Sinobrody, to moje szóste spotkanie z niesamowicie lekkim piórem, prowokacyjnym językiem i iście specyficznym humorem amerykańskiego pisarza, eseisty i wykładowcy literatury na Uniwersytecie Harvarda oraz na City Collage, Kurta Vonneguta.

Co zostało ukryte w spichlerzu?
Rabo Karabekiana jest, a może raczej był malarzem, który porzucił swoje rzemiosło, by pozostać kolekcjonerem sztuki. Teraz u schyłku swych dni szczyci się swą niezwykłe bogatą kolekcję obrazów amerykańskich ekspresjonistów. Jednak to nie galeria jest najistotniejszą i najbardziej cenną rzeczą w jego życiu.

Sekret byłego malarza próbuje za wszelką cenę odkryć wścibska wdowa, która niespodziewanie pojawiła się w życiu Ormianina i powiela zadanie, jakie postawiły sobie niegdyś żony Sinobrodego ze starej legendy, który zabijał je, ponieważ łamały jego zakaz zaglądania do tajemniczej komnaty. Czy uda jej się odkryć sekret Rabo Karabekiana?

Autobiografia, a może jednak dziennik?
Bardzo urzekająca i ciekawie skonstruowana historia w formie autobiografii, która bardzo szybko przerodziła się w formę nietypowego dziennika.

Dzięki czemu akcja powieści dzieje się na dwóch płaszczyznach, a my jako czytelnicy podczas tych przeskoków (czy to miejscu, czy w czasie) mamy chwilę na liczne przemyślenia dotyczących życia, wojny, kobiet i w końcu samej sztuki.

Sztuki, która wraz ze starą legendą stała się punktem wyjścia tej historii i jest pewną formą rozliczenia się autora z artystami i ich twórczością.

Lekko ironiczne i rozrywkowe podejście do całego tematu powodują, iż książkę czyta się niezwykle lekko, ale między wierszami czuć powagę, a zakończenie bardzo pięknie pokazuje, iż każdy może odnaleźć wewnętrzny spokój.

Podsumowując. Sinobrody pokazał mi, że lubię Kurta Vonneguta również w formie komediowej, która to absolutnie nie przeszkadza autorowi przekazywać wielu wartości i zadawać mnóstwo trudnych pytań.

Polecam gorąco! Klasa sama w sobie i czekam na wznowienie kolejnych dzieł autora.

http://unserious.pl/2020/11/sinobrody...

This was a lovely reintroduction to Vonnegut after a nearly eight year hiatus. I remember loving his style and staccato rhythm of his prose. Slaughterhouse-Five remains one of my favourite novels and was one of the first that made me think science fiction could be much more than explosions and cool scenes. Bluebeard, by contrast, is an entirely realist novel about the abstract expressionist art movement.

Although it's only a little bit about that too.

What it's really about is Rabo Karabekian, ageing hermit, art collector, and life-regretter with a secret something in his potato barn. His hermitage is interrupted by Circe Berman, a writer of what sure sounds like YA novels, who endeavours to change his life, much to his chagrin. The novel involves many other characters who would be poorly introduced by myself in comparison to their richness as presented by Vonnegut. All the characters here are wonderfully realized and I was sad to see them go by novel's end.

I love how Vonnegut is able to tie tethers through time to connect a character's past to their actions throughout their lives without shoving it down the reader's throat. If Rabo is suffering, he does so without expending page upon page in melancholy and it's to Vonnegut's credit that he makes the reader feel it in a sentence or two. The novel is structured as Rabo's memoirs, but plays loosely with linearity in a way that felt more playful than willfully experimental. In fact, it's a trait I remember loving from my earlier readings of Vonnegut.

I'm not sure if this is a well-known Vonnegut novel, but I was pleasantly surprised when it was chosen as our latest book club read. It was compelling, hilarious, heartfelt, and manages to be an uplifting story despite having some portions which seem like they would be highly unpleasant to have lived. I was touched by many scenes and inexplicably astounded by the reveal in the potato barn even though it is no immense twist. Bluebeard was a surprise and managed to slowly creep up on me with its charm. This one is definitely worth a read and has helped to rekindle my love for Vonnegut.

