Vonnegut's Beatitudes

Vonnegut's Beatitudes Jerome Klinkowitz A Man without a Country Kurt Vonnegut Seven Stories Press http://www.sevenstories.com 145 pages; cloth, $23.95 Early in A Man without a Country Kurt Vonnegut recalls the method he used to get attention from his family when he was the youngest child at the dinner table. "[A] joke," he learned, "was a way to break into an adult conversation." Years later, he'd use the same trick to get himself into the adult conversation that takes place between a novel and its readers, a matter of posing apparently serious questions and then providing the reliefofnot expecting a serious answer. With readers relaxed and refreshed, he could then make the point he wanted to, more often than not concerning weighty moral issues that otherwise would have turned his audience off. It's a technique in public speaking, of which he's also a master. And for essays, such as the twelve collected here, the approach works best of all. But not simplejokes or comic pratfalls. Henny Youngman or Rodney Dangerfield cracking one-liners on the stage, an opening monologue from Letterman or Leno, even the subtle situational hilarity of Larry David—all of this is funny, but not in the manner Vonnegut uses humor here. There's an edge to his mockery, as when he counsels: "We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away." Or, at the end of a serious piece on the eventual yet inevitable depletion of fossil fuels, when he sighs: "So there goes the Junior Prom, but that's not the half of it." What he's infused here is a sense of vernacular power that at once deflates his opposition and creates sympathy for his own position. That perspective, like most vernacular views, is self-deprecating, as when he laughs that a War on Drugs is better than no drugs at all (borrowing the sentiment from Indiana humorist Kin Hubbard on the reality of Prohibition). Taking President George W. Bush's sanctimonious account of recovering from alcoholism and rephrasing it in the vernacular has the same effect. "[B]y his own admission," Vonnegut notes, the man "was smashed, ortiddley-poo, or four sheets to the wind a good deal oftime from when he was sixteen until he was forty. When he was forty-one, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock offthe sauce, stop gargling nose paint." Is the author convinced? Well, "[o]ther drunks have seen pink elephants." Littlejokes like this, phrased in the way people really talk when they're not self-conscious about their pronouncements, move Kurt Vonnegut's commentaries along. But what keeps them from being merely Marc Penka Poetry Award The Marc Penka Poetry Award, with a first prize of $500, aims to promote poets whose work exemplifies the same uncompromising spirit that characterizes the poetry of Marc Penka, a radically original American poet who died in October 2000 at age 44. The First Prize will be granted to an author based on a body of representative work. The competition is open to poets of any age writing in English. In addition to the $500 cash award, the winning works will be displayed for one year at the Award's official website, www.marcpenka.com. Entries must be submitted online. For eligibility and submission guidelines, please consult www. marcpenka.com. The entry deadline is July 30, 2006. Winners will be announced on September 10, 2006. Previous winners: 2004: Annalynn Hammond; 2005: Erin Elizabeth MARC PENKA POETRY AWARD FOUNDATION PO BOX 16102 I PHOENIX I ARIZONA I 85014 funny throwaway lines is the larger purpose being served. Humor meliorates fear, the author explains, helping reader and writer alike proceed beyond limits that caution or timidity might impose. Used artfully, these jokes open the way for people to feel a little better about life, balancing the fact that most great works of literature "are all about what a bummer it is to be a human being." Humor deflates opposition and creates sympathy. A Man without a Country finds Vonnegut deeply bummed out. As a civic idealist schooled in...