Kurt Vonnegut’s Passing

If you’re a regular visitor, you’ll have seen Tom’s detailed posts on Kurt Vonnegut in the wake of his death.

He was my favourite novelist – which isn’t saying much – I’m not a novel person really but I always really enjoyed his ability to combine compassion and humour.

Like most people I have a few favourite books – “Mother Night” and “Slaughterhouse Five” are up there for me with “Last Exit To Brooklyn” “Rule of the Bone” and “The Magic Christian” as my all time choices – they number among the few novels I’ve read more than once.

Most people interested in fiction have read “Slaughterhouse Five” but I’d imagine less have had a go at “Mother Night”. You really should. It’s as good as it gets.

Telling the fascinating, fictitious story of American wartime “traitor” Howard W. Campbell Jr, Vonnegut delivers his usual blend of tenderness and surreal humour throughout.

Campbell, a US born German resident, becomes famous during WWII when he acts as a propaganda broadcaster for the Nazi regime. Hated in his home country and pursued in later life by Israel we learn that he has been no such thing – he has been spying for the Allies all along, sending coded messages in his broadcasts.

The novel masquerades as Campbell’s memoir as he explains his motivations, his abandonment by the American Government he served and his encounters with a hilarious band of crumbling old Nazis looking for a leader, his cranky, mysterious neighbour, the Mossad agents sent to kidnap or kill him and the dramatic re-appearance of what appears to be his long dead wife.

It works as a love story brilliantly, as a comedy brilliantly and, as with most of Vonnegut’s work, it comments wryly on the idiocy of war.

I really can’t recommend it highly enough.

Obviously I was saddened to hear about Vonnegut’s death, but he lived a good life – he was a good writer and was a noble man. He was for people, and so few of us are these days.

He passes on with less than most to be ashamed of. Not that he'd agree with me there.