Kurt Vonnegut's 55 year-old commentary on the American Poor

In Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (published in 1969), there is a character called Howard W. Campbell Jr. He is an American traitor turned propagandist for the Nazis, operating like Lord Haw-Haw, during the second world war. 

There is a section of the book purportedly taken from an essay by Campbell about how American prisoners-of-war are so much worse in terms of behaviour than prisoners from other countries. Campbell wants to explain to his fellow Nazis why his countrymen are like this. 

It's an interesting take and I wondered how much of it might have been the author's own insights into the way American society functions. It definitely resonates with some of the political selfishness spilling out of the poorer parts of the USA in the past decade or so.

This is how Campbell explains things:

"America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but it's people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain't no disgrace to be poor, but It might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters."

(Unlike Campbell, Kin Hubbard was a real person; an American cartoonist and humorist who died in 1930.)

And then a bit further on, some more of Campbell's words:

"Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue... Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those with no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times."

"Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love each other because they do not love themselves."

There are two things that have occurred to me reading this. The first is this seems to fit with the political rage of the MAGA movement that has been so prevalent in the past decade or so. Particularly the idolising (and idolatry) of Donald Trump, who has no redeeming features except that most American of virtues - the appearance of being rich. And why they rage against "socialist medicine" being "un-American", preferring to risk bankruptcy if they get cancer than seeing that affordable or free healthcare for all benefits everybody. 

The persistency with which the American poor vote against their own interests has been referred to as a mindset that they aren't poor, they are just temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and one day the money truck will stop at their house and they don't want to be made to share. 

It also explains why American religious identity has had such a garish obsession with wealth. To the best of my knowledge, America has never spawned its own ascetic movement. The Amish, the Shakers and the Quakers were all imports from the Old World. America's gifts to Christianity are the Prosperity Gospel wealth-and-health movement with private jet evangelists, and Mormonism which literally promises it's most faithful adherents that they will each rule their own planet one day.

The second thing that occurred to me is that Vonnegut deliberately puts these un-American heresies into the mouth of a traitor because there would be no way to have a true American think these terrible things. And yet, these observations are so acute, it doesn't seem that he is just giving his character stuff to say. There is a ring of truth to these condemnatory words, which is maybe why he needs to distance himself from them. 

And 55 years after the book was published, the words still ring true. 

Books of the Month - three pieces of speculative fiction

I have been bitten by the reading bug lately and this is the second book of the month post in a row featuring three novels. This time all three are speculative fiction (as discussed previously). 

I'm going to review them in the order I read them. The first book was another pick up from TK Maxx. 

The Power - Naomi Alderman

This book was published in 2016 and imagines what would happen if women suddenly developed the power to conduct electricity (the Power), establishing them as the dominant gender. It's framed through being written as a fictionalised history written by a man in a future civilisation, 5,000 years hence. Throughout the books are drawings of archaeological discoveries dating from the time period being written about.

The framing includes advice from an editor that it seems far-fetched that men were ever the dominant sex. There's also a rather patronising suggestion that the fictional author considers publishing it under a female name to avoid it being categorised as women's literature. I wondered if the real author had been on the receiving end of similar sentiments.

The book follows several female characters who either develop the Power of have it awakened in them. All the characters are in some way oppressed, abused or overshadowed by men, and the Power enables them to break free. There is also one male character who is chronicling the impact the Power has on various societies and it's really through his eyes that the shift becomes noticeable, as he finds it increasingly unsafe to be in the presence of women.

I was interested in the development of a women-centred and led religion, evolving rapidly out of Catholicism, which echoed the growth of populist movements in organised religions that sometimes outflank the established ecclesiastical structures. It felt believable to me, because new religious movements can take root and spread very quickly - and would be much more robust if they were linked to a sudden societal change like the emergence of the Power. There is, however, a natural explanation for the sudden emergence of the Power, although details are kept to a minimum. 

There's a bit of gore and violent vignettes, including some sexual violence. There are some loose threads that are left frayed at the end of the book. But overall, there are plenty of points that made me think about gender politics, and the reversal of power dynamics was sometimes amusing, sometimes frightening. The unwillingness of the female editor in 5,000 years time to accept the idea that women aren't just naturally aggressive, for example, made me smile. 

Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut

I bought this book in a deal at HMV because I had never read it and it appears on most lists of classic books one should read. I knew it was about the wartime firebombing of Dresden. I assumed it would be a straight up war book. I was wrong. 

