KV just never runs out of ways to be creative and innovative. To that end, in fairness, I haven't tried any of the recipes sprinkled throughout one of Kurt's darkest novels; I'm just not sure it's decent, but some of them do look appetizing. What to do, what to do?
It's a bit more of a challenge to tease out the ultimate message of this novel, aside from "all is futility," as just about everyone who features dies at some point. The story revolves around asexual Rudy Waltz, nicknamed Deadeye Dick for accidentally killing a pregnant woman when firing a rifle out of a window, a misdeed for which his father accepts responsibility and is sentenced to prison. The story is a creative yet odd mix of elements that seemingly don't fit together, except that they do: Rudy writes from the perspective of a middle-aged expat running a hotel with his brother in Haiti. The setting, incidentally, is also that of another of his famous novels, Breakfast of Champions, as is the Mildred Barry Memorial Center for the Arts. A fair number of characters from his other novels, including Eugene Debs (Player Piano) and Rabo Karabekian (Bluebeard) also make an appearance (haven't seen any mention of the great science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, though).
Futility is definitely at the center of this novel as well, with his multiple references to "wisps of undifferentiated nothingness," and lives being mere "peepholes" in the ultimate blackness of the universe. KV also explores guilt: the guilt of Rudy's father for allowing him access to the "gun room," where hundreds of valuable antique firearms were housed, resulting in the untimely death of a woman and her unborn child, and, ultimately, Rudy's family and way of life. Guilt of his brother Felix for letting the love of his life, Celia, the most beautiful woman in town, slip through his fingers, resulting in her untimely death and Felix's four failed marriages. And, conversely, he highlights the lack of guilt in the main character, who seemingly has little or none about the death he caused, or in the ultimate fate of his parents, whom he blames for just about everything.
This novel, more than some of the others I've read recently, is bursting at the seams with laugh-out-loud dark humor, or, rather, hilarity. See some of the special gems in the passages below. And dark, indeed: this one is downright Shakespearean. Not too many of the characters even make it to the epilogues of their lives: the parents, the most beautiful woman in town, the two Italian brothers, are among the many victims, which also include the entire population of a small Ohio town obliterated by a doomsday weapon which may or may not have been an act perpetrated by the US government. Lots of readers were apparently confused by this novel and its ultimate meaning, but maybe that's the point: there really isn't one, so just enjoy the ride, and make the most of things before the little peephole closes permanently.
-----------NOTABLE PASSAGES----------
To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.
I have caught life. I have come down with life. I was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness, and then a little peephole opened quite suddenly. Light and sound poured in. Voices began to describe me and my surroundings. Nothing they said could be appealed.
That is my principal objection to life, I think: It is too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.
The only remotely military honor Father would ever receive was a citation from the governor of Ohio for Father's leadership of scrap drives in Midland County during World War Two. There was no ceremony. The certificate simply arrived in the mail one day. Father was in prison over in Shepherdstown when it came. Mother and I brought it to him on visitor's day...It would have been kinder of us to burn it up and scatter its ashes over Sugar Creek. That certificate was the crowning irony, as far as Father was concerned. "At last I have joined the company of the immortals," he said. "There are only two more honors for me to covet now." One was to be a licensed dog. The other was to be a notary public. And Father made us hand over the certificate so that he could wipe his behind with it at the earliest opportunity, which he surely did. Instead of saying good-bye that day, he said this, a finger in the air: "Nature calls!"
Does it matter to anyone or anything that all those peepholes were closed so suddenly? Since all the property is undamaged, has the world lost anything it loved?
The late twentieth century will go down in history, I'm sure, as an era of pharmaceutical buffoonery.
There was no reason to take us seriously as individuals. Celia in her casket there... might have been a dead cell sloughed off by a pancreas as big as the Milky Way. How comical that I, a single cell, should take my life so seriously.
I wasn't to touch anything on this planet, man, woman, child, artifact, animal, vegetable or mineral - since it was very likely to be connected to a push-pull detonator and an explosive charge.
We are going to have to go back to Midland City soon... to collect whatever personal property we want, and to file our claims against our government. It now seems certain: The entire country is to become a refugee center, possibly fenced. A dark thought: Perhaps the neutron bomb explosion wasn't so accidental after all.
