"We are here on earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you different. Kurt Vonnegut is undoubtedly one of the greatest American writers of the post-WWII era. His unofficial memoir Man without a Country is full of witty humor, personal reflections, and social commentary. However, Vonnegut represents the humanist intellectual who converted to postmodern apathy. From his reflections, we can learn a thing or two about how to avoid pulling over onto the median, or even worse: turning into oncoming traffic.
Vonnegut's humble American success story is admiring. As a third-generation German, and student of Chemistry at Cornell University, he developed a unique view of the world. His father, a product of the lean and mean times of the Great Depression, insisted that Kurt keep out of the arts to avoid becoming jobless. After all Marc Antony, Confucius, maybe Dennis Rodman once proclaimed "choose a job that you love, and you'll never work a day in your life." After all, the free market employs everyone - as long as you provide marginal utility for your owner. Anyway, he expressed a sort of nostalgic admiration for such men as Albert Einstein and Eugene Debbs. Their value of working class life, socialism, and intellectual achievements was the last vestige of the good life.
After the turbulent times of the sixties, followed by the economic recession of the seventies and right wing bacllash of the eighties, Vonnegut abandoned his aspirations for a better society. He proclaimed that "power corrupts all" and fossil fuels were the cause for the end of humanity - particularly automobiles. This is where I saw the flaws in Vonnegut's depreciating outlook. His beliefs rest on a profound sense of mistrust and cynicism that led him to blame individuals and human nature, rather than systems of oppression It is likely that Kurt was even a 9/11 truther. As a self-proclaimed follower of Debbs (and even Marx), it appears that he suffered from dementia when he began proscribing the ills of society to the depravity of man. More than anyone, Vonnegut sounded like Thomas Hobbes. Who knows, maybe Vonnegut became a monarchist later in his life. As Vonnegut grew older, he certainly lost his ability to separate overly pessimistic thoughts from a more balanced and rational vision of he world. Not only a man without a country, Vonnegut ended his life as a man without any hope for the future. He took his hope for humanity with him to the grave.
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