Deadeye Dick

Rudy Waltz grows up in Vonnegut's Midland City in Ohio. His 'memoir' tells of his father's failed life as an artist, during which he become friends with another failed artist, Hitler. His parents are wealthy and Rudy grows up a rich kid until he shoots a gun out of the top of his house and the bullet hits somebody. From there everything becomes a train wreck for him and his family.

Rudy sleepwalks through life until ending up as co-owner of a hotel in Haiti, from which he tells the story.

The book is a rich stew of Vonnegut's acidic satire and written in a way that immediately fills out the characters and draws in the reader. From his father's delusions and non-ironic contact with Hitler, the dissociated family, police brutality, government incompetence, until the final escape as refugees into the country of refugees.

I was left feeling I'd been in a Wes Anderson movie with a darker than normal colour pallette. It was a very enjoyable fantasy world.

Kurt Vonnegut's 10th novel and more of life's absurdity.

Vonnegut is one of those observers of life's foolishness, its inanities. Who did he base Rudy Waltz on, the black sheep of the family and nicknamed “Deadeye Dick” for the accidental manslaughter of a neighbour? Rudy's father was friends with Hitler and at one point was popular in the city they lived as he knew a head of state. Imagine that, one knows a head of state and everyone thinks you are a fine fellow indeed.

A neutron bomb exploded over the city. There is this passage in the book; “Nations might think of themselves as stories, and the stories end, but life goes on. Maybe my own country's life as a story ended after the Second World War, when it was the richest and most powerful nation on earth, when it was going to ensure peace and justice everywhere, since it alone had the atom bomb.” Mankind's lack of civility to his fellow man is an odd take when one considers that Vonnegut has said that there is at heart a goodness in us all. Bomb one of your own cities?

Rudy Waltz claims he is a neuter. If this is a comment on the human rights of minorities, and that Rudy's dad was a Nazis, is the obliteration of an arts centred city some kind of metaphor I am missing?

At this point, I am an unmitigated Vonnegut fan; one has to be to read 10 of his novels in nine months.
As usual, Vonnegut give me plenty to think about even if I might not get it.
One more for the Vonnegut reader and recommended as such





My review of number 1 Player Piano.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6205354368
My review of number 2 The Sirens Of Titan.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6267103559
My review of number 3 Mother Night.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6287961968
My review of number 4 Cats Cradle.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371451
My review of number 5 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371734
My review of number 6 Slaughter House Five
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231370983
My review of number 7 Breakfast Of Champions.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371515
My review of number 8 Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6478713647
My review of number 9 Jailbird.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1815571880

Like many Vonnegut books, this is an almost rambling (coherently so) account from the protagonist about the circumstances of their life. Vonnegut is one of my favorite writers when it comes to satire, and this one explores guns and violence, the bomb, and to an extent small town life. It not my favorite of his writings, but I still enjoyed it.