنده و نثر شیوایی که برای این روایت انتخاب کرده، تحمل این تلخی رو برای خواننده آسونتر میکنه.
اجرای صوتی انگلیسی کتاب هم فوق العاده است و زیبایی این نثر رو دو چندان به رخ میکشه.

When most people think of Kurt Vonnegut, the novels Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle immediately come to mind. It's a shame that more people aren't familiar with Mother Night, a novel in which Vonnegut explores the nature of moral ambiguity and what high-minded ideals we sacrifice on the altar of war. It's a skillful blend of Vonnegut's trademark dark humor and philosophical musings about human morality as observed through the lens of war. To put it simply, this is some good stuff.

Sitting in an Israeli jail and writing his memoirs, Howard Campbell awaits trial for war crimes as a Nazi in World War II. As Howard himself says, "I am an American by birth, a Nazi by reputation, and a nationless person by inclination" (1). And this is the root of Howard's problem: he has no true identity. As he ruminates on his past, we see how the apolitical Howard was drawn into events that eclipsed the simple life he longed to live as an artist writing plays for his muse and wife, the lovely Helga.

Howard's situation is a unique one. An American who moved to Germany as a child and seamlessly assimilated into German culture prior to any rumblings of war, Howard makes the perfect candidate for an American spy. However, to remain above suspicion, Howard must align himself with the Nazi cause by pretending to be a Nazi propagandist, eventually becoming the voice of the Reich through his radio broadcasts. Through a series of coughs, sneezes, and sniffs, Howard sends coded information out to the Americans at the same time he spews vile invective against the Jewish people.

So what's the problem? He was a good guy, right? That's how it would normally be perceived, but as Vonnegut cautions, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be" (v). Maintaining this dual identity weighs heavily upon Howard in the years after the war which robbed him of everything: his family, his friends, his art, and his Helga. Howard excelled as a propagandist--so good, in fact, his father-in-law tells him that Howard, not Hitler and not Goebbels, convinced him to become a Nazi. Howard's American handler even claims Campbell "was one of the most vicious sons of bitches who ever lived" (188). Knowing that it was his words and his voice that convinced so many to hate in the name of God is a guilt that Howard can never alleviate, especially given that his communications with the Americans never took the form of words. He never knew what information he was passing on to the Americans, nor what, if any, good came from it. In the end, he can never be certain if the good he did outweighed (or at least balanced out) the evil his words inspired in the hearts of men. The question is, do pure motivations absolve heinous outcomes? As Howard's past begins to catch up with him, he must confront these questions and try to determine who Howard Campbell has become in the shadow of war.

I think what is most intriguing about the novel is that Howard Campbell is the ultimate unreliable narrator. A man who is skilled with words and at shaping the perceptions of others, it's important to remember that, in this metafiction, it is Howard Campbell writing his own life's story. Even in the end we cannot be certain whether or not we come to know the real Howard Campbell as the resulting narrative may be Campbell's masterwork of propaganda--rewriting his own history with an eye to posterity. Howard Campbell may be a fiction created by the man himself, a constantly shifting personality recreating himself to fit the times in which he lives. After all, we become what we pretend to be.

Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder

‘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. Campbell, Jr written as he awaits trial in Israel for his work as a Nazi propagandist. The catch is, Campbell was an American spy using his vitriolic antisemetic broadcasts to hide secret codes to the Allied armies. 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. 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. 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.

‘Oh, God — the lives people try to lead.
Oh, God — what a world they try to lead them in.’

Vonnegut was a master of dark humor, with rather absurdist tales that are still grounded in a bleak realism, his stories not unlike a literary version of Sunday comic strips. Mother Night is one of the darker tales, weaving through Campbell’s past and present and making both the war times and his pathetic post-war existence in New York seem all a tangle of terribleness. Even the American war hero, O’Hara, finds post-war life to be a devastating dud of kids and lame jobs, trying to track down Campbell and make him suffer in order to chase some illusion of former glory. This ends poorly for him, as does really any aim or ambition performed throughout the novel. The idea of pursuing some higher cause where the ends might justify the means seems to leave everyone either dead or dead inside with a trail of disaster left in their wake. Despite all this, the novel is full of Vonnegut’s signature humor, which keeps this a rather boisterous and compelling read even as we wade through the muck of human folly.

‘These pieces of paper were me at one time.’

