In the water, he was beautiful

It's tempting to talk about politics tonight. For several hours, the Attorney General was schooled by the Congress, including passages where he was reminded that if he was going to suggest that US Attorneys were fired for being poor managers, he should lose his job as well, as well as Chuck Schumer reminding him that the burden of proof lies with Gonzales to explain his actions to Congress, and not the other way around, since Congress isn't actually putting him on trial. It's a bit pathetic, really, that the Attorney General doesn't seem to be so well versed in the whole law thing, but rank incompetence no longer comes as such a surprise.

I'm even going to hold off on the news that the FBI raided Rep. Rick Renzi's (R-AZ) and he had to step down from the Intelligence committee. The investigation likely cost Arizona's US Attorney his job during the abovementioned Attorney firing scandal, just as San Diego's Carol Lam was forced out after successfully prosecuting the now former-Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA). Renzi's raid occurs just days after the FBI raided Rep. John Doolittle's (R-CA) house, forcing him to step down from the House Appropriations Committee, a committee whose ranking Republican member is Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), who you may be shocked to find out is also under investigation, in an inquiry started by former US Attorney Carol Lam, who as we mentioned was fired during the US Attorney scandal.

No rather than not mentioning politicians, I thought it would be a good opportunity to not review a book. During our trip, I read "The Sweep of the Second Hand", by Dean Monti, since it cost $2 and the cover review said it begged comparisons to Woody Allen and Nick Hornby. It doesn't. It begs comparison, rather, to Joseph Heller's "Something Happened". This is very, very much not a compliment. I could go on about the book I read, and take some potshots, but what's the point? It's not like anyone who reads this is likely to even see it in print during their lifetimes. Instead, I will take some potshots at Joseph Heller, by comparing him to the guy we killed by going on vacation, Kurt Vonnegut.

It is tempting to link Heller and Vonnegut in a way, as they wrote two of the most famous American novels about war during the previous century, books about WWII that seemed to describe Vietnam just as well. It should be noted that Catch-22 came out in 1961, long before Vietnam had entered into the American consciousness, whereas Slaughterhouse-Five was written in 1969. I have to say, between the two, I'd probably have to take Catch-22 if I was forced to choose. It's satire is as sharp as just about any serious novel ever written, and it is difficult to imagine a time where one can't describe the classic contradiction posed in the novel in any other terms. Without risk of hyperbole, it certainly deserves consideration as possibly the greatest American novel of the century (along with To Kill a Mockingbird, Gatsby, and what? Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck?). It is, sadly, really the only great novel Heller wrote.

This is not much of a criticism, mind you, very few of us have even a readable novel in us, much less a good one. Heller wrote one of the best of all time. Still, why could he never reach that height again? The sequel, Closing Time, felt like a pale imitation of the original (think U2's most recent stuff compared to their mid-80's peak). Good as Gold is like a lesser novel by Bellow, God Knows is funny but hardly memorable, and for the life of me I don't remember a thing about Picture This. Something Happened, on the other hand, is wretchedly awful, a long slog of several hundred depressing pages filled with quasi-ironic "insights" about how much life sucks that we are supposed to find deeply meaningful, as if Heller's discovery of angst is really something new. The contrived ending only makes the rest seem like an even greater waste of time. The question becomes: why did Heller have one great book, and so many more that pale so much in comparison?

I think the answer lies in the way he writes. He is always funny, but it is a cold humor. The insanity he channels throughout Catch-22 is madcap but somewhat passionless at times, and that lack of empathy shows through much more in his later works in which the cold glare falls on our very real lives. Where Catch-22 can be enjoyed for finding humor in what would otherwise be tragedy, the rest of his books basically seem like descriptions of just how tragic life in general tends to be, and the jokes have a gallows quality that kind of ruins the enjoyment. Sure Heller is a satirist, but he just doesn't always seem to care about anything or anyone, and that grates after a while.

Vonnegut, on the other hand, may have been a satirist and a notable pessimist about human behavior, but in the end he remains one of the most deeply humanist authors ever to achieve greatness. I'm not talking about the Secular Humanist sense (which he was), but rather in the sense that he had a deep and powerful love for humans and humanity. It's been said that his books are "bitter-coated sugar pills", with a thin veneer of irony covering an almost cloying desire for people to be better. I can't say that this is description is wrong, but in many ways it is what makes him such a joy to read. No matter how bad things are, and in a Vonnegut book, we're usually talking about Armageddon-level bad, there remains the hope that if people are better, things could improve. It's not that he thinks we'll actually be better, just that we have the potential. He even could see it in himself, in a way. Tonight's post title is taken from his description of himself in the foreword to "Welcome to the Monkeyhouse".

Our book club will be reading Cat's Cradle for next month, perhaps his greatest novel (unless you prefer Breakfast of Champions or Slaughter House-Five), but even a middling Vonnegut novel can stick with you for years. In Slapstick, which Vonnegut himself only graded as a "D" (really!), he manages to introduce a concept for artificial communities that I really think might radically change American society for the better if we ever tried it, by assigning random names and numbers to all people that would serve as communities to which everyone gets to belong. If you think about it, given that we bond with people because of common interests in sports teams, favorite authors, and any number of other random things. Why not give people a few more, in such a way that everyone gets to have some. There is literally no downside, beyond getting used to middle names like Daffodil-11 or Raspberry-19.

It's strange, both men are dead, and I will be forever glad that Heller ha one amazing novel within him, but I feel like I miss Vonnegut and will for a long time.



So it goes.