Great Read!
February 24th, 2007 by Charla
Kurt Vonnegut’s,
- A Man Without A Country
a gift yesterday from my neighbors, Michael and Terry. Thank you so very much. 144 pages. I read cover to cover in bed last night. Best read I’ve had in a long time! I totally recommend it. It’s writing that doesn’t seem like writing, echoes of Mark Twain…
Here’s an excerpt on men and women:
“Okay, now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about sex. Let’s talk about women. Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want: a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.
What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them.
Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.
A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys.
But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man.
When a couple has an argument nowadays, they may think it’s about money or power or sex or how to raise the kids or whatever. What they’re really saying to each other, though without realizing it, is this: “You are not enough people!’”
Michael and Terry left a Barnes & Noble bag hanging from my doorknob yesterday. In it a book they’d raved about to me earlier in the day, Kurt Vonnegut’s
-
A Man Without a Country.
With a gift note attached to the bag. So very nice to come home to such a wonder-full surprise. I read it cover to cover in bed last night. I love it because it doesn’t seem like writing…more like voice or voices, and therefore real and true. More than I can say for the stack of more literary novels and serious non-fiction on the nighttables flanking my bed. More than I can say for the blah blah blah of the majority of blogs and articles and commentary I’ve been dipping into lately in my travels online.
