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    A Man Without a Country
    A Man Without a Country
    A Man Without a Country
    Ebook152 pages1 hour

    A Man Without a Country

    By Kurt Vonnegut

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “For all those who have lived with Vonnegut in their imaginations . . . this is what he is like in person.”–USA Today

    In a volume that is penetrating, introspective, incisive, and laugh-out-loud funny, one of the great men of letters of this age–or any age–holds forth on life, art, sex, politics, and the state of America’s soul. From his coming of age in America, to his formative war experiences, to his life as an artist, this is Vonnegut doing what he does best: Being himself. Whimsically illustrated by the author, A Man Without a Country is intimate, tender, and brimming with the scope of Kurt Vonnegut’s passions.

    Praise for A Man Without a Country

    “[This] may be as close as Vonnegut ever comes to a memoir.”–Los Angeles Times

    “Like [that of] his literary ancestor Mark Twain, [Kurt Vonnegut’s] crankiness is good-humored and sharp-witted. . . . [Reading A Man Without a Country is] like sitting down on the couch for a long chat with an old friend.”–The New York Times Book Review

    “Filled with [Vonnegut’s] usual contradictory mix of joy and sorrow, hope and despair, humor and gravity.”–Chicago Tribune

    “Fans will linger on every word . . . as once again [Vonnegut] captures the complexity of the human condition with stunning calligraphic simplicity.”–The Australian

    “Thank God, Kurt Vonnegut has broken his promise that he will never write another book. In this wondrous assemblage of mini-memoirs, we discover his family’s legacy and his obstinate, unfashionable humanism.”–Studs Terkel
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateJun 20, 2017
    ISBN9780525510130
    Author

    Kurt Vonnegut

    Kurt Vonnegut was a master of contemporary American Literature. His black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America's attention in The Siren's of Titan in 1959 and established him as ""a true artist"" with Cat's Cradle in 1963. He was, as Graham Greene has declared, ""one of the best living American writers.""

    Read more from Kurt Vonnegut

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    Reviews for A Man Without a Country

    4/5

    1,268 ratings37 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Vonnegut’s last book is a series of memoirs and musings loosely thematically related. He is angry, though still witty and funny, at the state of the US Government, the environment, and people’s shitty attitudes in general. He definitely doesn’t care what anyone thinks or who gets offended which is so refreshing! I might be good he didn’t live to see the current state of affairs if he thought Bush was bad. I thoroughly enjoyed this very quick read.
    • 4/5
      A look at the country (but not his) of 2005. A cynical, humorous, personal look at the hell that politics and our government were during the mid-2000s. KV would surely be bitter at what is going on now.
    • 2/5
      This was the last book that Vonnegut published before his death, and he grumbles his way through it, sure that the world is dying along with him. While he certainly deserves to be able to write something as self-indulgent as this, I made the mistake of picking this up before having read any of his canonical stuff.
    • 5/5
      Kurt Vonnegut is really special. He wrote this little slice of his life in 2005, two years before that life would end.

      "I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex." Agreed... I like either books written in the past, or modern books; people who write new books but place them in the near-distant past I think are just trying to avoid the way we behave with technology.

      Speaking of technology, the best part was where he describes how he used to send things out to be typed, by the mail, using a new envelope he would buy for the purpose at the nearby stationary store; all the people he would interact with. He had a crush on the post office counter girl, and purports that she would do things like frizz her hair or wear black lipstick just to entertain her clientele. I like that little appreciation for how we are all part of a big promenade, here to entertain our neighbors and be entertained in our turn.

      After his lovely vignette about the post office, he concludes, "Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something."

