Vonnegut & Beckett

If ever there was an appropriate time to read a book that points out the flaws in different economic systems, I suppose it would be now! I accidentally had good timing with reading Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut. The main character was involved in the Watergate scandal. While he worked in a capitalist environment, he had once dabbled in putting his beliefs in communism. While you get a background of his life, the real story begins with him being released from jail: his wife is dead, his son hates him and never contacts him, he has no friends, and essentially all he's got is a song in his head and a raggedy suit.

As usual, the shockingly honest and all-too-real Vonnegut humor is present throughout the entirety of the sad tale of the main character, Walter. I shall quote a song in the book:

"Sally in the garden,
Sifting cinders
Lifted up her leg
And farted like a man.
The bursting of her bloomers
Broke sixteen winders.
The cheeks of her ass went [clap clap clap]"

One is supposed to actually clap at the end. Hilarious, no?

And Vonnegut is such a good Athiest. Real, real, real. All that is here is all there ever is. The main character says late in the book "We are here for no purpose, unless we can invent one. Of that I am sure. The human condition in an exploding universe would not have been altered one iota if, rather than live as I have, I had done nothing but carry a rubber ice-cream cone from closet to closet for sixty years." How's that for truth?

Anyway, I really liked this book (as I do for most Vonneguts).

OVERALL RATING: 4.5

I think by high school most people have read Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, but somehow I seemed to have escaped it until now. And actually, it's probably the first play I've read since something Shakespeare, and is probably the only play I've ever really enjoyed reading.

It was interesting to me that these two men, Vladmir and Estragon, keep waiting for this Godot character and think that he and apparently only he can rescue them from whatever their troubles are. They wait for two days and almost exactly the same things keep happening, and Godot never shows up. It's quite like man to think that someone else can save him and to stand around and wait for it to happen, while time could be better spent putting efforts into saving themselves instead of waiting!

I haven't the energy to verbally analyze plots and themes and underlying meanings, but I think these are the kinds of things one can subconsciously understand and absorb while reading. So if you want to read something funny and probably existential, this play is where it's at!

OVERALL RATING: 4

No. 2: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

So, I've been on a little book tear. My mother is a reading teacher, so reading was something I learned how to do early and I suppose I'm pretty fast at it when I'd like to be. Or it could be the four hour shifts at work I've had to devote to it entirely...

Anyway, The Bell Jar. A common thing for me is to find things I think I'll hate and then wind up liking them, as in the case of Benjamin Button. I had always heard of The Bell Jar and then resented it because it seemed to coincide that every girl who had brains enough to read it just LOVED it and really felt connected to the character at times, blah, blah, blah.

My brains told me that I liked it pretty well. It was somehow immediately interesting, which is rare for me and books, and despite its heavy weight in terms of subject matter I didn't feel too bogged down by it in the end. Usually books like this are so much that they make me feel like throwing up-- to real, perhaps?--as could be said for certain movies I've seen lately under the genre of film noir. It put me in a funk a few times but if I put it down to do some menial tasks for a few minutes to pull myself back into my own reality, I could return to it quite easily and devour another large portion. It helped that the whole first half wasn't heavy at all, but the weighted latter half swung down with quite a bit of heaviness.

It's difficult to read pages upon pages of story about someone who keeps intending to kill themselves but never really does, and all the while thinks in grim truths muddled together with their own un-reality. It's also made me realize how truly inescapable the mind is, especially when it's consumed with something so entirely and may have chemical imbalances that prevent rationality. It also reminded me of the fine line between mental disorder and higher thought. Higher thought without being able to let go and succumb to some parts of your dumb animal instincts can get you in some deep trouble with yourself, as this character seemed to do.

This book was believable, honest, dark, and enjoyable all at once. I didn't enjoy every single inch of it because certain parts went on a second or two too long, and some were almost unbearable because of their weight, but the story as a whole was so good that I think it needs a rating of 5. A low 5, but a 5 nonetheless.