This is Vonnegut at his very best. He does a superb job here, as usual, being cynical and using dark humor to speak to very real issues. I'd put this, Slaughterhouse-Five, and The Sirens of Titan as his three best books. The difference here is that unlike those other two books and much of Vonnegut's other writing, there is no science fiction element here. Yet it's still a great read. Highly recommended to everyone.

Just read this for the first time, and wow-- what an amazing novel. I think it's now my second favorite Vonnegut, after Slaughter House 5, which I've read 3x. There are so many surprises in this story, one after the other, and I don't think I saw any of them coming. Vonnegut is justly popular, because he is wildly entertaining of course, but also because, quite simply, he was a great writer. A taut, flabless, but expressive, writer. He knows how to introduce a flashback, seamlessly, placing us in the past as if it's the present action. A textbook example of a beautiful, yes beautiful, flashback, or beautifully done anyway, is on p. 93. It lacks the usual string by hack writers of clunky, unnecessary "hads", that constantly remind us we're in the past. One had is all you need, and he did it still more subtly by rendering it a contraction: "I'd."
Loved --absolutely loved-- the scene with Adolph Eichmann, p 166-8. The protagonist Campbell and Eichmann are both in jail, and each is writing a memoir while he awaits trial. (This novel of course is the text of Campbell's 'memoir'.) In addition to a wholly tasteless joke about the six million (which regardless is very funny), Eichmann asks Campbell, "do you set a certain time of day aside for writing" (and) "Do you think a literary agent is absolutely necessary".
I think it's safe to say that all writers, and also readers who have attended book signings, will get a kick out of that scene.

Some memorable quotes:
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
----
"I had no brothers or sisters, and my father was seldom home. So I was for many years the principal companion of my mother. She was a beautiful, talented, morbid person. I think she was drunk most of the time. I remember a time when she filled a saucer with a mixture of rubbing alcohol and table salt. She put the saucer on the kitchen table, turned out all the lights, and had me sit facing her across the table.
And then she touched off the mixture with the match. The flame was almost pure yellow, a sodium flame, and it made her look like a corpse to me, made me look like a corpse to her.
"There–” she said, “that’s what we’ll look like when we’re dead.”
This queer demonstration not only scared me; it scared her, too. My mother scared herself with her own queerness, and from that moment on I ceased to be her companion. From that moment on she hardly spoke to me – cut me dead, I’m sure, out of fear of doing or saying something even crazier.”
-----
“I have never seen a more sublime demonstration of the totalitarian mind, a mind which might be linked unto a system of gears where teeth have been filed off at random. Such snaggle-toothed thought machine, driven by a standard or even by a substandard libido, whirls with the jerky, noisy, gaudy pointlessness of a cuckoo clock in Hell.
The boss G-man concluded wrongly that there were no teeth on the gears in the mind of Jones. 'You're completely crazy,' he said.
Jones wasn't completely crazy. The dismaying thing about classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, thought mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined.
Hence the cuckoo clock in Hell - keeping perfect time for eight minutes and twenty-three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for six seconds, jumping ahead two seconds, keeping perfect time for two hours and one second, then jumping ahead a year.
The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds, in most cases.
The wilful filling off a gear teeth, the wilful doing without certain obvious pieces of information -
That was how a household as contradictory as one composed of Jones, Father Keeley, Vice-Bundesfuehrer Krapptauer, and the Black Fuehrer could exist in relative harmony -
That was how my father-in-law could contain in one mind an indifference toward slave women and love fora a blue vase -
That was how Rudolf Hess, Commandant of Auschwitz, could alternate over the loudspeakers of Auschwitz great music and calls for corpse-carriers -
That was how Nazi Germany could sense no important difference between civilization and hydrophobia -
That is the closest I can come to explaining the legions, the nations of lunatics I've seen in my time.”

This is one of my favorite books. I picked this book up and read it through in one sitting. I couldn't put it down I was so engaged.

This book presents the moral dilemma of Howard W. Campbell Jr. an American who became a Nazi propagandist. However, he only became a Nazi propagandist because he was spying for the USA. Yet, he was a really good propagandist. His dilemma is this: Does the good of spying for America obviate and out weigh the evils he did by making propaganda for the Nazis or do his sins and virtues in both roles exist independently?