      Finally a quote from his son: "Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."
    • 3/5
      I believe everyone should read Kurt Vonnegut. I also believe that if you read him at only one time in your life, it should be when you are young. Most of the Vonnegut I have read was before or well before I was 30. His various novels, especially my favorite SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, detail the worst of what the world might offer but also the best of how we can handle it. However fantastic the goings on, the strength of our humanity will be what gets us through. This is largely why he was so popular among college kids in the sixties who were tossing off the time worn structures of religion and politics and embracing humanism. I took his books as a tuning fork setting the tone for how I perceived the world: hard but not without hope. What fascinated me about this collection of Vonnegut materials (mostly worth reading) is that it seemingly unconsciously reveals what happens to old humanists. When you consider humanity responsible for all that is wicked and wonderful in the world, you have no safety net other than your own contentment with what you have done. And part of getting older and older and old is evaluating the paths you have chosen that determine that contentment. This book indicates this isn't always a restful process. Vonnegut's humor and humanity still twinkle but also at times a gloom is cast that can be quite unsettling--as if hope had escaped Vonnegut. In my 50's now, I pride myself on still hearing that tone I picked up from Vonnegut years ago. Sometimes I have to strain to hear it or seek a quiet place from which to listen--but it is still there. That is not always evident for Vonnegut himself in this book. Maybe this explains the title better than anything else. In the end we are our own countries, our own world, our own responsibility. As we live, we learn but knowledge should not be the enemy of hope--but it certainly has a habit of wounding it.

      While pondering this review I kept thinking of the Coen Brothers and in particular their movie THE BIG LEBOWSKI. I would like to think that among the last thoughts of Kurt Vonnegut was something as reassuring as "The Dude Abides". If you don't know what that means watch the movie. If then you still don't know what it means, watch it again. So it goes.
    • 5/5
      A Man Without a Country, a collection of essays, was Vonnegut’s last book. In keeping with my practice of acquiring books chiefly from garage sales and used-book stores, I discovered it ten years after it had become a bestseller. As a longtime Vonnegut fan, I expected to love it, and I did, I do.

      I now realize how naive I have been in being disappointed how he conducted his marriages and how he left child-rearing to his wives. His insight into life and his way of expressing its joys and disappointments issue from the flawed man that he was, and my misguided judgments about his life issue from the flawed woman that I am. I take him as he is with gratitude at his ability to say things so simply and perfectly, to ask and answer all the questions human beings have. And in this collection, he even showed me that he had spent some time ruminating about his lost marriage and also about something that I’ve spent a lot of time considering: why inter-gender relationships are so damned challenging. A case in point:

      "Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want: a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.
      What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them .
      Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to."

      He also talks about the admirable qualities of socialism and what it was like to be a prisoner of war in Dresden, as British incendiary bombs destroyed the city.
      And so it goes.
    • 3/5
      I like Vonnegut's books. I've read every one of them, and will probably reread some. I liked his cameo in Back to School.

      This one has gotten lots of 4-5 star reviews here on Goodreads. How many great reviews would it have gotten if it weren't written by Kurt Vonnegut? Probably none.

      It's a nice rambling book, with perhaps some pearls of wisdom, but right now I have too many other books that I want to read. Maybe another day.

      Sorry, Mr. V.
    • 5/5
      More relevant today than when it was first written. God Bless You, Kurt Vonnegut, the world needs you back!
    • 3/5
      A non-fiction book by Vonnegut. It was extremely well written like all his books. But Vonnegut is a pessimist who is very liberal and he talks about how people are ruining the earth and each other.
    • 3/5
      Overall, this was a pretty depressing read. Vonnegut brings up a lot of things wrong in the world today. It is very pessimistic and snarky. However, he also discusses humanism in a way I found very enlightening. There were some snippets of humor in here, but I wouldn't classify this a humor book.

      I like Vonnegut and typically agree with this ideas, but I just found this to be very heavy. I may revisit at some time in the future when I am in a different frame of mind. I would not recommend this as someone's introduction to Vonnegut.
    • 5/5
      I picked this up on a whim at the library and I couldn't have chosen a better read.

      Vonnegut was a man that not only wrote about the bombing of Dresden in Slaughterhouse Five, but actually lived through it himself. Using that experience as a lens, he expresses his views on our current conflicts in the middle east. As you can imagine, he takes a hard line stance against warmongering and the glorification of killing. It's not a new perspective, but one that carries some weight while being incredibly interesting to read.