Wow. This was a novel that's going to keep me thinking for a long, long time. It was everything jam packed into a small little book: clever, tragic, engrossing, laugh out loud funny, imaginative, unexpected, and even transformative, I think. There are so many layers to this book I'm sure I'll be thinking about it off and on for the next several months at least and will almost definitely re-read this book a number of times before I reach room temperature.

Check it out: The protagonist/autobiographer is a veteran who lost an eye in WWII who later becomes one of the biggest jokes of the Abstract Expressionist art movement because all of his art disintegrates due to a poor choice of paint. He started life as an illustrator who couldn't make it as a 'real' artist because his paintings lacked depth and vision. And then he goes off to WWII and LITERALLY LOSES HIS SENSE OF DEPTH by having one of his eyes shot out. Ironically, I think it's this literal and figurative lack of depth perception that enables him to survive and not commit suicide while all of his other artist friends don't. There is more to this thing about eyes and perception, too. When both his father and some other artists are at their most creative, their eyes become dead. Half of this guy's eyes are already dead, so he's not able to see what they're seeing, so he can't be harmed/driven to suicide by it. It's only at the very end of the book, perhaps when he's finally old/strong/mature/stable enough to cope with everything he's seen is he really able to paint something that combines the objective reality of illustration and the visceral experience of abstract expressionism. This shit was some mind-freeing stuff for me. Reading it right now for some reason.

And then there's the whole thing about forbidden rooms and curiosity...the name of the book itself, and whatever it is that the guy has locked away in the potato barn. Both the original Bluebeard story and Vonnegut's have curious, prying women, too.

But the thing that's occupying my mind about the book right now is endings. In one part of the book, a female character talks about how Ibsen's The Doll House ended the wrong way. The Doll House's female lead leaves the house and everyone's left to assume she goes to Happily Ever After. But the woman in Bluebeard believes she throws herself in front of a train. Mostly because there really was no Happily Ever After for women at that time. Only more doll houses. I read that and I'm, like, "Yeah, life is harsh and it's crappy to have books end happily. Good books gotta end sad." So then this book goes and ends on a positive note. At first I was pretty bummed that everything works out in the end. But then I thought, "It's only ME who tacks on the 'Happily Ever After' part. Even though he has started the process of healing, this guy has a whole long row to hoe that is not going to be happy, pretty or any other easy positive word." In the same way that Vonnegut's character has finally found a way to combine literal but soulless illustration with abstract expressionism, maybe I'm getting closer to being able to see 'happily ever after,' and 'life is still super hard' as two sides of the same simultaneously experienced reality.

I have been going on like this in my head since I finished this book 24 hours ago and things just seem to be speeding up, as far as I can tell. The sign of a great book, in my book.

Framed as an autobiography/diary of an antisocial veteran/painter living in the Hamptons, Bluebeard addresses primarily war and art. It's slow-paced, but filled with humor and philosophical observations.

Наш оповідач — одноокий ветеран Другої світової війни, народжений від батьків, які пережили геноцид вірмен і жили як іммігранти в Америці. Оцінювальний погляд на сучасне мистецтво та одвічної Куртової теми повоєнної людини. Його розповіді межують між скорботою та іронією, між відчаєм та захопленням. Текст насичений і це не буде легкою прогулянкою. Але для шанувальників Воннеґутта-молодшого це гарна книга у скарбничку улюблених.
На жаль, з Куртом, окрім Бійні, в мене так і не склалось. Отаке.

This one is an A- for me, with much more heart and optimism than a lot of Vonnegut's other works. The typical structures of his mind palace are there--war, humanism, granfaloons, outrageous names--but the first person perspective and the edge of Abstract Expressionism really make the voice of this book stand out.

We see again Vonnegut's clumsy attempts at writing women, although his Circe Berman redeems his usual foibles in that regard. She's an outstanding foil to the self-centered, shameful Rabo Karabekian and I actually found their developing friendship to be heartwarming and endearing.

The motif of legacy is poignant, as Rabo seems throughout to actively sabotage his own. You get the sense that this aging Kurt was meditating on his own legacy and his own perceived failures through life, allowing for the grace of self-forgiveness and, subsequently, self-fulfilment. The observations on abstract expressionism were also superbly thoughtful and understanding of a divisive art form that in many ways echoes those consistent ideas of legacy.