I had never considered a moral dilemma like this before.

It is a great story about how a person can do evil when they are trying to do good as well as how one man can be destroyed in the clash of two countries.

This book is amazingly well written, thought provoking and powerful. I recommend it to everyone.

I read this book because my roommate recommended it and because I like Kurt Vonnegut.

Dovremmo porre più attenzione in ciò che facciamo finta di essere

Ma gli agenti segreti servono a spiare le mosse del nemico o a crearlo, il nemico?

E se l'odio per gli ebrei in Germania fosse stato fomentato dagli stessi agenti segreti?

In questo inquietante romanzo del 1961, Vonnegut  racconta di uno scrittore americano, Campbell, che nel corso della seconda guerra mondiale accetta di diventare un agente infiltrato nelle file dei nazisti.

Campbell è un intellettuale, pensa di avere una missione da compiere, anche se non sa bene in cosa questa consista. Non crede nemmeno ad una parola di quel che dice, eppure diventa quindi uno dei principali esponenti della propaganda nazista, convince milioni di ascoltatori con i suoi discorsi antisemiti alla radio e crede di far passare, con questi messaggi, informazioni agli Stati Uniti mediante un codice cifrato.
Ingenuo? Forse solo sognatore.

Ma quando finisce la guerra e viene processato gli sorge il dubbio di essere stato manipolato, nonostante dovesse essere lui il manipolatore. Ripensando alla sua vita gli sorge il dubbio di avere contribuito a peggiorare il conflitto, di aver contribuito a mistificare gli avvenimenti, il dubbio di essere stato usato, di aver confezionato un mostro nazista che era fondamentale per avvallare l'intervento militare statunitense in Europa.

Vonnegut tenta di instillare il dubbio che lo scopo dei servizi segreti non sia quello di trasmettere informazioni, ma quello di "inventare" situazioni. L'agente segreto per Vonnegut è un creativo, uno che mistifica, che crea, che fa accadere fatti. Vonnegut prova a suggerirci che quando qualcuno ci indica col dito qualche avvenimento poco chiaro, la cosa migliore è quella di... guardare il dito che ce lo indica.

Siamo sicuri che certi fantasmi dei giorni nostri siano reali e non suggerimenti di qualcuno che ha interessi a mostrarceli? I terroristi islamici, Al Qaeda, Bin Laden...

Un libro acuto che fa riflessioni sui nostri valori, sulla  vendetta e sulla politica con ironia e che alla fine ci mostra la guerra e il nazismo da un differente punto di osservazione.

Primo libro di Vonnegut; ne valeva la pena.

چیزی که باعث شد خشکم بزند احساس گناه نبود یاد گرفته بودم هیچ وقت احساس گناه نکنم... چیزی که باعث شد خشکم بزند احساس ترسناک خسران نبود یاد گرفته بودم هیچ وقت حسرت چیزی را نخورم.... چیزی که باعث شد خشکم بزند نفرت از مرگ نبود یاد گرفته بودم مرگ را به دیده دوست نگاه کنم.... چیزی که باعث شد خشکم بزند خشم عمیق نسبت به بی‌عدالتی نبود یاد گرفته بودم پیدا کردن نیم تاج الماس در جوی خیابان منطقی‌تر از انتظار پاداش و مجازات متناسب با خدمت و خیانت است... چیزی که باعث شد خشکم بزند این نبود که هیچکس دوستم نداشت یاد گرفته بودم بی عشق سر کنم.... چیزی که باعث شد خشکم بزند تصور ظالم بودن خداوند نبود یاد گرفته بودم هرگز انتظاری از خداوند نداشته باشم.....چیزی که باعث شد خشکم بزند این بود که در آن لحظه مطلقاً هیچ دلیل و انگیزه‌ای نداشتم که به کدام سمت بروم آنچه در این سالیان دراز بیهودگی و مرگ مرا به پیشرانده بود کنجکاوی بود اما اکنون آن نیز فرو نشسته و خموشی گرفته بود یادم نمی‌آید چند دقیقه یا چند ساعت همینطور خشک بر جای ایستاده بودم اصلاً اگر قرار هم بود حرکت کنم کس دیگری می‌بایست انگیزه حرکت را در برانگیزد و کسی نیز چنین کرد. یکی از ماموران پلیس مدتی مرا تماشا کرد و بعد آمد پیشم و گفت : حالتون خوبه؟؟
.
داستان از زبان شخصیت اصلی، هیو لند هوفمن، روایت می‌شود. او یک نویسنده آمریکایی است که به عنوان یک جاسوس در دوران جنگ جهانی دوم به نازی‌ها نفوذ کرده و با هویت یک مبلغ پروپاگاندای نازی فعالیت می‌کند. هیو در واقع به عنوان یک شخصیت دوگانه عمل می‌کند؛ او در ظاهر یک نازی است، اما در باطن، نظرات و دیدگاه‌های ضد نازیس دارد. با گذشت زمان، او به دلیل نقش خود و انتخاب‌هایش با سوالات عمیقی درباره هوی ت و اخلاق مواجه می‌شود. به نظرم این کتاب مسئله جنگ و وطن‌پرستی رو عالی بیان کرده بود....