      Along side said essays are his interesting musing on life and the human condition. I often find myself searching for meaning in life and welcome any new perspectives, regardless of how pessimistic they may be.

      A very enjoyable read that I will be recommending to those that haven't already read it.
    • 2/5
      The work of an author with more than 1 book under his belt. For Vonnegut aficionados.
    • 4/5
      I actually just rescued this off a weeding cart to read at lunch, but it reads almost like a cynic's version of "Oh the Places You'll Go!" Vonnegut talks a lot about life and politics and in fewer than 150 broad-margined pages manages to amuse and offend pretty much anyone reading the book. But in addition to the lighthearted jokes and the bombing of Dresden (and even a joke or two ABOUT the bombing of Dresden), there are a lot of beautiful things and good advice built into the pages.

      It's not necessary to have read any of Vonnegut's fiction to appreciate the book, but it does add a little more depth to the book, and it gives roots to some of his more esoteric ramblings.

      The book would make a good graduation gift for a high-school student or a cynic in training. But then again, pretty much anyone can appreciate the page that says "We are here on earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."
    • 4/5
      The only criticism is that this work is much too short. Mark Twain lives
    • 5/5
      "A Man Without a Country" is not a novel, of course, but an update on Vonnegut thought, particularly about social issues and President G.W. Bush and others of his calling, like Jas. K. Polk and Abe Lincoln. Nor was it intended as a last will and testament; Kurt Vonnegut was only 82 with plenty of potential to finish "If God Were Alive Today" and anything else that came to this Nobel Laureate's agile and unique mind. He was ready for another Nobel. What? They don't award more than one to the same genius? Yet another first for this great, great man. If you've read "Mother Night," or "Cat's Cradle," or "Slaughterhouse Five," I know you'll agree that these tales make you laugh, weep, and even think. What more can you ask of Great Literature? OK, I was just kidding about his winning a Nobel Prize, as I'm sure the committee in Stockholm thought they were doing by holding it back for so long. "A Man Without a Country" reads like a series of Nobel acceptance speeches, and great ones at that. So I figured that with this book I was getting a preview of a major coming attraction. But the Swedes lost a chance to redeem themselves; they failed again to Ring the Nobel for Vonnegut in 2006. “A Man Without a Country” encapsulates his legacy: “Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go do something. We are here on earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.”
    • 2/5
      Really dreadful...it's sad that someone like Vonnegut, who wrote some truly brilliant short fiction, could be such a terrible non-fiction essayist. His political views are so simple-minded that they hardly deserve serious discussion...suffice it to say, he thinks Jesus Christ was the greatest moral thinker who ever lived, and we should base our political system on the Sermon on the Mount. As if Aristotle had never lived, and the Renaissance and the Enlightenment had never taken place. Except he actually mentions Aristotle, to whom he refers as "a good guesser"---as against Hitler, who was "a bad guesser" (Vonnegut sees no difference between their epistemological methodologies, or why the "guesses" of Aristotle happened to be rather better than those of Hitler).

      Vonnegut says near the end that he might be getting too grumpy to be funny anymore, but this is just ironic false humility, as he clearly still thinks very much of himself indeed...but the real irony is that he was right, he really wasn't funny anymore. Part of the problem is that, like so many old people, he keeps repeating the same stale stories...but he compounds the sin by doing so in print. And, as alluded to above, his views are so poorly conceived and argued that they're not even funny (talk about guessers...projection, anyone?).
    • 2/5
      If he wasn't famous, this book would probably have no audience. Though perhaps my harshness is due to 1. listening to an over-emoted audio version dripping with a sardonic tone and/or 2. reading this too long after the world events he writes about. But really, meh.
    • 4/5
      This is a great book.
    • 3/5
      Basically classic Vonnegut. Definitely some gems in there, but a little more overtly preachy than the other stuff I've read as there is no fictitious narrative to enshroud it. Not his best, but probably worth a read if you really like Vonnegut.
    • 5/5
      This was the first book of Vonnegut's I read, (I've since read the majority of his work). It's also the very last book he published while alive. From the first pages of this book I was completely enamored with his candid style and black sense of humor.