It's a bit more of a challenge to tease out the ultimate message of this novel, aside from "all is futility," as just about everyone who features dies at some point. The story revolves around asexual Rudy Waltz, nicknamed Deadeye Dick for accidentally killing a pregnant woman when firing a rifle out of a window, a misdeed for which his father accepts responsibility and is sentenced to prison. The story is a creative yet odd mix of elements that seemingly don't fit together, except that they do: Rudy writes from the perspective of a middle-aged expat running a hotel with his brother in Haiti. The setting, incidentally, is also that of another of his famous novels, Breakfast of Champions, as is the Mildred Barry Memorial Center for the Arts. A fair number of characters from his other novels, including Eugene Debs (Player Piano) and Rabo Karabekian (Bluebeard) also make an appearance (haven't seen any mention of the great science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, though).
Futility is definitely at the center of this novel as well, with his multiple references to "wisps of undifferentiated nothingness," and lives being mere "peepholes" in the ultimate blackness of the universe. KV also explores guilt: the guilt of Rudy's father for allowing him access to the "gun room," where hundreds of valuable antique firearms were housed, resulting in the untimely death of a woman and her unborn child, and, ultimately, Rudy's family and way of life. Guilt of his brother Felix for letting the love of his life, Celia, the most beautiful woman in town, slip through his fingers, resulting in her untimely death and Felix's four failed marriages. And, conversely, he highlights the lack of guilt in the main character, who seemingly has little or none about the death he caused, or in the ultimate fate of his parents, whom he blames for just about everything.
This novel, more than some of the others I've read recently, is bursting at the seams with laugh-out-loud dark humor, or, rather, hilarity. See some of the special gems in the passages below. And dark, indeed: this one is downright Shakespearean. Not too many of the characters even make it to the epilogues of their lives: the parents, the most beautiful woman in town, the two Italian brothers, are among the many victims, which also include the entire population of a small Ohio town obliterated by a doomsday weapon which may or may not have been an act perpetrated by the US government. Lots of readers were apparently confused by this novel and its ultimate meaning, but maybe that's the point: there really isn't one, so just enjoy the ride, and make the most of things before the little peephole closes permanently.
-----------NOTABLE PASSAGES----------
To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.
I have caught life. I have come down with life. I was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness, and then a little peephole opened quite suddenly. Light and sound poured in. Voices began to describe me and my surroundings. Nothing they said could be appealed.
That is my principal objection to life, I think: It is too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.
The only remotely military honor Father would ever receive was a citation from the governor of Ohio for Father's leadership of scrap drives in Midland County during World War Two. There was no ceremony. The certificate simply arrived in the mail one day. Father was in prison over in Shepherdstown when it came. Mother and I brought it to him on visitor's day...It would have been kinder of us to burn it up and scatter its ashes over Sugar Creek. That certificate was the crowning irony, as far as Father was concerned. "At last I have joined the company of the immortals," he said. "There are only two more honors for me to covet now." One was to be a licensed dog. The other was to be a notary public. And Father made us hand over the certificate so that he could wipe his behind with it at the earliest opportunity, which he surely did. Instead of saying good-bye that day, he said this, a finger in the air: "Nature calls!"
Does it matter to anyone or anything that all those peepholes were closed so suddenly? Since all the property is undamaged, has the world lost anything it loved?
The late twentieth century will go down in history, I'm sure, as an era of pharmaceutical buffoonery.
There was no reason to take us seriously as individuals. Celia in her casket there... might have been a dead cell sloughed off by a pancreas as big as the Milky Way. How comical that I, a single cell, should take my life so seriously.
I wasn't to touch anything on this planet, man, woman, child, artifact, animal, vegetable or mineral - since it was very likely to be connected to a push-pull detonator and an explosive charge.
We are going to have to go back to Midland City soon... to collect whatever personal property we want, and to file our claims against our government. It now seems certain: The entire country is to become a refugee center, possibly fenced. A dark thought: Perhaps the neutron bomb explosion wasn't so accidental after all.
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