The thing I love best about Kurt Vonnegut is that he was both the ultimate cynic and the ultimate humanist. What better character for him to create to embody those views than a Nazi with good intentions?

Howard W. Campbell Jr. was an American citizen who grew up in Germany and became a prominent Nazi thanks to his virulent anti-Semitic propaganda. 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. Years after the war has ended, Howard recounts the story as he is being held in Israel awaiting trial for war crimes. 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?

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.

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. 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.

Right up front Kurt Vonnegut explains the moral of this short novel: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be. We then are shuffled rapidly through a cast of post-war men and women wearing masks, decked out to publicly play an adopted role, whilst concealing their true feelings and being underneath. The champion dissembler is Howard W. Campbell Jr., a former deep-cover American operative in the heart of Nazi Germany, who so brilliantly espoused propaganda and spat venom he did not believe in that he convinced the world of his rabid support for a cause he was secretly fighting against.

Years later he is living a quiet and faceless existence in New York City, his service to his country never acknowledged, the damage of his words reverberating still. As is its wont, life decides to alter the tempo of the music of its pageant, and whilst this new dance steers Howard inexorably towards a date with the hangman, a parade of new and old faces enter and re-enter his life; love once more warmly kisses and then coldly bites; and certain old truths and beliefs are shown to have been lies and illusions all along.

My expectations for Mother Night were quite high, having read so many glowing reviews over the years. I feel like I should have loved it, whereas I could only muster up an appreciative like. I knew I wanted something further from the story and yet couldn't quite assemble a concrete grievance from my lingering dissatisfaction; perhaps it's that I didn't find Campbell a particularly compelling character, his story a bit too abstract to hold close; perhaps Vonnegut confounds through an ability to impart a relatively simple and straightforward prose with a humor and meaning that, compacted so efficiently, lends itself to to being underestimated, underappreciated. It will be interesting to see if Slaughterhouse-Five—whenever I finally give it its overdue due—will affect me in the same manner. In any case, Mother Night, like so many books, should benefit from a second reading down the road and a reappraisal made of its more mature charms.

"Mother Night" by Kurt Vonnegut is a darkly humorous and thought-provoking novel that delves into the complexities of identity, morality, and the nature of evil. The protagonist, Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American playwright turned Nazi propagandist, finds himself entangled in a web of espionage and moral ambiguity. This novel is a profound exploration of the human condition. Let's navigate the murky waters of Vonnegut's creation.

In Stanley Kubrik's film, Full Metal Jacket, one of the most highlighted scenes is where the protagonist is asked to explain the peace symbol and "Born to Kill" slogan on his helmet. His response:“I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man.”

Cannot help but wonder if the writer for Full Metal Jacket had been thinking of Mother Night when he wrote that line. One of the darker novels in Vonnegut’s collection, but still with the humor and blithely irreverent tone that is his trademark, Mother Night asks a lot of questions and leaves many unanswered, inviting deep introspection for the reader and for our society as a whole.

**** 2019 re-read

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” - Vonnegut

“Poets priests and politicians
Have words to thank for their positions
Words that scream for your submission
And no-one's jamming their transmission
'Cause when their eloquence escapes you
Their logic ties you up and rapes you
De do do do de da da da
Is all I want to say to you” – Sting

I had forgotten how dark this is. Yes, still some fun mixed in, but we are seeing the 3am kitchen of Vonnegut’s soul. But like all of his works, it operates on many levels and is not what it appears to be on the surface.