"Oh, happy Meat. Oh, happy Soul. Oh, happy Rabo Karabekian."

l
Like listening to grandpa fart, a personal and rather disturbing affair best kept with its creator.

Sarcastic and haunted by what he has experienced. This is Vonnegut at his best. Slaughterhouse-Five is still my all-time favorite because of its science fiction element, but this is just as effective in combining pain with humor. After reading it, it seems odd to me that this book isn't one of his more popular. For me, it was a much more enjoyable read than Breakfast of Champions and Galápagos, which came off as a little too over-the-top. If you loved Slaughterhouse-Five but couldn't find another Vonnegut book that you enjoyed as much, give this one a shot.

Definitely one of Vonnegut's lesser novels. The trope of an imperfect elderly man looking back over his life is starting to feel repetitive

One of my favorite teachers once told my class that Brothers K and Bluebeard were his two favorite novels of all time. To him, he said, great novels have been much more than entertainments or distractions. They’ve saved him, changed him, challenged him, awakened him. My only foray into Vonnegut then had been Slaughterhouse-Five. I knew little about Vonnegut’s oeuvre and even less about what his claim meant, but I was intrigued. Where and how did Bluebeard fit in his grandiose statement? At that time, I loved reading probably more than anything else, but the thought of a book “saving” me or even changing me was so far beyond my realm of experience that I couldn’t even begin to grasp the thought of it. But Bluebeard stayed tucked in the back of mind, often resurfacing between the quiet, contemplative lulls of finishing one novel and beginning the next. I promised myself I’d read it one day when the time was right, perhaps finally understand what he had meant. Three years later, I’ve finally picked it up. My good friend Gregory had told me he was planning on reading it this summer, and when’s a more perfect time than quarantine? Besides, I at last can say that novels have changed, challenged, awakened me and even—as Mr. Favorite Teacher claimed to a class of weary seniors who thought they knew it all—been great friends. So I read Bluebeard in snippets over the course of today, as I iced my post-wisdom teeth surgery mouth, popped various prescribed pills and watered my vegetable garden. Upon finishing it, I can’t claim that Bluebeard is one of my favorite novels or even my favorite Vonnegut, but I think I can understand why it might be someone else’s.

Perhaps not as classically Vonnegut as his more renowned works, Bluebeard still retains his black humor, irony and absurdism, though perhaps seeped in more melancholy and introspection. Over and over, Vonnegut questions: what is art? What does it do that a shoe or potato cannot? What do people believe and why? Where is home? What is the burden you carry that you don’t let others see? Why do men do the things they do? What is the present and how do we live in it? What the fuck is Rabo Karabekian keeping locked in his potato barn?

Bluebeard, Rabo tells us, is a fictitious character in folklore who upon marrying his latest child bride, tells her she can enter any room but one. Eventually, she, with the curiosity of her predecessors (Pandora & Eve), succumbs to the forbidden temptation. Alas, Bluebeard catches her opening the door, which reveals the murdered bodies of Bluebeard’s former wives. So what can we do but wonder about the Rabo’s own inaccessible room and read on in hopes that we learn the answer? Rabo gives us a hint: what’s inside the potato barn is bigger than bread but smaller than Jupiter. It’s at once animal & vegetable & mineral.

And now it is your turn, reader, to solve this riddle. Pick up this book, open it up and begin.

By far, my favourite Vonnegut book (though, to be fair, I've only read two others: Slaughterhouse-Five and Mother Night). I'm also biased because the main character was Armenian, and I could relate. Incidentally, however, I was inspired to read Vonnegut from YouTuber climbthestacks. Her video series on where to begin reading certain authors includes Vonnegut, and she too said her favourite book was Bluebeard, so I'm in good company :)

I read a library copy, but I'll definitely be buying this book for my personal library.

that awkward moment when you find a book on your bookshelf that you have no recollection of buying and then you realize the name [REDCATED] is written on the inside meaning that you stole this from your high school AP English teacher over 6 years ago...

Mrs. Sabato, please forgive me. i do love Vonnegutt so your book is in good hands!