Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

If you're old enough, you remember the phenomenon of "clip show" episodes of old TV shows. If you're not, well, let me explain: you would get episodes of a show where, for whatever reason, they didn't want to tell a whole new story. So you would come up with some framing device that didn't take more than a few minutes of footage - the characters get trapped in an elevator or something - and then have them reminisce about their times together. Then, most of the episode could be highlights from previous episodes, letting the time ostensibly for a new episode be filled with glorified reruns.I mention all of this because, at its core, Palm Sunday is Kurt Vonnegut's "clip show." A collection of speeches, introductions, essays, letters, and a few literary miscellany strung together by Vonnegut and connected with more writing, Palm Sunday is less a book and more of a collection of pieces by Vonnegut, unlinked by much except for their author and the fact that he thought it was interesting enough to be in a collection. (Not that Vonnegut had fooled himself; towards the end of the book, when he's grading his own works, he gives Palm Sunday a C.)And yet, as you can see from the rating, none of that kept me from enjoying Palm Sunday quite a bit, even with that acknowledgment of what it is. Your enjoyment of this book will depend entirely on how much you enjoy hearing Vonnegut talk - and I like him a lot. When Vonnegut died, Jon Stewart said that "the world is less interesting without him in it," and I couldn't agree more. I don't always agree with everything Vonnegut says, and I can't deny that some of these pieces are better than others - the long modern retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for instance, is certainly...something. But by and large, to read Palm Sunday is to listen to a natural storyteller - a raconteur, a curmudgeon, a social commentator, a comic wit, and just a fascinating person - opine about life, family members, history, and more.Over the course of Palm Sunday, you'll get graduation speeches, reflections on the shape of stories, odes to Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain, musings on the nature of mental health, somber thoughts about the increasingly forgotten horrors of Dresden, a look into Vonnegut's family tree, discussions about the Statler brothers, and much more. The whole experience can feel disjointed and jumbled together, to put it mildly, but that doesn't make the individual experiences less enjoyable. As Vonnegut sardonically chuckles through his morbid thoughts of the world, you can almost smell his cigarette smoke and hear his inimitable gravelly voice.More than that, there are genuine insights into Vonnegut's thought process here, especially in a long self-interview originally posted in the Paris Review. Oh, Vonnegut takes it in his usual ironic style, but there are genuinely thoughtful moments throughout, as if he found himself taking the whole experiment seriously despite himself.And, of course, there are the phrases that just delight you - the things that Vonnegut says so perfectly that you can't help but marvel that no one's said it before, or better."A folk society, in his imagination and in our imaginations, too, is an ideal scheme within which people can take really good care of one another, can share fairly, and can distribute honors to one and all. Maybe so. That could be a dream, but I do not choose to think so." "What should young people do today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.""There is this drawback, though: If you give to that sort of stranger the uncritical respect that you give to friends and relatives, you will also want to understand and help him. There is no way to avoid this. Be warned: If you allow yourself to see dignity in someone, you have doomed yourself to wanting to understand and help whoever it is."In short, it's Vonnegut at his core: cynical, snarky, sarcastic...and yet unable to give up hope that we could be better than what he's seen us be, proving the old adage that at the heart of every cynic is a wounded optimist. And those words give me some comfort that maybe we can do that after all.

This book is a wonderful collection of cobbled together transcripts of talk and speeches Vonnegut made over the years, along with a family history. Because they were all written by him they capture his sensitivities, values and humor. Anyone who enjoys his other works will enjoy this.

This is a collection of essays, speeches, letters, etc. that reflect Vonnegut's views on various topics. There a few nuggets of brilliance in here, such as Vonnegut's chapter on censorship of his works. Authors tackling censorship has been something that has been done to death, even at the time this book was released, but Vonnegut does probably the best job of it. There is a sense of sincere, righteous indignation present here that stands out from his usual work, which tends to be more ironic and subdued.The book contains much reflection about Vonnegut's German American ancestry and upbringing, his genealogy, and his familial relations. Family, in general, is a central theme of this collection. And to be honest, there's only so much a reader outside of Vonnegut himself who could be invested in a family history of Kurt Vonnegut unless they were writing a biography or historical piece. There are moments where this material shines, like when Vonnegut discusses American attitudes towards German Americans during the war years. Otherwise, I found it difficult to focus a significant amount of the time in reading this. The author was as sharp as ever in his political and social commentary, but the material could have been trimmed; A Man Without a Country is an example. Worth a read, but be prepared to skip past a few chapters that start to get monotonous.

I started reading Vonnegut for a reason that Vonnegut probably would have appreciated. I had a huge crush on a girl, and she liked Vonnegut, and I wanted things to talk to her about. At first, I liked what I read okay, but I didn't quite see the big deal about a lot of it, and I missed some analogies and symbolic parts of what I read.For me at least, Palm Sunday was like a short course on Vonnegut taught by Vonnegut. It wove together common themes in his writing and made them easier to more fully appreciate.The girl and I drifted apart and we became happily married to different people. But Vonnegut has remained my favorite novelist for over 30 years now.

I am a huge Vonnegut fan and have read all of his fiction and most of his short fiction collections. Recently, I've been tackling his non-fiction collections, and I started with this one. You can't really call this a novel. It's more of a collection of random thoughts, a mini-autobiography, and an essay and speech collection. If you value Kurt Vonnegut's opinions then this book will be a great read. It's a great personal look into a man who's fiction does hint at the man behind the pen but leaves you wondering who really is behind the story.You can find this book relatively cheaply. (Hardcover is going for 7 cents on here on Amazon.) For that price you really can't go wrong with this book, especially if you're a Vonnegut fan and don't have this in your collection.

This is a fine book, one I just discovered (it was published in 1981). It has a multitude of essays, but the core (for me) is his discussion of his German forebears, who settled in Indianapolis around 1850 when it had just 8,000 inhabitants. For many decades the civic life of the rapidly growing city was Germanic in nature, with Kurt's ancestors and kin dominating many aspects of civic and business life. Some wonderful stuff here, including Kurt's own denunciation of the anti-German sentiment which swept the city and the US as a result of WWI -- German language and culture had to be supressed, even though in the case of this and many mid-west cities, it was a vastly proud and beneficial heritage. Great book, which bears the subtitle: "An Autobiographical Collage."

Author writes about his history and this is helpful in upstanding his other books. It is interesting to learn his history

A thought provoking anthology of speeches, essays and biographical sketches covering the 20 year period 1959-79. Much sagacity here in KVs trademark style of simple, elegant and spikey humour. His concerns and comments are as applicable now as they were then. How about this for starters, " Vanity rather than wisdom determines how the world is run".

This is a must read for Vonnegut fans. Much insight into the cynical, old grouch's personality.

I'm a big Vonnegut fan --big--, but this reads very indulgent. His other collection ("Wampeters...") is one I read frequently and highly recommend.