A Man With No Country – Kurt Vonnegut
Water For Elephants – Sara Gruen
I remember seeing the Kurt Vonnegut book prominently displayed in bookstores when I was a teenager first starting to explore bookstores. It was published in 2004-05.
Vonnegut is the celebrated author of “Slaughterhouse Five” and “Cat’s Cradle,” amongst others. He is considered a master of dark humor, satire, and subtext.
His novels were funny, but this is not that. This slim volume collects essays and musings on a range of subjects, from writing to socialism to the end of humanity, written at the tail end of his life. Most read like a Rolling Stone op-ed circa 2004.
I forgot how much Bush and Cheney were hated back then. Vonnegut loathes them, taking every opportunity to call them evil dictators and Nazis or some variation on that theme. He’s convinced the 2000 election was stolen, calling it a coup. Ahh, those were the halcyon days of American politics.
To be honest, there’s not much to like about this book, and I try to be positive about every book I write about. Vonnegut sounds like a bitter old dickhead. Curmudgeonly is too kind a word for what he sounds like. He hates humanity.
There’s an essay about how gas supplies will dry out in 20 years and the subsequent societal collapse. Our ensuing extinction is described with barely concealed glee. Throughout, he disparages fossil fuels with a vehemence reserved for fanatics.
On a positive note, the essay about writing and storytelling is fascinating. There’s a good line about semicolons about being “hermphroditic” abominations that should rarely be used and mostly say “I went to college.”
“Water For Elephants” is another book I remember being prominently displayed during that same time period (I miss bookstores). Jacob is an old man in a nursing home who reminisces about his time in a travelling circus during Prohibition when the nursing home residents are offered a chance to go to the circus in the upcoming week.
A young student at Cornell, Jacob comes home from class one day to discover his parents have died in a car crash and have left him nothing. He skips his final exams to be a veterinarian and jumps a train. The train happens to be a travelling circus.
He’s gradually introduced to the colorful cast of characters who make up the circus: Camel, a drunken old roustabout; August, head of all animal acts; Marlena, his wife, who performs the Liberty Horses act; Uncle Al, the show runner; and Walter, a dwarf who shares a compartment with Jacob. Uncle Al hires him on a veterinarian, because all the big circus acts have one on hand and Jacob went to an Ivy League school, which massages Uncle Al’s ego.
Jacob’s story harkens back to the glory days of travelling circuses, of Ringling Brothers (who’s actually a competing circus in the story) and P.T. Barnum. At the heart of the book is a love story, as Jacob grows closer to Marlena when one of her Liberty Horses is injured. However, as they spend time together and arouse August’s suspicions, Jacob learns exactly how vicious August is beneath the charming exterior.
The story comes full circle at the end as old man Jacob escapes the nursing home and makes his way to the circus without a chaperone.
Easy Trouble 