      The book itself is a gem, but it's no better than his other collections of essays. I enjoy his fiction, but have found that his nonfiction, opinion-based ramblings are more my style. He had a way of weaving serious issues, like war, with threads of absurdity that's so unique. This book gives you a great taste of his work because it's a short collection that deals with current issues. His very distinct way of writing that often polarizes readers when it comes to his work. I'll be the first to admit that Vonnegut is not for everyone, but he is, for me, a joy to read.
    • 3/5
      Several of the blurbs for this book say it is as close as we will get to a memoir from Vonnegut. Honestly, if you have read Cat's Cradle, Slaughter-House Five, and his collections of lectures, speeches, etc. you have read everything in this book before. That doesn't mean it isn't worth reading. It is full of Vonnegut wit and misanthropy. It is fragmented, like his novels. It is funny, like his novels. The humor is to deal with the fear and hopelessness. He states that he has given up on mankind, and in particular, America. He strongly disliked the Bush administration, and he strongly believed that humans have destroyed the Earth. In typical Vonnegut fashion, he doesn't have any hope for us. To some degree it reads like a really depressed Al Gore- if Al Gore had a personality and was funny. I like Vonnegut's fiction. I liked it even more in my twenties when I was just as negative as he is, but I personally think you have to balance his cynicism with your own common sense and your own ability to think for yourself.
    • 5/5
      A quick read, but a treasure. Not a bad book for those who have never read anything by the author before. Very quickly, you get a sense of who Kurt is, what he believes in, and the humorous stance he has taken in order to get "through this thing, whatever it is."
    • 5/5
      I watched a PBS interview with Kurt Vonnegut and they were talking about this book. I found him to be a very interesting and satirical man. I had never heard of him before and was intrigued by watching him.

      There were many times throughout the book that I thought to myself "that is exactly what I was thinking." I liked that he was not afraid to say what he felt and I got the feeling that he didn't care who heard him.

      This book lead me into my quest for reading all Kurt Vonnegut I can get my hands on. I am looking forward to reading much more in the future.
    • 4/5
      My rating might be a little high as I am a pretty big Vonnegut fan.
    • 2/5
      This is basically an amalgamation of brief rants by Mr. Vonnegut. It reads like the writings of a 16 year old socialist who denounces the world's evils with half-baked arguments. Not too funny and and rather witless, I'm disappointed, as I have enjoyed some of his novels.
    • 2/5
      An attempt to an autobiography. I think Vonnegut didn't have enough strength left in him to write a real story of his life. As it stands now the book is a collection of oneliners and sweeping statements. This makes sometimes shallow reading, although lots of his statements make you think. Many of them very dark: ''We have squandered our planet's resources, including air and water, as though there were no tomorrow, so there isn't going to be one.'' Sometimes a bit more optimistic: ''What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do.''
      If you haven't read anything from Vonnegut I would suggest you read some of his other books first (my personal recommendations: 'Slaughterhouse 5' and 'Galapagos'),before you turn to this book, which presupposes some familiarity with his novels.
    • 5/5
      Took less than a morning to read, and it's already one of my favorite books of the year! Full of opinion, rants, KV articulates my frustrations and passions of this era better than any other I've read recently.
    • 4/5
      Excellent political commentary; autobiographical and humorous. Essential Vonnegut.
    • 3/5
      A short book of Vonnegut's musings on his life and life in general. After reading his first book, Player Piano, written 53 years ago, and not terribly good, it was a pleasure to read this and remember what he was like when he was good. Some really funny bits. And some dark despair. He gets a bit repetitive as the book goes on, but I feel such affection for him that I forgive.
    • 4/5
      As many have said, it’s part essay collection, part ramblings of a grumpy old man. But as I’ve also said in the past, Vonnegut’s throwaways are more entertaining and full of more wisdom than the best achievements of others. Even when I don’t agree with some of his points (such as KV’s defense of Ludditism), he’s still funny.