This is the second Kurt Vonnegut book that I've read. A few years back I read Breakfast of Champions. I didn't like that much, and, truthfully, although I can see why this is considered a classic novel, I didn't like this book much either. I think it's just that I don't get on with Vonnegut's style. 

Having said that there are moments and throwaway lines in this book that are almost instantly memorable. There is a very early comment that foreshadows the destruction to come when the narrator says that Dresden post-war must have "tons of human bone meal in the ground". 

There is another cynically comical comment about a woman who "Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops." With lines like that, I feel I really should have liked the book more!

The main character in the book is called Billy Pilgrim. The plot device is that he has been abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. He now experiences all of time all at once, which is a side-effect of travelling on a flying saucer. So his recollections of the war, being captured, being incarcerated in a converted abattoir (Slaughterhouse Five) that ironically protects him from the firebombing, and being involved in the grim clean up operation in Dresden afterwards, are mixed up with his life after the war, his family, his capture by aliens and subsequent captivity in a zoo amusing Tralfamadorians, and so on. 

I think it was that fantastical aspect that I found difficult. On reflection, it did distract from the absolute horror of what happened in Dresden. The vivid description of pulling bodies from the rubble afterwards ('opening up a corpse mine') and there being too many dead people to deal with other than incinerate them perhaps needed leavening with the alien abduction and Billy's happier post-war experiences. 

It might all be meant to indicate that Billy has gone mad as a result of his wartime experiences. But it's played with a straight bat - although, I guess, madness seems real to the person experiencing it. It may just be that it's Vonnegut's way of processing what he witnessed in Dresden and he needs to make this fantastical to deal with the fact that the worst bits of the story actually happened. 

There was some interesting commentary on the American poor, which I will save for another post. And the idea of experiencing time in a concurrent way rather than as causal consecutive moments felt very up to date - covering similar ground to some of the chapters in Existential Physics, which was my Book of the Month back in June. Not bad, considering Vonnegut published this in 1969.

The Boys from Brazil - Ira Levin

The other book in the HMV deal, and the second book by Ira Levin I have read this year. I reviewed The Stepford Wives last month. As with Stepford, I knew the basic premise of this story - Nazis in South America have perfected cloning and are seeking to restore the Third Reich.

What I didn't expect - the same as with Stepford - was to get quite so gripped by the story. The slow reveal of what is going on happens for both the main character, ageing Nazi-hunter Yakov Liebermann, and for the reader. The scene where Liebermann encounters his second teenaged clone was incredibly well done, and I really got a sense of the world slipping sideways for the character as he tried to process what he was seeing. 

Because the book was published in 1976, the science behind cloning has to be explained - even the word 'clone' has to be explained. I suspect this was cutting edge knowledge at the time of publication - but I was intrigued by how even then there was speculation that some governments had already been cloning larger mammals and maybe even humans. I remember the fuss in the late 1990s about Dolly the Sheep who was announced as the first sheep to be successfully cloned. So it was interesting to read characters speculating about it twenty years earlier. 

It's a short book that concludes with a discussion about the morality of killing children that might grow up to be evil. Liebermann and his anti-Nazi allies have to hope that the boys from Brazil defy their genetic heritage. The ultimate ending of the experiment is left ambiguous as to what might happen, which I quite liked for the ending. 

2015 in review: Other fiction books I read

I've already blogged about the six Douglas Coupland novels I read this year. Here is a list of the other fiction that I read (or finished reading) during 2015.

A Little Love Song - Michelle Magorian
This was my 'Book Group Secret Santa' book. Set in World War II, two teenage girls move to the country for safety and suddenly are able to live free of adult influence. It was quite sympathetically drawn although had a bit of a too happy ending, but it dealt with some mature themes despite being ostensibly a book for older kids. One bit, involving a person hiding orange peel about their person, made me laugh out loud.

Bonjour Tristesse - Francois Sagan
This is a Penguin Classic and came in a set of other classics. In its favour, it's quite short, so you can get the feeling of 'Yeah, I read a classic; without killing yourself to finish an epic tome. It's about a cynical teenage girl who uses sex and emotional manipulation to get what she wants from life. It was apparently considered scandalous when it was published, but I got a bit bored with it. The main character is unlikeable, which I know is kind of the point, but I found it was difficult to engage with her or her reasons for doing what she did.