Memories are key to the novel, hence the literary framing as a memoir that Vonnegut is publishing for us, and the idea of the written word as a way of both keeping record of the past and pursuing a future purpose is central to the narrative. Campbell himself was a playwright of enough acclaim to put him within the society of German elites, which made him a perfect choice to be a spy. His muse was his wife, and without her he is not only unable to create, but the loss of creating indicates the loss of the self. His trunk of his writing he keeps becomes a coffin of sorts:

‘I remembered the trunk now, remembered when I'd closed it up at the start of the war, remembered when I'd thought of the trunk as a coffin for the young man I would never be again.’

What is most intriguing is how while Campbell values words and takes pride in his own, his words always bring ruin. His Nazi propaganda goes without saying, but even when his work is stolen and reproduced in Russia does the thief find themselves put to death for Campbell’s erotic journal.

‘This is not who I really am. I am just going along with this on the outside to get by.’

For Campbell, there is the sense that it is only in writing that not only we the reader, but he himself, can glimpse his ‘real’ self. Which is critical to his character, who exists almost entirely externally having no real inward self of self, and each external self is a character of sorts, a playacting. He is repeatedly surrendering his agency to the whims of another, his only compensation to play a role like one he imagines for his plays. Even when he shoots the dog he does it to prove a point, to play a role, more so than taking wilful action. When he meets Wirtanen, he allows himself to be blown on the breeze of history. The novel concerns the question of if his playacted self, the war criminal, reflects the inward self, which we quickly realize becomes a question of if he even has a sense of self.

‘I am an American by birth, a Nazi by reputation, and a nationless person by inclination.’

Campbell is asked at one point if he hates America, which he responds that hating it ‘would be as silly as loving it..It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries.’ He frequently describes himself as a ‘nationless’ person, one without loyalties who can be a Nazi and a spy and not feel it matters because it is merely an act. He only feels grounded as a ‘nation of two’ with his wife, who is his muse and only through her does he find a sense of purpose and direction. Vonnegut even writes that another moral to the story is to ‘make love when you can. It's good for you.’

‘Society is more concerned with material possessions than it is with the true love and compassion of another human being.’

Setting aside the toxicity of muse culture and that women seem to only really exist in this book for sexual drives to uphold the narrative of a man, we should question how Campbell’s life of love still does not reflect a sense of self or elicit acts of self-agency.I will admit there are some lovely lines about love, however. He is driven by what he feels is the narrative of love and allowing another person to fill in for his sense of purpose and self. ‘What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction,’ he admits late in the novel. He sees no purpose to anything or a reason to even take agency of his actions, a personality that we can begin to understand why nihilist Resi found him appealing. The great moment of the novel is that his ending is the only time he took matters—and his life—into his own hands.

He is told at one point that he should have killed himself the way heroic action in his own plays would be depicted, which is some fine foreshadowing to boot with the scalding burn. He finds that he can be free, can escape his sins, can return to “normal” life, but also laments that he is too old by that point to make use of the freedom. While he may be evolved from his war crimes, he still must face the inner court of self-reflection: ‘I think that tonight is the night I will hang Howard W. Campbell, Jr. for crimes against himself’ he writes, for once taking agency over himself and passing a judgment the world could not wager. He has betrayed himself and will finally take action and agency over his life, giving himself the romantic death in keeping with his literary beliefs.

In a novel of chaos we have on thread that seems omnipresent and appears like deus ex machina is the influence of Colonel Wirtanan, aka Harold J. Sparrow, aka the Blue Fairy Godmother (the Blue Fairy Godmother also appears in a play in Slaughterhouse-Five). He is the freedom granter when needed but earlier the magic wand wave into being a spy and propulsion into the ranks of the Nazi party. He is also the deal with the devil, the Mephistopheles of the novel. In the author’s note, Vonnegut tells us the title Mother Night is ‘Campbell's; it is taken from a speech by Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust.’ The quote follows:

’I am a part of the part that at first was all, part of the darkness that gave birth to light, that supercilious light which now disputes with Mother Night her ancient rank and space, and yet can not succeed; no matter how it struggles, it sticks to matter and can't get free. Light flows from substance, makes it beautiful; solids can check its path, so I hope it won't be long till light and the world's stuff are destroyed together.’

In this quote we see Mephistopheles positioning for end times, good and bad obliterated together, and in this novel we see Campbell marketing Germany towards atrocity while also thinking himself to be apolitical and damning both good and bad. Much of the novel, however, shows how even his good intentions of using his propaganda to broadcast secret codes has evil side-effects, from encouraging the holocaust to emboldning hate groups in the US even long after the war. The book shows how he enabled evil and the people who are attracted to it.

