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"Oh I get," I said, "it's a parable. Cute. Let's go eat."
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We read! We read good!:
- Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
- Lamb by Christopher Moore
- Edisto by Padgett Powell
- How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely
- Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
- Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
- Mother Night, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
- Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates
- Last Night at the Lobster, by Stewart O'Nan
- Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo
- A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole
It's interesting that you ask this question because it never even occurred to me to consider the plausibility of this story. Knowing that it's a satire, I approached it with a inherent acceptance of any improbable plot twists. (Different readers reading things differently, I guess.)
ReplyDeleteIt also never crossed my mind that Campbell could be faking this story in order appear innocent of his crimes, especially since he offers himself up for trial and punishment at the end, thus assuming some sort of responsibility for the hate crimes he committed, regardless of what secret purpose they may have served. He may have technically been innocent of being a Nazi, however if this book teaches us anything it's that our true motivations don't really matter. It's what we actually DO that matters. Resi may have loved Campbell, but she still betrayed him. Kraft may have cared for his friend, but he still tried to turn him over to the Soviets. Campbell may have actually loathed the Nazis, but his words still infected others and fueled hatred. What point do good intentions really serve in comparison to their results?
Campbell (Vonnegut?) gave us his moral in the first paragraph of the novel's introduction: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." Thus, plausibility becomes a bit of a moot point. It doesn't really matter what REALLY happened, what we truly intended, or who we actually are. What matters is the effects of our actions and of our words.
As a post script, I'd like to add that Resi's character bugged me a bit. I had a hard time understanding how this young Nihilist could somehow turn into a woman who 1) spies for another country and 2) dies for love. How does this happen? Forced labor somehow made her both more romantic and patriotic? Maybe it's just me, but I felt there was a piece missing in her characterization...
ReplyDeleteAnd I did believe she loved Campbell in the end, but maybe only because Resi no longer existed at that point. Maybe by pretending to be Helga so successfully she - rather intentionally or not - ending up trading Nihilism in for Romanticism. Another example of actually becoming what you were only pretending to be...?
I think that Cambell is definitely an unreliable narrator. Books with unreliable narrators are notoriously difficult to get a hold of, and I definitely struggled with it. How much of what Cambell is writing is the truth? Does it matter whether he's telling us truth or lies?
ReplyDeleteIn the end I think it really all does come back to "we are what we pretend to be". Cambell pretended to be a Nazi, so he was. Resi pretended to be Helga, and became her. In his manuscript, Cambell pretended to be a spy working for the US Government, so he was.
All (or at least most) of Vonnegut's work is filled with unreliable narration that's kind of exemplified through that kind of metafiction where you are never quite sure whether it is the protagonist speaking or Vonnegut himself. I think that kind of uncertainty is what really distinguishes him as an author and, if I recall, this is the book that he really began to explore that dynamic.
ReplyDeleteAlso, remember, there are lots of "morals" that Campbell/Vonnegut give us. The first one for sure is important, but what about "Make love when you can, it is good for you"? That underlies the kind of whimsy that all of KV's books have, this darker one being no exception.
All (or at least most) of Vonnegut's work is filled with the unreliable narration that's kind of exemplified through that kind of metafiction where the reader is never quite sure whether it is the protagonist speaking or the author himself. I think that uncertainty is really what distinguishes Vonnegut as an author and, if I recall, this is the book where he really began to explore that dynamic of unreliable narration.
ReplyDeleteAlso, remember that there are lots of "morals" that Campbell/Vonnegut give us. The one mentioned here is certainly important, but what about one like "Make love when you can, it's good for you"? That underlies the kind of whimsy that all KV books have, this darker one no exception.
Maybe it's the second moral then, (Make love when you can, it is good for you) that explains why Campbell was so quick to accept the fact that Resi was posing as Helga. For a man so enamored with his "Nation of Two" concept, it confused me a bit that he so readily traded one sister for another. Perhaps - at least for him - the making of the love is more important than the person you are making it with?
ReplyDeleteMaggie---I'm here! I finished the book awhile ago but time kept getting away from me (slippin', slippin', slippin' into the future...)
ReplyDeleteI think I may be out in left field here, but I thought that he made up the entire spy story as a defense against the horrible things he said. I think that Campbell, like so many other Germans of the time, went along with the Nazi mentality out of mob behavior as well as a desire to save his own skin. There was a part of him, though, that felt very guilty about his behavior and the things that he wrote. So, that part invented this concept of Campbell as an American double agent. He didn't want to face the part of himself that said terrible things about his fellow human beings.
So all you lit teachers out there will want to know how I can back up my thesis. For one thing, the narrator mentioned "dissociating," being "schizophrenic," and being "divorced" from aspects of one self in order to psychologically survive war. He says it too many times for it not to be significant. Also, as Paul pointed out, the novel was written at the same time as RR. In that period of time a lot of people were interested in Freudian psychology, and it stands that Vonnegut may have been aware of subconscious defense mechanisms. Another thing is that I'm not certain that anything that Campbell said or wrote actually constituted a war crime, which would explain why he was under lax security in the field (he could have wandered off without any help from the Blue Fairy Godmother) and would also explain why the U.S. government was totally uninterested in extraditing him to Israel. Israel had different laws; perhaps hate speech was a crime to them, but they couldn't do anything about it unless Campbell turned himself in (which he did). Finally, the Blue Fairy Godmother shows up with perfect timing when Campbell needs him most, yet always in a different location. How would he know where Campbell was? How did nobody see him? He wasn't real!
Campbell was a two-bit writer who lost a wife, said terrible things about his fellow human beings, and felt horribly guilty about them. But he wasn't a spy.
Okay: now go ahead and accuse me of watching "A Beautiful Mind" one too many times.