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Kurt Vonnegut

Bluebeard

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Bluebeard, published in 1987, is Vonnegut’s meditation on art, artists, surrealism, and disaster. Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist painter, who we meet late in life and see struggling (like all of Vonnegut’s key characters), with the dregs of unresolved pain and the consequences of brutality. Loosely based on the legend of Bluebeard (best realized in Bela Bartok’s one-act opera), the novel follows Karabekian through the last events in his life that is heavy with women, painting, artistic ambition, artistic fraudulence, and as of yet unknown consequence.
Vonnegut’s intention here is not so much satirical (although the contemporary art scene would be easy enough to deconstruct), nor is it documentary (although Karabekian does carry elements of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko). Instead, Vonnegut is using art for the same purpose he used science fiction cliches in Slaughterhouse-Five; as a filter through which he can illuminate the savagery, cruelty, and the essentially comic misdirection of human existence.
Readers will recognize familiar Vonnegut character types and archetypes as they drift in and out through the background; meanwhile, Karabekian, betrayed and betrayer, sinks through a bottomless haze of recollection. Like most of Vonnegut’s late works, this is both science fiction and cruel contemporary realism at once, using science fiction as metaphor for human damage as well as failure to perceive. Readers will find that Vonnegut’s protagonists can never really clarify for us whether they are ultimately unwitting victims or simple barbarians, leaving it up to the reader to determine in which genre this book really fits, if any at all.
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238 printed pages
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Impressions

  • Мариshared an impression6 years ago
    👍Worth reading
    🔮Hidden Depths
    🎯Worthwhile
    🚀Unputdownable

    Very short, can be read on a trip to a beach. Despite being short, it’s filled with deep thoughts and musings. I loved it.

Quotes

  • Артём Воронинhas quoted4 years ago
    Captains Courageous, starring Spencer Tracy and Freddie Bartholomew.”
  • Артём Воронинhas quoted4 years ago
    Tell Mama!” Can you beat it?
  • Артём Воронинhas quoted4 years ago
    There is nothing erotic about our relationship. I am twenty-eight years Mrs. Berman’s senior, and have become too ugly for anyone but a dog to love. I really do look like a gutshot iguana, and am one-eyed besides. Enough is enough.

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