Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut's Mother Night is written as a final testament of Howard J Campbell Jr as he awaits trial and probably execution in an Israeli prison for crimes committed during WWII. Living in Berlin in 1938, writer and playwright of romantic fantasies, Campbell achieves notoriety as one of the vilest propagandists for the Nazis, but his radio broadcasts actually send messages to US intelligence.  he agent who recruited him becomes known as The Blue Fairy Godmother, since he hasn't appeared to testify to the work Campbell has done for the government.

Campbell's account of his activities after the war, the loss of his German wife Helga, his escape back to the US is typically twisted, satirical and humorous in classic Vonnegut style. Hounded by fanatical racist admirers and  target for the hatred of all true Americans, Campbell becomes friends with a painter in a neighbouring apartment who is actually a Russian spy, and is re-united after a fashion with Helga (actually her younger sister Resi - also a Russian agent!), recreating his "Nation of Two (Das Reich der Zwei), which is the only nation he holds any real allegiance or feeling for. 

"I can't think in terms of boundaries.  Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies.  I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul.  Virtues and vices, pleaasures and pains cross boundaries at will".

The writing is sharp and snappy, delivered in short chapters. No-one escapes the political satire - the Nazis, Zionists, American patriotism, Communism - but mostly its Vonnegut's anti-war sentiments that hit home strongest, the author reserving his distain for those who those who succeed during wartime as "specialists in slavery, destruction and death", noting that "People should be changed by world wars, else what are world wars for?" and observing that there has never been "a society that has been without strong and young people eager to experiment with homicide, provided no awful penalties are attached to it".

Principally, of course, you can see Vonnegut in Campbell, an outrageous provocateur who claims detachment as merely a commentator on the insanity of the world. As his German friend Heinz (who later turns out to be an Israeli agent) says, "All people are insane.  They will do anything at any time, and God help anyone who looks for reasons". For his part, Campbell offers that "I had hoped as a broadcaster, to be merely ludicrous, but this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought..."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Protos Experiment - Simon Clark

Image
Despite having limited experience in the field of cinema, Simon Clark's idea for The Protos Experiment seemed a natural for it to be developed as a film script. That ambition has come to fruition with the movie directed by Laurence and Brian Avenet-Bradley premiering at Cannes this year. Although not yet on general release, Clark's own novelisation appears to retain much of that cinematic quality, but also some novelistic originality and ambition. Ironically, for something that has such a strong visual presence, the novel opens with a scene in a room of near complete darkness where, after convincing himself that he is not dead and opening his eyes, a man discovers that he is in some kind of chamber divided by plastic sheets (always a worrying sign) where a number of other people who can't see each other are chained up. John discovers that he himself is chained to a deranged monster of a man who is going to kill them all. It's a bold and compelling way to start the nove...
Read more

Blood Crazy: Aten Present (Blood Crazy: Book 3) - Simon Clark

Image
In the spirit of Nick Aten, the protagonist from the first Blood Crazy book who is back again for the third (and final?) installment of the series and isn't afraid to make a pun, mix a metaphor or state the obvious, Blood Crazy: Aten Present starts out in an explosive fashion as Nick meets up with Jack Ranzic from Book Two: Aten in Absentia . It's an appropriate way for the leads of the first two books to meet up and Nick's forthrightness and down-to-earth qualities are appreciated, but otherwise neither of the two young survivors of the crisis that has overwhelmed the planet are in a better place by the time they unite in the third book in the series. Well, the Creosotes weren't going to disappear overnight, were they? Creosotes is the name that the groups of young survivors have given to adults over age of 19 who three years ago all turned overnight into shambling bloodthirsty monsters. It's a constant struggle for survival and despite some theories about the na...
Read more

Blood Crazy: Aten in Absentia (Blood Crazy: Book 2) - Simon Clark

Image
At the end of Blood Crazy we were left with the grim acceptance that the situation the world had been plunged into was irresolvable. With the adult population having been altered in a way that would drive them to tear their own children apart, everything had changed and the world wasn't ever going back to the way it was. Without giving away any spoilers, while some interesting theories were proposed to explain what had happened to trigger this apocalyptic situation overnight, it still meant that it would be up to small communities of survivors to rebuild society and find a way of defending themselves from the ever present threat of the “Creosotes”. That doesn't mean that there aren't more stories to tell and new revelations to be told, but it has taken almost 30 years for Simon Clark to get a sequel in print. It's a long time for some fans of the original novel (recently republished by Darkness Visible), but by the end of Blood Crazy: Aten in Absentia , I'm sure fa...
Read more