Tuf Voyaging - George RR Martin
This was a reasonably interesting science fiction story split into four separate stories. The first one was excellent, probably some of the most enjoyable science fiction I've read for a while as space-wanderer Havilland Tuf finds and lays claim to a starship of almost unspeakable power - a planetary and genetic engineering vessel that can be used for good or evil. What lets it down after the first story is a drift towards slightly racist stereotyping as Tuf helps a culture that is overpopulating its planet. That the people of the planet are known with an 'ese' suffix makes you think of China or Japan and the descriptions of the people seem to follow this up. So that left me feeling uncomfortable. Then there's Tuf himself who is all-wise and able to second-guess anyone and unbelievably lucky and always right about everything. Which was plain annoying.

The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of a Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson
This started well and then got stupid very, very fast. I liked the concept more than the story. The initial chapters of the eponymous old man's disappearance is funny and engaging. But then the flashbacks of his life begin and it all gets a bit ridiculous.

Moominland Midwinter, Tales from Moominvalley, and Comet in Moominland - Tove Jansson
Here's a three for one offer. I'd read Moominland Midwinter as a kid and really enjoyed it on a re-read. Moomintroll wakes up mid-hibernation and can't go back to sleep so leaves the family home and explores the alien wintery Moominvalley. It's quite fun and has some great characters, like the traghic and scary Groke who just wants to be warm, but extinguishes all warm things it sits on. It's the best Moomin book I've read and I've read most of them.

ales from Moominvalley was a bit hit and miss. There was one short story about the Moomin family taking in an orphan girl who had been rendered invisible through living with relatives who constantly belittled her and put her down. I quite liked that. Moominmama is the lead Moomin character, which doesn't happen often. There's also a story of when Moominpappa goes sailing with the enigmatic Hattifatteners, who terrified me as a child, but now seem a lot more comic.

Comet in Moominland was one of the first Moomin books and is pretty weak. For example, Moomintroll and Sniff travel to the observatory in the Lonely Mountains and back to Moominvalley but cross completely different topography each way - crossing a dried up sea bed on the way back of an ocean that wasn't mentioned on the way there.

One thing all the Moomin books have in common is that I can't shake the feeling I am reading an in-joke. The characters are obviously based on people Tove Jansson knew and no doubt her family and close friends wet themselves laughing when they read the stories, but for me that was frustrating because I felt excluded somehow.

A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness
This isn't really about a monster. It's about cancer and loss and the darkness of grief. It's ostensibly for kids. Someone who knows more than me about bereavement said it was one of the best things they had ever read about it.

The Red Pony - John Steinbeck
A depressing set of stories about not making promises you can't keep, and not setting your heart on something that is out of your control to have - like promising a boy a red pony of his own when there is every danger the pony will get sick and die, which of course, it does. Set on a ranch on California in the early part of the twentieth century, the description of living there feels authentic. I like Steinbeck's writing style, but this is a short book and as such sometimes feels a bit superficial even though it is dealing with deep themes. This particular edition came with an essay about the book as a preface, which I didn't read until afterwards. This proved a wise move as it was chock full of spoilers from the get go.

So, that was my year in fiction.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

I'm a late adopter when it comes to books and this one has been around a while. This was Cathy's 'Secret Santa' book at book group. She read it in one sitting and then suggested I read it. I found out later that was because she wanted to discuss the ending with me.

The story is about a nine year-old boy called Bruno who moves from Berlin in 1943 when his father is promoted to Commandant at a concentration camp. He hates it there as he is lonely and there is nothing to do. But then he befriends a boy called Shmuel who is living on the other side of the fence, inside the camp.

The tension builds towards the end and I had a vague sense that something bad was going to happen - as presumably Bruno will realise what is going on and what is going to happen to Shmuel. However, the ending wasn't quite what I expected and it stayed with me vividly for a couple of days.

What is clever about the book is that for almost all of it you know more than the main protagonist. There are several moments where Bruno just doesn't get what is going on - for example when he tries to explain to Shmuel that he should have caught a less crowded train to the camp, because the one Bruno travelled on had plenty of room.

Another interesting element is that, with the exception of one young soldier, the Commandant and his family are portrayed as ordinary people doing what they think is right and good and proper. Bruno's mother drinks a bit too much; his father is authoritarian; his sister, Gretel, just accepts the existence of the camp as how things are - but none of them are bad people, even as they participate to a greater or lesser extent in the Holocaust.

It's to John Boyne's credit that as an author he didn't wimp out at the end. Having made you care about the characters, the power of the story would have been considerably less if he had given it a happy ending.

I gave this book five stars, so it will join the list. It's not one I will read again in a hurry, mainly because it's so memorable. In many ways, reading it reminded me of when I saw Schindler's List - the shock and horror of what happened in the Holocaust confronted me anew. Again, John Boyne, did well to take something so well-known and yet make me as a reader feel horrified all over again.