"My wife has been killed by a machine which should never have come into the hands of any human being. It is called a firearm. It makes the blackest of all human wishes come true at once, at a distance: that something die."

In the last ten days, there have been twelve mass shootings in the U.S. 28 people killed and an additional 42 injured. In ten days. And that's mass shootings, I didn't even look up the number for individual shootings.

What's perhaps more chilling than those numbers is that only two of them made it on the national news. Ten of them were obviously just normal, everyday killings. Nothing of interest here, folks. Move along now.

The two news-making mass shootings will have the following results: Democrats will vow to bring about gun reform and stricter gun laws. Republicans will cry that guns don't kill people, people kill people and it's our constitutional right to walk around slinging guns like we're still living in the Old Wild West.

The Democrats and Republicans both will wax poetic about how their thoughts and prayers are with the families. And nothing will be done.

In a week or two, both sides will have forgotten all about those killings and remain silent on the subject until the next news-worthy shooting takes place.

If Kurt Vonnegut were alive today, I'm sure he'd have an amusing and eloquent way to point out all the bullshit.

He's not alive but he did leave us Deadeye Dick, a satirical story about guns and bombs and humans killing humans. Rudy Waltz is just twelve years old when he accidentally shoots and kills a pregnant woman. This happens a few hours after his father boasts to Eleanor Roosevelt that he taught his sons how to use firearms at a young age because it ensured they would never have a shooting accident.

"He said most of the things the National Rifle Association still says about how natural and beautiful it is for Americans to have love affairs with guns." Safety habits, he explained, were second nature when you taught young kids how to use guns.

Yes, the world is much safer because we have guns.*

It's not just guns that play a role in killing people in Deadeye Dick. We also have tanks and war and neutron bombs. The government dropped one on a small city in Ohio, killing approximately one hundred thousand people. They did this to demonstrate how safe these bombs were, because there was no danger in visiting the city afterwards!

Vonnegut points out the idiocy of war and weapons with his signature subtle wit. As ghastly as it all was, it was entertaining. After all, providing entertainment is something we Americans do well. That, and shooting people. We do both exceptionally well.


*That's me being sarcastic.

3.5

I'm from way up north where the blueberries grow; where high school shuts down for the opening of deer season and kids learn to load buckshot before they hit puberty. If you do something in the morning, everyone will sure as shit have already heard about it by evening. It's safe to say that I live in a small town. And this, in a way, is sort of what this story is about. Rudy Waltz is the infamous Deadeye Dick of Midland, Ohio. Everyone knows him, and what he did, and those hometown nicknames are hard to shake off. Especially when you deserve them.

Small towns are weird. If you have a lick of talent, everyone thinks you are great, but you get out in the real world and realize you were just a big fish in a small backasswards pond. You swear to God Almighty that you are going to get out of this stupid place and never come back, but you find yourself sucked back in with the rest of the folk that couldn't manage to do anything with their lives or break away from the safety of a close-knit community. And there you are, working the same job at the mill your daddy did.

There is a lot more to this story than just small-town midwestern living. But this is what resonated the most with me. What else can I say about this book other than I love it? Vonnegut is a master of irony and this story hits home in a lot of ways. It is simultaneously bizarre, funny, and heartbreaking -- like you would expect with a Kurt Vonnegut book. It's a story of a life of broken people, missed opportunities, and sheer luck.

Deadeye Dick is a one more proof that Kurt Vonnegut was an inimitable maestro of dark social satire…
The novel, like many other books of the author, is an artistic downbeat extravaganza about all sorts of misfits…

There stood my mother, Emma, who was herself a child. Outside of school, she had never had any responsibilities, any work to do. Her servants had raised her children. She was purely ornamental.
Nothing bad was supposed to happen to her – ever. But here she was in a thin bathrobe now, without her husband or servants, or her basso profundo elder son. And there I was, her gangling, flute-voiced younger son, a murderer.

Misfits may be either ugly or beautiful… Misfits may be either rich or poor… Misfits can be self-styled or accidental… They can be products of society… They can be results of family upbringing… Or many various combinations of all those…

I have never made love to anyone.
Nor have I tasted alcohol, except for homeopathic doses of it in certain recipes – but the others had been drinking champagne. Not since I was twelve, for that matter, have I swallowed coffee or tea, or taken a medicine, not even an aspirin or a laxative or an antacid or an antibiotic of any sort. This is an especially odd record for a person who is, as I am, a registered pharmacist, and who was the solitary employee on the night shift of Midland City’s only all-night drugstore for years and years.
So be it.

Life of misfit is a life anyway, and it must be lived.

I will be rereading this, soon. It's so good.

Perfect absurdist antidote to the non-fiction I was on before. Toes the line between random and deeply poignant, makes it look effortless (bet it takes some effort indeed). Loved it.

“To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.
I have caught life. I have come down with life. I was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness, and then a little peephole opened quite suddenly. Light and sound poured in. Voices began to describe me and my surroundings. Nothing they said could be appealed. They said I was a boy named Rudolph Waltz, and that was that. They said the year was 1932, and that was that.
They said I was in Midland City, Ohio, and that was that.
They never shut up. Year after year they piled detail upon detail. They do it still. You know what they say now? They say the year is 1982, and that I am fifty years old.
Blah blah blah.”

Кърт Вонегът може да ти зареди батериите и да ти обясни какво значи да си жив.
Страхотен е.

Although Deadeye Dick isn’t a Top 5 Vonnegut novel for me, it still has real weight. It presents a picture of Middle America in the 20th century as raw and insightful as any of his other work. And a lot of standard Vonnegut motifs are present: repeated phrases and ideas (life as a “peephole “), tragically bumbling but lovable characters, implausible yet somehow believable realities (neutron bombs and ghosts), and interconnected yet polar opposite characters. There’s plenty here for any Vonnegut fan. The rest should read Slaughterhouse Five or Breakfast of Champions and become a Vonnegut fan first, but then make a trip through Midland City and the mind of Deadeye Dick.

This is satire at its blackest. Deadeye Dick might be the angriest of Vonnegut's books: nuclear weapons, small-town life, hopeless parents and marriages, drug addiction, warped governments, racism, police brutality and gun laws. It's all here in this mulligan stew of righteous indignation.

Brilliant. A real tour de force of grumpy trouble-making.

Review TBC.

This is Kurt saying a final goodbye to his mother.

3.5 stars

I've read better by Vonnegut, but this was still a delight.

His discussion about a person's story vs their epilogue was enlightening. I'll definitely be thinking about it for some time.

Vonnegut is back at full strength! I'm reading his novels in chronological sequence and the two written after Breakfast of Champions were a disappointment at best. With Deadeye Dick, his power returns, with a more mature end-of-life perspective. Even though Vonnegut was only 59 while writing it, you get the feeling that his personal story has ended, and its epilogue has begun. This is not a guess: he admits it for himself, through his characters, and is a main theme of the book.

Between its opening lines

"To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: watch out for life."

and its final judgement

"And you want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages—they haven't ended yet."

is a deeply emotional modern fable I will not soon forget. It will be interesting how he follows (of course, followed) up on this one.