Daily Vonnegut – Day 7.

n  “To be is to do” – Socrates
“To do is to be” – Jean-Paul Sartre
“Do be do be do” – Frank Sinatran

Rudy Waltz, a mostly autobiographical figure from Vonnegut. He does us the favour of “explaining” the symbols in the book in the preface. A bizarre tale with his father, Otto Waltz, who was Hitler’s friend back in art school and who paraded the Nazi flag in their living room. A tale of caution with gun control. But also a deeply moving plea in there, one that calls for attempting to understand your relationship with your parents and your family. Perhaps this last point is cheating, as I looked up a Vonnegut interview and looked at his face as he was talking. I read about his mother and her death by suicide. I felt my heart ache and I wanted to reach out and give him a hug. After the interview, I came back and continued reading. A lot of folks are all about removing the human element and separating the art from the artist, which is completely fair. But look here: separating the art from the artist in this case makes Vonnegut’s books a massive exercise in allegory, sarcastic and ironic and somewhat bitter, but ultimately optimistic about human nature. I am not a huge fan of the entirety of a novel being used as a vehicle for delivering a single message, so I read the book and see its point and either agree or disagree, but I want more. When I add the human element here, and god did Vonnegut seem to be a lovely human, it changes everything. It shouldn’t… but it does.

I have limited myself to one Vonnegut book a year - lest I run out of the joy of reading one of his books for the first time. Deadeye Dick was no exception - it provided all the joy I needed.

Deadeye Dick reminded me why I wanted to be a creative writer in high school. This book was published in 1982 and explores all the themes haunting the Midwest (the middle west as he calls it) to this day: big pharma using the average American as a dumping ground for its poison, "if you blink, you will miss it" cities using resources to build cultural establishments to go back to their heydays, and of course: white supremacy.

Reading Vonnegut during the pandemic, where I'm convinced that I am aging at the rate of the only surviving astronaut in 2001, made me focus on how life can be wasted if it is spent living in the past.

Kurt Vonnegut has a direct line to my funny bone, I am sad his peephole is closed.

A wise man once said, ‘The key to happiness is low expectations.’

Despite being that wise man, I failed to heed my sage advice and went into this book with fairly lofty expectations because it’s Vonnegut.

It’s basically a non-chronological auto-biography of the main character, Rudy Waltz, and centers around the following line.

"That is my principal objection to life, I think: It is too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes."

He begins by telling us that his father, Otto Waltz, was born into a wealthy family that earned their fortune principally by selling a quack medicine known as “Saint Elmo’s Remedy.” Otto takes advantage of his family’s affluence to travel to Europe to become an artist where he makes one of his perfectly horrible mistakes by befriending a young Hitler and then preaching the new social order when he returns to his hometown of Midland City, Ohio at the beginning of Hitler’s ascent.

A second perfectly horrible mistake is the accidental detonation of a neutron bomb in Midland City which kills everyone in the area but leaves all the buildings and infrastructure intact.

A third perfectly horrible mistake is committed by Rudy at the tender age of 12 and leads to him living a neutered life where he tries to make amends for his crime by waiting hand and foot on his parents for as long as they live while being as non-existent as possible.

Throughout the book, Rudy sprinkles in detailed cooking recipes, and despite racking my brain to figure out why (alright, maybe I didn’t rack my brain, but I most definitely asked it politely to storm a few reasons), I’ve got nothing. Except that maybe there’s a few people out there who enjoy reading cooking recipes with their literature.

All in all, while the story is flat and somewhat rambling, it did have its fair share of interesting thoughts and witty lines. And there is a quite powerful (and topical at the time of this review) appeal for gun control which I take as the book’s underlying message.

But the fatal flaw of this book is that Vonnegut calls Saint Elmo’s Remedy a quack medicine and goes on to describe it as grain alcohol dyed purple, flavored with cloves and sarsaparilla root, and laced with opium and cocaine. That’s a fucking wonderdrug! How is that not in every Walgreens on the planet?!

