Mother Night

Howard Campbell agrees to act as a spy for his country and in the process becomes a better Nazi than the real ones. Darkly humorous with a parade of offbeat characters that cause Campbell to reflect on the moral consequences of his life as a spy.

Wow! Another certified Vonnegut classic. I have yet to read one that I haven't liked. When I was debating what book to read next (choices were this and [b:South and West: From a Notebook 32842454 South and West From a Notebook Joan Didion https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1611917690l/32842454.SX50.jpg 53445066] by Didion), unanimous support for this across two Discord servers. One friend said this is their all time favorite Vonnegut.Vonnegut is one of my all time favorite authors. I read Slaughterhouse-Five once a year (very white-bread, I know, sue me), and I have the big Library of America set that I'm working through. I love his voice and his pleading for us to be better. To listen to our better angels. [b:Slaughterhouse-Five 4981 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut Jr. https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440319389l/4981.SY75.jpg 1683562] comes nearly ten years after this work, but there is a lot of it in here.“An eighty-eight was set up in it, and the gun was manned by boys about fifteen or sixteen years old. There was a success story for Heinz's late wife—boys that young, and yet with men's uniforms and a fully-armed death trap all their own.”Hard not to think about Slaughterhouse-Five, the Children's Crusade.There's also just a lot about what Vonnegut says right up front as the moral: be careful what you pretend to be, because that's what you become. Act as if ye have faith, and faith shall be given to ye. Put it another way, Leo McGarry says on the West Wing, fake it til ya make it. It's the flip side of that same coin. I love it.It is of course frustratingly prescient because we humans make the same mistakes on a schedule that'd make a stationmaster jealous.Jones wasn't completely crazy. The dismaying thing about the classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, though 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 mose cases.The willful filing off of gear teeth, the willful doing without certain obvious pieces of information—That is how the Nazi's took a functioning republic into one of the deadliest totalitarian regimes in history. It took about 53 for Hitler to end democracy in the Weimar Republic, apparently. He gained power in January 1933. Dachau opened in March.The willful filing off of gear teeth. A valuation of ignorance. A valuation of national pride over all else. A revulsion to immigration, civil liberties, hope, and love.It is hard to read this book and not feel a little depressed about where we are in 2025, 64 years later. As hard as it is, I basically refuse to be a pessimist. I don't know how or why I have that resistance in me. But I still believe that this world can be better today than it was yesterday, and tomorrow, today, and so on. Not all better, and some days maybe not net-better. But I think and hope it is a cumulative thing. And if I don't believe that, then I don't know what the point of it is. So, I will choose to believe it.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr writes a “what is truth?” novel. In 1961 when published there was no such thing as fake news. Or was there? The term “fake news” is to my ears of recent origin and comes from the US, at least that's what I believe. My first encounter with “what is truth?” was many decades back when I was dragged to a pub in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley where journos got themselves smashed to smithereens on Bundy Rum and XXXX beer. This was the only time I ever went to this pub while it was infested with journos and it was at the height of the slow (at least that is what it seemed to me) political downfall of a noted premier of this state of Queensland. A drunken journo blurted out to me that they had always supported this premier as they had been told to from up above. Did YOU really support him I asked? “As close to a fascist as you will ever get” he drunkenly spluttered. So why the written word support? I asked. I got laughed at.

And that is my take on this book. One sometimes must do what one has to do even if one is not sure it is truth. But as was written very early “we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Indeed and especially when in a pub drunk.
How cynical of Kurt Vonnegut Jr to even suggest that “truth” and all its derivatives may be pretence for the human species. This is Kurt's 3rd book and follows his very good The Sirens of Titan. Strangely in that review I wrote that Titan's might be about “why we might do what we do and might think what we think.” So this is very much the same thematically, but this story is told conventionally as apposed to his previous Sci Fi efforts.

This is a fictional memoir of Howard W. Campbell Jr a US spy in the WW2 who was the equivalent of Lord Haw Haw. Trouble is that not even the US authorities knew he was a spy so consequently he ends up on trial in Israel for war crimes. The question of what is truth and who really knows it is truth is what permeates just about every page. We even get good old love appearing. What shall we do with love sweet love? Let's just say that one can pretend to be in love, but if one really does fall in love one may have to stop pretending and the consequences of that can be dire.

