Kurt Vonnegut

Mother night

Maurice FitzGerald

Maybe it is because i just read The Kindly Ones and a bunch of Svetlana Alexievich but this Vonnegut seems almost criminally timid. I am not sure what to make of the main character. Good or bad who really cares when the situation is so contrived or particular that it has no resonance. I really must of missed something.

“Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer . . . a zany but moral mad scientist.”—Time Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all. “A great artist.”—Cincinnati Enquirer “A shaking up in the kaleidoscope of laughter . . . Reading Vonnegut is addictive!”—Commonweal

A Novel

Mother Night

Aaron J Mitchell

Andrew John Kinney

I always love Kurt Vonnegut, and this book was a great read. Not one of his very best, but still very good.

Omar AlHashmi

Wow, Vonnegut does it again. This may currently be my favorite book written by Kurt Vonnegut. Although it is very different from his other books, you still know its him. From the very first line I knew I was reading a Vonnegut book. 
I couldn't put the book down, literally 3-4 days and I finished the book. I never used to do that! Especially when I'm in university because of all the work I have. But for some reason I couldn't put down this book. Vonnegut keeps on giving more reason for him to become on of my favorite authors. Though his style may not suit everybody. Mother night is one of those books that I believe may appeal to a more broader audience than say something like Breakfast of Champions, which is a very hard read for someone not used to Vonnegut. Incredible book 5/5

Jenna

I LOVE this book! Probably the least weird Vonnegut I've read so far. I liked the story- delving into the mind of someone too good at propaganda, knowing how much harm he has done and keeping it a secret that he was actually doing good. He is known as a Nazi, but is he really a Nazi? Do his "crimes" define who he is? The moral of the story: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

Everytime I read a new (to me) Vonnegut book I claim it is my favorite. But really, I enjoyed this book a lot.

“I have never seen a more sublime demonstration of the totalitarian mind, a mind which might be linked unto a system of gears where teeth have been filed off at random. Such snaggle-toothed thought machine, driven by a standard or even by a substandard libido, whirls with the jerky, noisy, gaudy pointlessness of a cuckoo clock in Hell.
The boss G-man concluded wrongly that there were no teeth on the gears in the mind of Jones. 'You're completely crazy,' he said.
Jones wasn't completely crazy. The dismaying thing about classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, thought mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined. 
Hence the cuckoo clock in Hell - keeping perfect time for eight minutes and twenty-three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for six seconds, jumping ahead two seconds, keeping perfect time for two hours and one second, then jumping ahead a year.
The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds, in most cases.
The wilful filling off a gear teeth, the wilful doing without certain obvious pieces of information - 
That was how a household as contradictory as one composed of Jones, Father Keeley, Vice-Bundesfuehrer Krapptauer, and the Black Fuehrer could exist in relative harmony - 
That was how my father-in-law could contain in one mind an indifference toward slave women and love fora a blue vase -
That was how Rudolf Hess, Commandant of Auschwitz, could alternate over the loudspeakers of Auschwitz great music and calls for corpse-carriers - 
That was how Nazi Germany sense no important difference between civilization and hydrophobia - 
That is the closest I can come to explaining the legions, the nations of lunatics I've seen in my time.” 
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

A timely read in this climate. Funny and dark.

Kim Marie

Harsha G

Vonnegut had brilliant black things to say about the world in beautiful bright ways.

‘Black satire of the highest polish’ Guardian Whilst awaiting trial for war crimes in an Israeli prison, Howard W. Campbell Jr sets down his memoirs on an old German typewriter. He has used such a typewriter before, when he worked as a Nazi propagandist under Goebbels. Though that was before he agreed to become a spy for US military. Is Howard guilty? Can a black or white verdict ever be reached in a world that’s a gazillion shades of grey? ‘After Vonnegut, everything else seems a bit tame’ Spectator

Mother night

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