I give Deadeye Dick 3.5 stars (rounded up to 4 here) but would only recommend it if you go into it with very low expectations so that you’re not disappointed. Although there’s a good chance that you still will be so don’t give me no gruff if you are.

Bonus quote:

"The actress playing Celia could ask why God had ever put her on earth.
tAnd then the voice from the back of the theater could rumble: 'To reproduce. Nothing else really interests Me. All the rest is frippery.'"

That’s God telling us to get it on!!! So send me some naked pics ladies and let’s keep this party going.

Kurt Vonnegut’s 10th novel and more of life’s absurdity.

Vonnegut is one of those observers of life’s foolishness, its inanities. Who did he base Rudy Waltz on, the black sheep of the family and nicknamed "Deadeye Dick" for the accidental manslaughter of a neighbour? Rudy’s father was friends with Hitler and at one point was popular in the city they lived as he knew a head of state. Imagine that, one knows a head of state and everyone thinks you are a fine fellow indeed.

A neutron bomb exploded over the city. There is this passage in the book; “Nations might think of themselves as stories, and the stories end, but life goes on. Maybe my own country’s life as a story ended after the Second World War, when it was the richest and most powerful nation on earth, when it was going to ensure peace and justice everywhere, since it alone had the atom bomb.” Mankind’s lack of civility to his fellow man is an odd take when one considers that Vonnegut has said that there is at heart a goodness in us all. Bomb one of your own cities?

Rudy Waltz claims he is a neuter. If this is a comment on the human rights of minorities, and that Rudy’s dad was a Nazis, is the obliteration of an arts centred city some kind of metaphor I am missing?

At this point, I am an unmitigated Vonnegut fan; one has to be to read 10 of his novels in nine months.
As usual, Vonnegut give me plenty to think about even if I might not get it.
One more for the Vonnegut reader and recommended as such





My review of number 1 Player Piano.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My review of number 2 The Sirens Of Titan.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My review of number 3 Mother Night.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My review of number 4 Cats Cradle.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My review of number 5 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My review of number 6 Slaughter House Five
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My review of number 7 Breakfast Of Champions.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My review of number 8 Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My review of number 9 Jailbird.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

A few questions prompted by my reading of Deadeye Dick:

Had Adolf Hitler been more successful as an artist, would it have altered the course of history?
*
What was a pregnant Midland City mother doing operating a vaccuum cleaner on Mother's Day?
*
How many journeys in search of Shangri-la have been inspired by James Hilton's Lost Horizon?
*
Why are some idiot Americans still so obsessed with guns and so afraid of gun control?

One can be answered more or less by Google, one only by Vonnegut himself, one would require a time machine, and regarding the other I have several theories ranging from overcompensating for something else to the fear of confronting the monster/vacuous nothingness that is each of us. This is the story of Nobodies who wanted to be Somebodies only to discover that every Somebody is a Nobody regardless. Our peepholes open and our peepholes close and what happens in between is of very little consequence to the great majority. Inspiring, isn't it? A sort of companion piece to Breakfast of Champions, although the scope of Vonnegut's universe never ceases to astound me.

I read almost the entire book when a fire broke out at a painting section of a car factory, and all the workers were sent out to spend their day outside. For one day the usually busy nest of working blue-overall bees turned into a sunny festival of ice-cream and cigarettes. It could have been the best day of the summer. The joy of sunshine when you are expected to work, but cannot because of a system failure.

This is a big, bulky book for only little over 200 words. The blue cover, which looks like a cheap 90's superhero promotion matched the blue overalls, and people smiled whilst driving by with their forklifts. I was being careful to not to be on the way, for this is the perfect story about accidents that ruin lives. ("This is my principal objection to life, I think: it is too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes." 17)

Vonnegut has created one of his most sympathetic, relatable, and curious main characters. Reading his works always makes me remember how little we can define what kind of life is good. He ridicules the insistence of human beings on hierarchical structures which are essentially built upon nothing more but appearances. And then, at any given moment, everything gets taken away, and someone cuts the buttons off all of the clothes you bought in London.