‘There are plenty of good reasons for fighting...but no good reason to ever hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty 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....it's that part of an imbecile that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly.’

The novel is comprised of well-crafted histories of hate leaders and their cohorts telling Campbell they are huge fans and were frequent listeners. They even try to reunite him with his lost wife as a token of appreciation for spearheading their white supremacist causes. This was a hell of a thing to read in the present day.

‘this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate.’

While navigating a bleak subject matter, Vonnegut maintains the absurdist humor dripped in dread and serious context that he is well known for. Mother Night is a wild rampage through questions of morality and beliefs, extols the beauty and barbs of words, and investigates complicity. There is a lot of interesting aspects going on here, particularly the metafictional framing as found memoir, though also deeper issues of self such as wondering if making him Campbell Jr. and using some childhood biographical details of his own life, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was making a commentary on his own selfhood. Vonnegut looks at our agency and asks us to interrogate our sense of self and what mark it will leave on the world, and this little gem is one worth investigating.

4.5/5

God, this book is so devastating. Vonnegut is so chameleonic, or something, how the lightness of his prose brilliantly belies the darkness of his themes, but oh my god, I can't even think how to express how sad this one made me. Everything is so sharply focused, every word is so perfectly, harrowingly placed. The loops and recursions and double-agents and plots within plots: all perfect. All awful. All honed for maximum pathos and horror without becoming maudlin or overdramatic. I feel punched in the gut. Gah.


(Here is the summary I wrote for myself the last time I read this, two years ago, not for work. I'm leaving it because I cycle through Vonnegut books every few years, and I often forget which was which, and this will help me. Feel free to ignore it; it's slightly spoilery.)
It's about a former Nazi radio propagandist, who now sits in jail awaiting trial for war crimes. Campbell claims he was a double agent, using his broadcasts to send coded messages to the Americans, but no one in the United States will come forward to confirm that he was working for them. The whole thing is told in flashback, about Campbell's life as a celebrated Berlin playwright before the war, his importance during it, his flight to New York as it was ending, and several years of living in total anonymity in the U.S., until he is finally discovered by – yup – a crazed White Supremacist. His nextdoor neighbor in New York is a Russian, a chessmaster, and maybe a spy? There's of course a love story, and plenty of hijinx, and on and on.

Vonnegut's third book, and often described as his 'underrated book', or even one of his best. I think it's a damn good book, but nothing comes close to 'Slaughterhouse 5' for me.

'You don't write anymore?' she said.
'There hasn't bee anything I've wanted to say,' I said.
'After all you've seen, all you've been through, darling?' she said.
'It's all I've seen, all I've been through,' I said, 'that makes it damn nearly impossible for me to say anything. I've lost the knack of making sense. I speak gibberish to the civilised world, and it replies in kind.'

This small exchange, I think, boils right down to Vonnegut himself. He wanted to write about what he saw and experienced for a long time before he wrote 'Slaughterhouse 5'. In fact, the word Dresden shows up in, I think, almost every book I've read of his. It shows up in this, 8 years before the publication of SH5, three times. It's there, bubbling in Vonnegut's mind, waiting to be written - and write it he does, and writes it as a masterpiece.

In the introduction Vonnegut says this about 'Mother Night':
'This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvellous moral; I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.'
I disagree with Vonnegut, I think it's a pretty marvellous moral.

Less 'Vonnegut' than his later works, but still a great read, black comedy, satirical, and most of all, through the humour - thought provoking, and dangerously enlightening.

'You've changed so,' she said.
'People should be changed by world wars,' I said, 'else what are world wars for?'

I didn't review this when I read it last October, but it made a profound effect on me. It may be an outlier in the KV oeuvre (especially in terms of tone), but this is one deeply serious and masterful book, one that everyone+++ should read, whether or not you are a KurtAnhänger or VonneFan.

After much delay, last night I watched the 1996 film adaptation with Nick Nolte and Alan Arkin (and John Goodman!), and if anything (within the limitations of a two hour movie) it improves on the novel in a couple of ways that I won't spoil here. Needless to say the masterful performances by these actors did admirable service to the novel. The whole thing has a "labour of love" vibe about it that reminded me of the superb George Roy Hill 1972 film of Slaughterhouse-Five and which is so often missing from such adaptations.

I'll leave you with a couple of stills from the film, and which shall serve as a reminder that I need to re-read this again soon.





