An idiot for a president; unelected leaders dehumanizing millions of people; new technologies encroaching every aspect of our lives; the pervasive use of semicolons. Though these statements aptly describe a routine scroll through social media today, they are some of the issues Kurt Vonnegut explores in his essay collection, A Man Without a Country. The last book published in his lifetime, A Man Without a Country turns twenty this year and remains an important critique of American failures, as well as a defense of the arts as antidote to apathy and dejection.
More than just the swan song of a great American writer, A Man Without a Country endures because of Vonnegut’s commitment to the American project—a project which is in more danger today than ever before. Anger, wit, sarcasm, and hope permeate this collection of twelve essays, a requiem, and a seemingly unimportant author’s note. Vonnegut demonstrates his breadth in the topics he addresses—the necessity of humor, the willful destruction of our planet, socialism, and the Sermon on the Mount—and depth in the incisive comments he makes. While discussing Karl Marx’s (in)famous remark about religion being the opium of the masses, he not only reinterprets this statement by discussing the use of opium as medicine but also reminds us what allegedly God-loving Americans were doing around the same time: “When Marx wrote those words, by the way, we hadn’t even freed our slaves yet. Who do you imagine was more pleasing in the eyes of a merciful God back then, Karl Marx or the United States of America?” Vonnegut is irreverent, idyllic, and indignant. With the same pen that he jokes about suing the makers of Pall Mall cigarettes for not killing him and waxes lyrical about the beauty of waiting in line, he berates “our unelected leaders [who] have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings.” Sound familiar? And, yet, the most important word in the aforementioned quote is not “unelected” but “our.”
Across the many topics explored in A Man Without a Country, Vonnegut refuses to exclude himself—or his readers—from responsibility. It is not the government, the media, the corporations but rather our government, our media, our corporations which have become corrupt, which suggests Vonnegut’s feelings of implication in the failure of America—while at the same time providing the possibility of redemption or reconciliation. When speaking on our “catastrophically idiotic war” in Vietnam, Vonnegut explains the unlikely silver lining that came out of the public’s disappointment with their government:
But I think the Vietnam War freed me and other writers because it made our leadership and our motives seem so scruffy and essentially stupid. We could finally talk about something bad that we did to the worst people imaginable: the Nazis. And what I saw, what I had to report, made war look so ugly. You know, the truth can be powerful stuff. You’re not expecting it.
Here, Vonnegut alludes to the Dresden bombing in 1945, in which Allied forces killed an estimated 25,000 people, many of which were civilians. The Dresden bombing haunted Vonnegut for the rest of his life—his firsthand experience of the bombing as a prisoner of war served as the basis for his novel Slaughterhouse-Five and a myriad of essays including “Wailing Shall be in All Streets.” Throughout his work, Vonnegut wrestles with the morality of violence and hatred, providing a critical lesson for us today as we navigate our troublesome past, contentious present, and uncertain future. As Americans, we bear the responsibility of our government, whether we like it or not: “In case you haven’t noticed, we are now as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis once were. And with good reason.” But it is in this sense of responsibility that we can muster up the courage to fight apathy and dejection—to advocate for truth, to speak the unspeakable. In that way, we are like Vonnegut’s saints: everyday people behaving “decently in a strikingly indecent society.”
None of this is to say, of course, that Kurt Vonnegut is the perfect representation of contemporary morality and cultural sensitivity. There are several instances in this collection where he sounds like an old white guy from Indiana because, after all, that is what he was—but I don’t think he would want it any other way. While berating new technologies and the illusion of progress, he admits that one of his favorite novels, Huckleberry Finn, was the first manuscript drafted on a groundbreaking piece of tech: the typewriter. Vonnegut undermines his own arguments over and over again because he is trying to prove an important point: “rules can only take you so far.” Rather than prescribing a specific worldview or merely giving in to the despair that comes with having troglodytes in the White House, Vonnegut encourages us to examine ourselves—to engage critically with our biases and strive to keep our compasses pointing north in spite of the vitriol, ridicule, and hate that envelope our current administration.
But perhaps the most important contribution Vonnegut makes in A Man Without a Country is his advocacy for the arts. “The arts are not a way to make a living,” writes Vonnegut. “They are a very human way of making life more bearable.” In some ways, Vonnegut’s perspective on art has fallen out of favor; today, many artists prefer Toni Cade Bombara’s exhortation to “make the revolution irresistible.” And yet, Vonnegut’s perspective on art as remedy rather than catalyst provides us with a valuable opportunity to reflect on our present moment and reimagine our future. At the conclusion of this collection, Vonnegut recalls a conversation with Saul Steinberg, a graphic artist most notable for his work for The New Yorker. When asked whether he is a “gifted” artist, Steinberg responds: “No, but what you respond to in any work of art is the artist’s struggle against his or her limitations.” This remark concludes a series of essays which, at their heart, are about the artist’s struggle at the end of the world. What a joy it is to know that Kurt Vonnegut’s struggles continue to make our lives bearable as time drags on.
NONFICTION
A Man Without a Country
By Kurt Vonnegut
Random House Trade Paperbacks
Published in 2006