Howard W. Campbell Jr. was a nazi. He was an American raised in Germany when his engineer father moved the family there for work. He stayed and became a propagandist and radio voice for the Third Reich.

Or did he?

Vonnegut is in rare form in this 1961 publication (his fifth) and one that delves deeply into the Germany he experienced as a prisoner of war. His later book Slaughterhouse Five (1969) goes more depth about his own perspective, but here we examine the troubling case of an American who has switched teams.

But –

Turns out that the apolitical Campbell really just wanted to play with words and have fun and make love to his beautiful German wife Helga. He was approached surreptitiously early on by an American officer who recruited him to be a spy, to pretend to be a nazi agent and to send coded messages home during his pro-nazi broadcasts.

But the talented wordsmith did his job too good. He became the poster boy for all things nazi and a beacon of inspiration for Hitler lovers and a source of derision to those of his native land.

Vonnegut explores, in his mischievous way patriotism, ideology and the effect of words on those that choose to listen. For this reason alone, in this age of political correctness, where saying the wrong thing implies that we ARE the wrong thing, this sixty-year-old book is timeless and relevant.

The scenes with the aging group of diverse racists is dementedly hilarious and quintessential Vonnegut and made me wonder if Dave Chapelle was inspired by this work.

Mental health disorders are a ubiquitous element in Vonnegut’s books. During this 2019 reading festival so far, I’ve read Breakfast of Champions, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Galapagos and now this and they’ve all had characters who suffer some mental impairment and commentary from Vonnegut. Vonnegut’s mother suffered from levels of insanity and the deranged perspective is one that he returns frequently.

Perhaps not one of his better known works but a must read for his fans and one that an interested reader should to see the great range and ability of one of our most talented writers.

شب مادر پنجمین تجربه ونه گات خوانیم بود. به خاطر فضای جنگ جهانی دومی که داره کمی یادآور "سلاخ خانه شماره پنج" ه...داستان با همون طنز همیشگی و لحن سرخوشانه ونه گات روایت میشه ولی تو این کتاب، برخلاف سه اثر فیکشن قبلی که از ونه گات خوندم از نشانه های آخرالزمانی یا علمی تخیلی اثری نیست

داستان جالبی داره.مردی اصالتا امریکایی ولی بزرگ شده ی آلمان در طول جنگ جهانی دوم صدای رایش رو از طریق رادیو به مردم انتقال میده و با شهرت و محبوبیتی که نزد ملت آلمان کسب کرده ازطریق پیام ها و سخنرانی های شورانگیزش ، ملت رو برای شرکت و ادامه جنگ تحریک می کنه. اما کاری که در واقع در حال انجامش بوده جاسوسی برای امریکا و ارسال اطلاعات از طریق سرفه و عطسه و تغییر لحن و ...است. حال سال ها بعد از پایان جنگ، بی هویت و بی پشت و پناه در حالی که بخش عظیمی از زندگی، خوشی، کار، هنر و عشقش رو از دست داده، در یکی از زندان های اسرائیل منتظر محاکمه و مشغول نوشتن خاطراتشه...

پیام کتاب همون جمله ای که ونه گات در ابتدای کتاب و حتی قبل از شروع داستان صریح و مستقیم می نویسه: مراقب باشید که به چی تظاهر می کنید چون در واقع شما همون چیزی هستید که بهش تظاهر می کنید

سوال کتاب اینجاست: اخلاقیات و درستی و نادرستی اعمال ما رو کی مشخص می کنه؟ شخصیت اول قصه آدم خوبه س یا آدم بده؟

استتوس هایی که از کتاب آپلود کردم رو هم می تونین مطالعه بفرمایین

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

Howard W. Campbell, Jr. is one of the most important propagandists of the Third Reich, and he is an American spy. While sending coded messages to the U.S. during WW II, he is also contributing to the German war machine. "Mother Night" is the memoir this fictional character writes in a Jerusalem prison, while awaiting trial for war crimes.

This is an equally dark and funny metafictional novel, full of clever ideas, puns, jokes, satire, and quirky twists - but as this is Vonnegut, there is a melancholy core at the heart of this text: Vonnegut's humor does not cover ugly truths about history and human nature, it highlights them.