The consequences of pretending to be what we are not are always dire. That seemed to be Howard W. Campbell Jr's message. I tend to think he had a point.


My 3rd read in my attempt devour Kurt Vonnegut Jr's oeuvre from first to last.
My review of number 1 here. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6205354368
My review of number 2 here. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6267103559

Onwards to the next.

This is not usually the kind of book I read. Not really my vibe for many reasons. So I'm not sure how I feel about it. 
There were parts of it I really enjoyed (surprisingly to myself), and parts of it that I didn't like. 
I'm not a classics girly and this clearly reads like a classic in the writing style. Which isn't for me. I also don't like historical fiction, so it doesn't really make sense why I picked this book up but that's besides the point. 
This book surprised me. It's not for everybody that's for sure. But I'd say it was pretty solid. 

4.5

So many great quotes and phrases. My favorite Vonnegut yet.

Poate ca merita 3.5/5, inca nu sunt sigur, dar cel mai probabil o sa ma intorc la povestile SF ale lui Vonnegut.

Great and one hell of a philosophical take on human behaviour and state. The book's context revolves around the Nazi Germany and the holocaust, but it's a sort of a pretext to talk about much more universal values I believe.
I think the best description of this book will be just a couple of quotes from it:

“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.”

—–
“You hate America, don't you?'

That would be as silly as loving it,' I said. ‘It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.”

—–
“I had hoped, as a broadcaster, to be merely ludicrous, but this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate. So many people wanted to believe me!

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.”

—–

“I froze. It was not guilt that froze me. I had taught myself never to feel guilt. It was not a ghastly sense of loss that froze me. I had taught myself to covet nothing. It was not a loathing of death that froze me. I had taught myself to think of death as a friend. It was not heartbroken rage against injustice that froze me. I had taught myself that a human being might as well look for diamond tiaras in the gutter as for rewards and punishments that were fair. It was not the thought that I was so unloved that froze me. I had taught myself to do without love. It was not the thought that God was cruel that froze me. I had taught myself never to expect anything from Him. What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction.”

My sister recommended me this book and instead I read it, I did not regret it. I enjoyed it so much and was so different from the things I usually read. I was also stuck as a book I have been reading seems unfinishable even as I am liking it, this was easy and quick to read and reignited my interest I reading other things. I recommend it so much, it is different, I don't fully know why, but it felt different in the best way!

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

The quote above says it all as far as the theme of this story. The events center around WWII but I think the idea could work in any time period. What strikes most about this book is the idea that we all fool ourselves into believing we're heroes in our own story.

As the main character and narrator of this story, Campbell doesn't do that. An American spy/Nazi propaganda writer, he knows he's done both good things and bad things and he can hold the contradiction in his mind. (He can't actually live with it, but that's a different problem.) This is in defiance of the other characters in the story who eliminate the thoughts from their mind that don't fit in with their goals, their life philosophy.

There is for example, O'Hare, the former soldier who captured “war criminal” Campbell the first time and who thinks all the troubles in his life will be solved if he just captures him again. There is also the white supremacist dentist, Jones, who truly believes in his hateful cause. Not coincidentally, Campbell thinks of this kind of “totalitarian madness” as tearing a tooth out of your head. The missing teeth “are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds, in most cases.”

I enjoy Vonnegut's writing style. He has a dry sense of humor, the story moves along nicely, he doesn't overwrite, and yet the characters and scenes are vivid. The dialogue is entertaining and believable. The themes of the story are heavy and even dark, but Vonnegut tackles them with a clear and direct writing style.

Vonnegut è il piacere di leggere al netto della storia che racconta; sa scrivere, e lo fa in maniera cosi diversa ed atipica rispetto a quello che si legge solitamente che alla fine ti rendi conto una volta tanto di aver letto qualcosa di speciale che non assomigli a niente a cui hai letto prima. E questo vuol dire tanto se sei un lettore forte che comincia a pensare di leggere sempre le solite storie con personaggi differenti.