(+++ In the spirit of the bodhisattva I would certainly urge the talking heads at Rupert Moloch's Fascist News to consider what lies within these pages before they lose all touch with any humanity they might once have had...)

Life crashed in a bit - in the way that defines a pandemic mixed with the insanity of a fascist [R] administration. So it suddenly put me off reading anything but the information I needed to keep up with the current onslaught. Certain specifics were particularly soul-crushing: the fierce opposition towards mask mandates - and science in general; the siege in the USPS; the growing reminder (as if I needed one) that bigotry in America is very much alive and unwell.

When I stopped reading for pleasure and the nourishment of my soul, I had just started reading 'Mother Night'. But yesterday I was beginning to hunger for real 'food', so I continued reading - and whizzed right through to the end.

There are instances when a certain book comes to us at just the right time. For me, 'Mother Night' was just such a book. It's brilliant - and a full meal.

It had been years since I'd read something by Vonnegut. I read a fair amount of his work in high school and can recall being, by turns, moved and entertained by 'Slaughterhouse-Five' and 'Welcome to the Monkey House' (specifically, 'Who Am I This Time?' is among the most charming tales I've ever read). But I don't recall *loving* a Vonnegut work as much as 'Mother Night'. ~which is probably a somewhat-odd reaction.

Vonnegut's use of language is largely comforting. There's just something cozy in his manner of storytelling. Even if the story-at-hand is not comforting. 'Mother Night' is not a comforting story; it's largely unpleasant. It's about a man who is used by and for the killing machine of war, becomes all-too-good at the job he is called on to do (his effectiveness - as a spy - surprising even himself) and, as a result, is royally f'd for the rest of his life.

As the protagonist Howard W. Campbell, Jr. explains:n  

I had hoped, as a broadcaster, to be merely ludicrous, but this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate. So many people *wanted* to believe me.

nIt's a story of ideological schizophrenia, set in the mind and memoirs of a man who is not crazy.

The structure of the novel is impressive; it simultaneously time-jumps and lands in places we need to land in just at the moment we're thrown into them. The timings of the elements of surprise are also commendable - and every single whammy is completely organic. This is one well-thought-out work.

All told, 'Mother Night' is - I think - an essential novel.

Sir Vonnegut, what have you done with Sir Vonnegut?

[I was sufficiently a man of the world, or sufficiently unimaginative-take your choice-to think that a girl that young and pretty and clever would have an entertaining time of it, no matter where fate and politics shoved her next] -82%/denouement
Chess match of old men playing with young lives. do these youngn's have free will or are they dependent on their circumstance?

I am sad to say but this was my least favorite Kurt Vonnegut, of all the Vonneguts. He usually intermixes humor and light banter around the specter of death that is World War II. In Mother Night, however, there is nothing light about it. It was morally repugnant, it upset the pit of my stomach, and its attempts at nihilism felt disrespectful in the face of tortured Jews and Poles, oppressed by the hand that feeds without any choice in the matter. The ready dissociation portrayed of the ghostfaced killers of Central Europe's nonchalant self-reflection when returning to civilian life was shocking; crowd anonymity of the most vile actions had become so normal as tying your bootstraps in the morning.

This novel follows US double agent, anti-Semite publicist, lofted into renowned propagandist behind Dr. Joseph Goebbels in the Nazi regime Howard Campbell Jr. and his exile into a hideout in Brooklyn, following capture of a Nazi officer regiment. He is surrounded by "friends", who all turn out to be Russian spies. Grown comfortable in the safety of his surroundings, he begins to publish his works again, and reenters communities in society. One man, Jones, inaugurates him with respect in a secret separatist group of Brooklynites; Jones proceeds to house Campbell and adds to his stipend income, inspired he is by Campbell's notion-wooing propaganda. One fateful day, Resi, the sister of his estranged wife tricks him into marrying again. We later learn that she too is a double agent, but for Russia, who learns of him after a Russian soldier seizes his chest of writings that all become published best-sellers abroad. The most famous work in Moscow, the Asiatic capital of churches, is a detailed account Howard's sexual relations with his wife Helga.

While it was informational about the range of war crimes SS soldiers committed, I felt offended throughout, and would not read this novel again. Telling your people to unite against the Jewish-Negro oppression whilst killing millions of our already sparse population!! Use some tactful restraint, good sir!
[somewhere a siren, a tax-supported mourner, wailed]-87%

I am trying to only choose one quote in these reviews, but cannot choose my favorite thought to share.
["there are plenty of good reasons for fighting", I said, "but no good to ever 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]-94%