Bluebeard
A Novel
(Sprache: Englisch)
Robo Karabekian, a minor member of the Abstract Expressionist school of painting, reveals the secrets of his life, which he has locked away in a potato barn in Long Island
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Robo Karabekian, a minor member of the Abstract Expressionist school of painting, reveals the secrets of his life, which he has locked away in a potato barn in Long Island
Klappentext zu „Bluebeard “
Ranks with Vonnegut s best and goes one step beyond . . . joyous, soaring fiction. The Atlanta Journal and ConstitutionBroad humor and bitter irony collide in this fictional autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, who, at age seventy-one, wants to be left alone on his Long Island estate with the secret he has locked inside his potato barn. But then a voluptuous young widow badgers Rabo into telling his life story and Vonnegut in turn tells us the plain, heart-hammering truth about man s careless fancy to create or destroy what he loves.
Praise for Bluebeard
Vonnegut is at his edifying best. The Philadelphia Inquirer
The quicksilver mind of Vonnegut is at it again. . . . He displays all his talents satire, irony, ridicule, slapstick, and even a shaggy dog story of epic proportions. The Cincinnati Post
[Kurt Vonnegut is] a voice you can trust to keep poking holes in the social fabric. San Francisco Chronicle
It has the qualities of classic Bosch and Slaughterhouse Vonnegut. . . . Bluebeard is uncommonly feisty. USA Today
Is Bluebeard good? Yes! . . . This is vintage Vonnegut good wine from his best grapes. The Detroit News
A joyride . . . Vonnegut is more fascinated and puzzled than angered by the human stupidities and contradictions he discerns so keenly. So hop in his rumble seat. As you whiz along, what you observe may provide some new perspectives. Kansas City Star
Lese-Probe zu „Bluebeard “
Having written "The End" to this story of my life, I find it prudent to scamper back here to before the beginning, to my front door, so to speak, and to make this apology to arriving guests: "I promised you an autobiography, but something went wrong in the kitchen. It turns out to be a diary of this past troubled summer, too! We can always send out for pizzas if necessary. Come in, come in."I am the erstwhile American painter Rabo Karabekian, a one-eyed man. I was born of immigrant parents in San Ignacio, California, in 1916. I begin this autobiography seventy-one years later. To those unfamiliar with the ancient mysteries of arithmetic, that makes this year 1987.
I was not born a cyclops. I was deprived of my left eye while commanding a platoon of Army Engineers, curiously enough artists of one sort or another in civilian life, in Luxembourg near the end of World War Two. We were specialists in camouflage, but at that time were fighting for our lifes as ordinary infantry. The unit was composed of artists, since it was the theory of someone in the Army that we would be especially good at camouflage.
And so we were! And we were! What hallucinations we gave the Germans as to what was dangerous to them behind our lines, and what was not. Yes, and we were allowed to live like artists, too, hilariously careless in matters of dress and military courtesy. We were never attached to a unit as quotidian as a division or even a corps. We were under orders which came directly from the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force, which assigned us temporarily to this or that general, who had heard of our astonishing illusions. He was our patron for just a little while, permissive and fascinated and finally grateful.
Then off we went again.
Since I had joined the regular Army and become a lieutenant two years before the United States backed into the war, I might have attained the rank of lieutenant colonel at least by the end of the wear. But I refused
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all promotions beyond captain in order to remain with my happy family of thirty-six men. That was my first experience with a family that large. My second came after the war, when I found myself a friend and seeming peer of those American painters who have now entered art history as founders of the Abstract Expressionist school.
My mother and father had families bigger than those two of mine back in the Old World--and of course their relatives back there were blood relatives. They lost their blood relatives to a massacre by the Turkish Empire of about one million of its Armenian citizens, who were thought to be treacherous for two reasons: first because they were clever and educated, and second because so many of them had relatives on the other side of Turkey's border with its enemy, the Russian Empire.
It was an age of Empires. So is this one, not all that well disguised.
The German Empire, allied with the Turks, sent impassive military observers to evaluate this century's first genocide, a word which did not exist in any language then. The word is now understood everywhere to mean a carefully planned effort to kill every member, be it man, woman, or child, of a perceived subfamily of the human race.
The problems presented by such ambitious projects are purely industrial: how to kill that many big, resourceful animals cheaply and quickly, make sure that nobody gets away, and dispose of mountains of meat and bones afterwards. The Turks, in their pioneering effort, had neither the aptitude for really big business nor the specialized machinery required. The Germans would exhibit both par excellence only one quarter of a century later. The Turks simply took all the Armenians they could find in their homes or places of work or refreshment or play or worship or education or whatever, marched them out into the countryside, and kept them away from food and water and shelter, and
My mother and father had families bigger than those two of mine back in the Old World--and of course their relatives back there were blood relatives. They lost their blood relatives to a massacre by the Turkish Empire of about one million of its Armenian citizens, who were thought to be treacherous for two reasons: first because they were clever and educated, and second because so many of them had relatives on the other side of Turkey's border with its enemy, the Russian Empire.
It was an age of Empires. So is this one, not all that well disguised.
The German Empire, allied with the Turks, sent impassive military observers to evaluate this century's first genocide, a word which did not exist in any language then. The word is now understood everywhere to mean a carefully planned effort to kill every member, be it man, woman, or child, of a perceived subfamily of the human race.
The problems presented by such ambitious projects are purely industrial: how to kill that many big, resourceful animals cheaply and quickly, make sure that nobody gets away, and dispose of mountains of meat and bones afterwards. The Turks, in their pioneering effort, had neither the aptitude for really big business nor the specialized machinery required. The Germans would exhibit both par excellence only one quarter of a century later. The Turks simply took all the Armenians they could find in their homes or places of work or refreshment or play or worship or education or whatever, marched them out into the countryside, and kept them away from food and water and shelter, and
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Autoren-Porträt von Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut s humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America s attention in The Sirens of Titan in 1959 and established him as a true artist (The New York Times) with Cat s Cradle in 1963. He was, as Graham Greene declared, one of the best living American writers. Mr. Vonnegut passed away in April 2007.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Kurt Vonnegut
- 2008, 336 Seiten, Maße: 14 x 21 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: DELTA
- ISBN-10: 038533351X
- ISBN-13: 9780385333511
- Erscheinungsdatum: 04.08.2008
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
Ranks with Vonnegut s best and goes one step beyond . . . joyous, soaring fiction. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution Vonnegut is at his edifying best. The Philadelphia Inquirer
The quicksilver mind of Vonnegut is at it again. . . . He displays all his talents satire, irony, ridicule, slapstick, and even a shaggy dog story of epic proportions. The Cincinnati Post
[Kurt Vonnegut is] a voice you can trust to keep poking holes in the social fabric. San Francisco Chronicle
It has the qualities of classic Bosch and Slaughterhouse Vonnegut. . . . Bluebeard is uncommonly feisty. USA Today
Is Bluebeard good? Yes! . . . This is vintage Vonnegut good wine from his best grapes. The Detroit News
A joyride . . . Vonnegut is more fascinated and puzzled than angered by the human stupidities and contradictions he discerns so keenly. So hop in his rumble seat. As you whiz along, what you observe may provide some new perspectives. Kansas City Star
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