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FROM POINT A TO POINT B. WITH LOTS OF STOPS
And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a friend of mine. Not
that I ever met him, but he was a friend of mine all the same,
because he did for me what friends do. He got me through
rough patches of my life with his absurd humor and simple
decency. When no one else's words seemed to offer me any
thing, his were always there. Reading Vonnegut, I could always
hear a voice, feel a human presence beyond mere style, beyond
glib wordplay. Kurt Vonnegut was my friend, and your friend
too.
Armageddon in Retrospect (Penguin USA, 2008) is a new
collection of previously unpublished works by Vonnegut on the
! one-year anniversary of his death, and while it's not exactly the
! treasure-trove his fans might have hoped for, this assortment of
| essays and short stories on the theme of war is still Vonnegut,
| and even the least of his works contain amazing stuff.
War was always a preoccupation for Vonnegut, its horrors
| and pointlessness and capacity to make otherwise rational
j people behave in nonsensical ways, and these elements are
doled out in full and equal measure in this collection. Of par-
j ticular interest to Vonnegut, and a running theme throughout
most of his work, is the issue
of capitulation—to what degree
do we allow ourselves to be par
ties to war by doing nothing?
In one story Vonnegut envisions
a future without conflict, a
condition so anathemic to the
human condition that time-travel
technology is used in order to
seek it out. In another, an old
couple in a Czechoslovakia freed
from Communist rule finds them
selves equally persecuted by an
American occupying force for not
having risen up against the last
regime. A family man in Norman
England has to choose between
a cushy berth as his feudal lord's
tax collector and the example he
must set for his son, despite his
j nattering wife's excitement over
better living through the scraps
from the Normans' table.
The defining moment in
Vonnegut's life was witnessing
the firebombing of Dresden,
Germany as a POW, an experi
ence he attempted to write
out through his seminal novel
Slaughterhouse-Five (1965), but
j which provides fodder for several
j of the stories here. Unlike many
posthumous collections, this one doesn't quite have the feel
of the author's heirs plundering the bottom of a discard trunk,
though the absence of any dates assigned to these stories does
make one wonder just how long Vonnegut, a shameless anthol-
ogizer of his own work, allowed these to gather dust and why.
Still, the collection is worth reading for the stories, the inclu
sion of Vonnegut's final piece of writing, an address he was
about to give at Indiana University when he had the accident
that took his life, and son Mark Vonnegut's eloquent and apt
tribute to his father's life and work. Vonnegut's best? No. But
in a world made the worse for losing Kurt Vonnegut's voice and
spirit, we'll take what we can get. After all, he was our friend.
One Man's Trash: There are few phrases in the common parlance
quite as pernicious as "guilty pleasure," the idea that there are
things out there—like raspberry Zingers, Weird Al Yankovic and
"Walker, Texas Ranger"—that we enjoy, but should be ashamed
of enjoying, because they're somehow beneath us. We have
devalued the notion of pure entertainment to such a degree
that some of us actually apologize for being entertained. This
is madness. Shy of snuff films and dogfighting, there is no
shame whatsoever in deriving enjoyment from the labors of
people who work hard to provide it, be th^y Steven Spielberg
or David Hasselhoff. Say it once, say it loud, I watch "America's
Next Top Model" and I'm proud!
Michael Chabon doesn't believe in guilty pleasures, either.
Although firmly established as one of the leading lights of
"serious" fiction of the last 15 years through remarkable work
like The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys, and the Pulitzer
Prize-winning (and just so damn good) The Amazing Adventures
of Kavalier & Clay, Chabon has never been shy about his love
of genre fiction or his assertion that there is as much insight,
wisdom, and just plain good writing to be found in the pulp
ghettos of mystery, fantasy, Westerns and science fiction as in
the gated communities of the mainstream.
The eloquent defense of genre forms the core of Chabon's
first collection of essays. Maps and Legends (McSweeney's
Books, 2008). Many of the articles in the collection originally
appeared in the New York Review of Books, erudite thought-
pieces on Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Philip Pullman's His
Dark Materials trilogy, and the bizarre world of Sherlock Holmes
scholarship (fanfic for academicians). Other pieces deal with
M. R. James, the best writer of ghost stories you've never read,
the passing of artist Will Eisner, and a celebration of comic-
strip creator Ben Katchor.
Chabon's nonfiction style is at times stultifyingly cerebral—
the man does love a 10-dollar word—but never inaccessible,
and his sheer enthusiasm for
both the high- and low-brow ele
ments that make up his psyche
is infectious. Chabon's fans are
likely to get the most out of
Maps and Legends, but then,
there are an awful lot of those
and there really should be more
of them.
Can't Get There from Here: If
you're traveling to Central or
South America any time in the
near future and you want to
use a Lonely Planet guide
book, check and see if Thomas
Kohnstamm wrote it. The
32-year-old writer recently outed
himself in a new book for writing
at least one of his guidebooks.
Lonely Planet Colombia, with
out actually going there, for
plagiarizing passages in other
guidebooks, and for dealing
drugs on the side to supplement
his income. Lonely Planet has
been scrambling to fact-check
Kohnstamm's books and so far
has found no inaccuracies, but
Kohnstamm's revelations come
as a definite black eye to a
company with a reputation for
providing some of the most in-depth and comprehensive travel
information on the market.
RoboCop... Showgirls... Jesus: Film buffs tend to be divided
on the subject of Dutch director Paul Verhoeven. Hailed as a
genius auteur in his early career, particularly for his very good
film Soldier of Orange, Verhoeven's output in America has been
spotty at best, from the campy brilliance of RoboCop to his
embarrassing adaptation of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers
to Showgirls, viewings of which should replace waterboarding
as the CIA's preferred form of torture.
Verhoeven's next venture, however, is pretty much guar
anteed to piss off everyone. Verhoeven, a member of the
scholarly historical group the Jesus Seminar, has written a
biography of Christ which contends that Jesus may have actu
ally been the child of a Roman soldier who raped Mary. The
book also attempts to salvage the reputation of Judas Iscariot.
It is slated for release in English next year, and Verhoeven is
reportedly working on a film version. Several members of the
Jesus Seminar, including influential historian John Dominic
Crossan, have come out against Verhoeven's book, their com
ments boiling down to a collective "What the hell... ?" Mel
Gibson, on the other hand, may relax in knowing that he will
soon no longer have made the most offensive movie ever about
the life of Christ.
John G. Nettles
10 FLAGPOLE.COM • MAY 14,2008
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