Oltretutto scrivendo di un tema come quello del nazismo e la sua propaganda, non proprio il solito scemo del villaggio che entra nel bosco di notte da solo, quando pure l'erba lo sa che sarebbe meglio non farlo. Per dire, trattare un tema su cui è già stato scritto e romanzato di tutto è veramente complesso e sorprendente riuscire a sorprendere.

Vonnegut lo fa, creando un personaggio totalmente nazista ma che in realtà è una spia americana che utilizza gli esaltati messaggi che crea e usa per il regime, ma che invece veicolano informazioni al governo americano. Ma qui succede che di fatto il protagonista, pur sapendo di essere una spia che sta combattendo egli stesso il nazismo, si sente così colpevole dei messaggi deliranti che veicola, di chiedere di essere processato come criminale nazista.

Perché per quanto bene possa aver servito la causa dei buoni, alla fine ci si rende conto di aver fatto molto di più per i cattivi.

3.5

nhặt cuốn này lên vì tình cờ đọc được một quote rất là lay động tâm can aka sên sến
và y như rằng đó là cái đoạn sến và cẩu huyết nhất truyện khiến tui ná thở chỉ muốn cho 3 sao cái sự rate mà tui ghét nhất
còn lại thì xuất sắc =))

Troubling. Funny. Just how you'd expect Vonnegut to be.

Great book. It made me think about morality.

Ik vond Kurt Vonnegut fantastisch goed toen op op school zat. Slaughterhouse Five, Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, het sprongetje van contentement dat ik maakte toen ik zag dat er nieuwe was, Galápagos.

En toen kwam ik vorige week een filmpje van hem tegen. En bedacht ik, tijd om die mens nog eens te herlezen.

Weeeeellllllll... you can't go home again, zoals ze zeggen.

Ik had Mother Night dacht ik niet gelezen, maar het werd mij aangeraden, en dus hey waarom niet. In Mother Night schrijft Howard W. Campbell in een gevangeniscel in Israël, terwijl hij wacht op zijn proces wegens oorlogsmisdaden. Hij heeft veel misdaan waar iedereen van weet, als een soort hoofdpropagandist voor de Engelstalige wereld tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog, maar hij heeft ook veel goede dingen gedaan waar bijna niemand van weet, door in zijn radio-uitzendingen gecodeerde boodschappen uit Duitsland naar de geallieerden te sturen.

Ik had Vonnegut gewoon dicht moeten laten, dan zou het bij een goede herinnering gebleven zijn. Het moet zijn dat ik een allergie heb opgedaan aan dit soort literatuur of zo, want ik werd al vanaf de eerste hoofdstukken (hoofdstukjes) kregelig. Die alleswetende verteller, die eindeloze metafictionele gimmicks van “ik zeg u op voorhand wat er gaat gebeuren, en zie, het gebeurt ook echt, neenee, kijk!, zie!, hiér gebeurt het”, ik word daar lastig van.

En oh kijk, we krijgen al helemaal in het begin een moraal mee: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Dankuwel, maar ik ben geen klein kind dat bij de hand geleid moet worden en alles van naaldje tot draadje uitgelegd moet krijgen. Oh wat nu? Krijg ik écht diezelfde moraal pagina na pagina er quasi letterlijk ingestampt? Ugh, nee. Nee bedankt.

De samenvatting staat hier. De wereld vind het wellicht een uitstekend boek, ik vond er niets aan en ik heb er spijt van dat ik het gelezen heb. (Sorry Iannis.)

My Amazon review -

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2ZBHYJKBQ8I0O/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

Actually started this a couple days ago, but just finished it. My fourth Vonnegut, after Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Breakfast of Champions. Mother Night is a fictional memoir of a sort-of Nazi propagandist. Definitely an interesting read; a far cry from Cat's Cradle and only very occasionally tongue-in-cheek, which I suppose suits a subject like this one. Liked it more than S5 and Breakfast, not as much as Cat's Cradle.