Bluebeard - Kurt Vonnegut [0]
KURT VONNEGUT IS …
“UNIQUE … one of the writers who map our landscapes for us, who give names to the places we know best.”
—DORIS LESSING
The New York Times Book Review
“OUR FINEST BLACK-HUMORIST. … We laugh in self-defense.”
—The Atlantic Monthly
“AN UNIMITATIVE AND INIMITABLE SOCIAL SATIRIST.”
—Harper’s Magazine
“A CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“A LAUGHING PROPHET OF DOOM.”
—The New York Times
BLUEBEARD
“THE QUICKSILVER MIND OF VONNEGUT IS AT IT AGAIN…. He displays all his talents—satire, irony, ridicule, slapstick, and even a shaggy dog story of epic proportions.”
—The Cincinnati Post
“A VOICE YOU CAN TRUST TO KEEP POKING HOLES IN THE SOCIAL FABRIC … Vonnegut sets up his political salvos with the skill of a Woody Allen who’s finally managed to forget about himself for a while.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“IT HAS THE QUALITIES OF CLASSIC BOSCH AND SLAUGHTERHOUSE VONNEGUT…. BLUEBEARD IS UNCOMMONLY FEISTY.”
—USA Today
“IS BLUEBEARD GOOD? YES! … THIS IS VINTAGE VONNEGUT—GOOD WINE FROM HIS BEST GRAPES.”
—The Detroit News
“A JOYRIDE … Vonnegut is more fascinated and puzzled than angered by the human stupidities and contradictions he discerns so keenly. So hop in his rumble seat. As you whiz along, what you observe may provide some new perspectives.”
—Kansas City Star
“I FIND BLUEBEARD TO BE VONNEGUT’S BEST NOVEL SINCE SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE and would rate it among his top five novels. Start it tonight!”
—The Tennessean (Nashville)
“VONNEGUT FANS SHOULD LOVE THIS ONE. TENDER, MERCILESSLY LOVELESS, BLENDING WISDOM AND INSANITY, BLUEBEARD HAS WIT, SUBSTANCE, AND STYLE.”
—Rave Reviews
“VONNEGUT’S MIXTURE OF THE COMIC AND IRONIC BALANCES HIS SENSITIVE CONCERN for what it means to be human. This is a novel that should be read.”
—The Chattanooga Times
“VONNEGUT IS A GENIUS. His language is direct and deceptively simple, and he writes accurately of the chaos of our times.”
—Austin Chronicle
“IT’S THE TOPS!”
—The Grand Rapids Press
“A GIFTED AUTHOR’S DAYDREAMS … WISTFUL AND CHARMING.”
—Time
“VONNEGUT [IS] … AS CRUSTY, IMAGINATIVE, AND BITINGLY FUNNY AS EVER. AND WITH SOUL, SOUL, SOUL.”
—The Des Moines Register
BOOKS BY KURT VONNEGUT
Bluebeard
Breakfast of Champions
Cat’s Cradle
Deadeye Dick
Galápagos
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Jailbird
Mother Night
Palm Sunday
Player Piano
The Sirens of Titan
Slapstick
Slaughterhouse-Five
Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons
Welcome to the Monkey House
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is a novel, and a hoax autobiography at that. It is not to be taken as a responsible history of the Abstract Expressionist school of painting, the first major art movement to originate in the United States of America. It is a history of nothing but my own idiosyncratic responses to this or that.
Rabo Karabekian never lived, and neither did Terry Kitchen or Circe Berman or Paul Slazinger or Dan Gregory or Edith Taft or Marilee Kemp or any of the other major characters in this book. As for real and famous persons I mention: I have them do nothing that they did not actually do when tested on this proving ground.
May I say, too, that much of what I put in this book was inspired by the grotesque prices paid for works of art during the past century. Tremendous concentrations of paper wealth have made it possible for a few persons or institutions to endow certain sorts of human playfulness with inappropriate and hence distressing seriousness. I think not only of the mudpies of art, but of children’s games as well—running, jumping, catching, throwing.
Or dancing.
Or singing songs.
K. V.
“We are here to help each other get
through this thing, whatever it is.”
—DR. MARK VONNEGUT, M.D.
(Letter to Author, 1985)
BLUEBEARD
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF RABO KARABEKIAN
(1916–1988)
This book is for Circe Berman.
What else can I say?
R.K.
1
HAVING WRITTEN “The End” to this