The title "Mother Night" refers to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's play Faust: First Part, the ultimate German literary text about the fight between good and evil. This is an interesting reference (and it seems like many English-speaking readers are unfamiliar with this play), so I'd like to elaborate on it a little:

The status of "Faust I" in the German literary canon could be compared to a piece like "Hamlet" in the English-speaking world - it is extremely well-known. Probably the most famous part is the first encounter between the protagonist, Dr. Heinrich Faust, and Mephisto, the devil. Faust asks him who he is, and Mephisto starts to talk about the nature of evil (this is absolutely fantastic, go read it). Here's an excerpt:

"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."

Faust clearly does not want to stick to matter anymore: He makes a pact with the devil, "So that I may perceive whatever holds / the world together in its inmost folds" - i.e., Faust wants to attain universal knowledge. Although Faust's goal is not evil per se, he trades off his moral standards, and his hubris will lead to terrible consequences. And what Faust doesn't know: God and the devil made a bet whether Faust will ultimately side with good or evil - so who will finally win the fight for the human soul?

Just as Goethe, Vonnegut lets the battle between good and evil take place within individual people, reminding the reader that "the Nazis" and "the allies" were not monolithic masses, but groups composed of individual people who made individual decisions - and Vonnegut comes up with rather relevatory decisons and reasonings! What makes his text so exciting is that he introduces an unreliable narrator who tries to be both good and evil and a cast of characters who bent the idea of good and evil in every possible direction, thus showing how people deceive themselves in order to conform to ideologies or to evade personal responsibility. Who will win the fight for their souls? And what will the consequences of Campbell's Faustian pact with the Nazis be?

Many thanks to fellow Goodreader Tim (the Swiss one, not the one residing in Faust's hometown of Leipzig ;-)) for recommending this book to me!

Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut

Mother Night is a novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut, first published in February 1962. The title of the book is taken from Goethe's Faust.

It is the fictional memoirs of Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American, who moved to Germany in 1923 at age 11, and later became a well-known playwright and Nazi propagandist.

The action of the novel is narrated (through the use of meta-fiction) by Campbell himself.

The premise is that he is writing his memoirs while awaiting trial for war crimes in an Israeli prison. Howard W. Campbell also appears briefly in Vonnegut's later novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و هشتم ماه دسامبر سال2001میلادی

عنوان: شب مادر؛ نویسنده: کورت ونه گات جونیور؛ مترجم علی اصغر بهرامی؛ مشخصات نشر تهران، روشنگران و مطالعات زنان، سال1380، در240ص، شابک9789645512987؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م

داستان «هاوارد کمپبل» است، که در پایان جنگ جهانی نخست، به «آلمان» رفت، و سپس به عنوان تبلیغاتچی «نازی‌ها» کار کرد؛ این رمان از زبان خود «کمپبل» روایت شده‌ است؛ «کمپبل» پس از کوچ والدینش، بر خلاف میل آنها، در «آلمان» می‌ماند، و به نوشتن نمایشنامه ادامه می‌دهد؛ به دلیل اینکه از پدر و مادری آریایی به دنیا آمده‌ است، او را از آن حزب «نازی» می‌دانند؛ و به او پیشنهاد جاسوسی برای ارتش «ایالات متحده» می‌شود، و بعدها وی داده ها را به صورت رمز، از رادیو، برای «آمریکایی»‌ها، می‌فرستد؛ همسر او در میانه ی جنگ، به شرق «آلمان» می‌رود، و به «هاوارد» خبر می‌رسد، که او احتمالاً در آنجا کشته شده‌ است؛ بعدها «هاوارد»، توسط نیروی نظامی «ایالات متحده» دستگیر می‌شود، و با وساطت «وارتنن»، افسری که به او پیشنهاد جاسوسی کرده بود، آزاد، و به «آمریکا» فرستاده می‌شود؛ مضمون اصلی «شب مادر» هویت است؛ هر یک از آدم‌های رمان، دو یا بیش از دو شخصیت دارند: اینان کدامیک از این دو شخصیت‌ هستند؟ یکی؟ هر دو؟ هیچ کدام؟ و با کدام ترازو؟ که پاسخ به این پرسشها به متن رمان و به پیشنگاره ی «ونه‌ گات» باز می‌گردند؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 06/12/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 08/09/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی