I love Kurt Vonnegut. I love his mix of humour and profundity, his ability to to turn the obvious into the radical, or the opposite: in one instant he can make the most outrageous statement, and in the next I’m laughing, and then I’m nodding, thinking what he’s said is not actually outrageous, or just funny, it’s also really depressingly true, depressing unless you decide to accept his opinion as fact, that we humans really have made a god-awful mess of things and it’s probably for the best that the Earth will soon be inhospitable for us. A Man Without a Country is not his best, but then his best is among the very best, and I can’t think of a better way to spend a lazy August afternoon trapped by the oppressive heat and a cat on my lap, than reading the final published thoughts of, for my money, if not the best American writer of the 20th Century, then at least the most humane, and always the most quotable: “I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.”
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No. 3 of 50 books I intend to read and review in 2023.
I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, sketch and write essays and a monthly newsletter highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.
Patrick Sherriff 