I'm going to give this five stars because of someone whose peephole closed due to a radioactive mantelpiece.

So it goes.

Do bi do bi do.

Kurt Vonegut ile tanışma kitabım. Tanışma kitabım olmasına rağmen, Vonegut’a bambaşka bir kitabıyla da başlanabilir gibi hissettim zira kendisi alışveriş listesi bile yazsa eğlenceli, oyuncaklı bir eser olurdu gibi!

vonnegut is the best midwestern author to ever exist. he does a phenomenal job of capturing what it is like and what it means to live where nothing is really going on. not my favorite of his books, but still good and it intertwines with Breakfast of Champions in a lot of interesting ways

another note: i love the way vonnegut’s stories flow. there are no surprises in the narrative because he says exactly what’s going to happen long before he expounds upon it. sort of talking in circles around an event

*** 2019 reread

Many of Vonnegut’s books are set in or at least mention Midland City, Ohio. This was the canvas on which he painted so much of his great work, and therein resided so many of his recurring characters. It was to him as Yoknapatawpha County was to William Faulkner.

Deadeye Dick had so much in common with his 1973 work Breakfast of Champions, it could almost be a loose sequel. We walk the sidewalks and run into Dwayne Hoover, Celia Hoover, Fred Berry and maybe even a brief glimpse at our writer, in a similar fashion as he appeared in BOC.

Like so much of his work, and like most great fiction, it is about a great many things besides the surface story told. On the surface it is about a boy who, in a moment of reckless carelessness, does something terrible and about all the horrible consequences that flow from that sad event.

But step back from Vonnegut’s easel, take a broader look at what’s going on and, of course, KV has said much more, he has given us a cynical, satirical image of our world where wealth, privilege and apathy has left us with deadly playthings in the hands of children.

He also hints that these same children grow up to get their hands on much worse playthings.

A recurring theme (one of the many that likely provides a universal and timeless quality to his work) is the useless and passively dangerous idle rich man. Here we find Otto Waltz, the father of our narrator Rudy Waltz, who is a pharmaceutical heir and erstwhile painter. He is sent, before the first World War, to Vienna to develop his nonexistent artistic ability. The educational sojourn of course turns into a drinking and carousing boondoggle and Otto befriends a young Austrian painter who would later almost destroy the world.

Vonnegut takes us again on a roller coaster ride of American hopes and dreams, traveling through a kaleidoscope of the darker truths as well.

“To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.”

Life is the opening and closing of “peepholes” in time, each peephole telling a story. There’s quite a bit going on here, but it focuses largely on the loss of innocence, life’s story, and life’s epilogue. Rudy Waltz fast became one of my favorite KV creations. His recipes and memory playlets added a layer of complexity to the character and style.

As always, Vonnegut is the master of satire.

От трите (поредни при това) книги на Вонегът, които прочетох, тази беше най-лесна за четене, историята беше най-последователна, без прекалено много отклонения. Но и много герои и подробности вече ми бяха известни от Закуска за шампиони. И въпреки че другите две бяха по-шантави и оплетени, ми бяха и по-замислящи. Най-много харесвам Котешка люлка, засега... ще чета и други негови, но не скоро, защото се преситих с Вонегът. :)

Description: Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut’s funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors—a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb—Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe . . . and who we say we are.

Minorite Church Vienna by Adolf Hitler 1910-1912

Our narrator is the son of the artist who befriended Adolf Hitler. The recipes, who expected those?

St Elmo's recipe: a mixture of grain alcohol, opium, and cocaine, it won't hurt you unless you stop taking it.

CR Deadeye Dick
3* Slaughterhouse-Five
4* Cat's Cradle
5* Mother Night
3* Galápagos
TR A Man Without a Country
TR Bluebeard
4* tGod Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
TR tPalm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage
3* Report on the Barnhouse Effect
3* Thanasphere