    Book preview

    A Man Without a Country - Kurt Vonnegut

    1

    As a kid I was the youngest member of my family, and the youngest child in any family is always a jokemaker, because a joke is the only way he can enter into an adult conversation. My sister was five years older than I was, my brother was nine years older than I was, and my parents were both talkers. So at the dinner table when I was very young, I was boring to all those other people. They did not want to hear about the dumb childish news of my days. They wanted to talk about really important stuff that happened in high school or maybe in college or at work. So the only way I could get into a conversation was to say something funny. I think I must have done it accidentally at first, just accidentally made a pun that stopped the conversation, something of that sort. And then I found out that a joke was a way to break into an adult conversation.

    I grew up at a time when comedy in this country was superb—it was the Great Depression. There were large numbers of absolutely top comedians on radio. And without intending to, I really studied them. I would listen to comedy at least an hour a night all through my youth, and I got very interested in what jokes were and how they worked.

    When I’m being funny, I try not to offend. I don’t think much of what I’ve done has been in really ghastly taste. I don’t think I have embarrassed many people, or distressed them. The only shocks I use are an occasional obscene word. Some things aren’t funny. I can’t imagine a humorous book or skit about Auschwitz, for instance. And it’s not possible for me to make a joke about the death of John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King. Otherwise I can’t think of any subject that I would steer away from, that I could do nothing with. Total catastrophes are terribly amusing, as Voltaire demonstrated. You know, the Lisbon earthquake is funny.

    I saw the destruction of Dresden. I saw the city before and then came out of an air-raid shelter and saw it afterward, and certainly one response was laughter. God knows, that’s the soul seeking some relief.

    Any subject is subject to laughter, and I suppose there was laughter of a very ghastly kind by victims in Auschwitz.

    Humor is an almost physiological response to fear. Freud said that humor is a response to frustration—one of several. A dog, he said, when he can’t get out a gate, will scratch and start digging and making meaningless gestures, perhaps growling or whatever, to deal with frustration or surprise or fear.

    And a great deal of laughter is induced by fear. I was working on a funny television series years ago. We were trying to put a show together that, as a basic principle, mentioned death in every episode and that this ingredient would make any laughter deeper without the audience’s realizing how we were inducing belly laughs.

    There is a superficial sort of laughter. Bob Hope, for example, was not really a humorist. He was a comedian with very thin stuff, never mentioning anything troubling. I used to laugh my head off at Laurel and Hardy. There is terrible tragedy there somehow. These men are too sweet to survive in this world and are in terrible danger all the time. They could be so easily killed.

    Even the simplest jokes are based on tiny twinges of fear, such as the question, What is the white stuff in bird poop? The auditor, as though called upon to recite in school, is momentarily afraid of saying something stupid. When the auditor hears the answer, which is, That’s bird poop, too, he or she dispels the automatic fear with laughter. He or she has not been tested after all.

    Why do firemen wear red suspenders? And Why did they bury George Washington on the side of a hill? And on and on.

    True enough, there are such things as laughless jokes, what Freud called gallows humor. There are real-life situations so hopeless that no relief is imaginable.

    While we were being bombed in Dresden, sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight. Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it. At least we were still alive! He proved it.

    2

    Do you know what a twerp is? When I was in Shortridge High School in Indianapolis 65 years ago, a twerp was a guy who stuck a set of false teeth up his butt and bit the buttons off the back seats of taxicabs. (And a snarf was a guy who sniffed the seats of girls’ bicycles.)

    And I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read the greatest American short story, which is Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, by Ambrose Bierce. It isn’t remotely political. It is a flawless example of American genius, like Sophisticated Lady by Duke Ellington or the Franklin stove.

    I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.

    Want a taste of that great book? He says, and he said it 169 years ago, that in no country other than ours has love of money taken a stronger hold on the affections of men. Okay?

    The French-Algerian writer Albert Camus, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, wrote, "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and

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