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who disapproved of his language, and he wrenches out of deserved and seemly abandonment yard after yard of paltry speeches made to commencement audiences, mourners at the funerals of friends, and unwary student activists assembled to hear rock music and inveigh against nuclear power. In these maunderings, he is disorganized, trendy, superficial, and stupefyingly boring. That last, no doubt, a familial trait inherited from his uncle John, who presented him with a history of his ancestors that would make a Barry Manilow record sound punchy, and which Vonnegut has the common gall to excerpt at great length, under the title “Roots.” There is no point to any of this stuff, which he found lying around the house and should have left to molder where the Lord had put it.

This is the kind of book that one heartily wishes had been saved, however narrowly, from publication. Vonnegut has his audience, the canon of his works, an understandable pride in his progress, a devoted family, a tendency to boast that he’s quit drinking (if this sort of work is what comes of sobriety, it’s the worst blow to the temperance movement in years), and funds adequate to support a comfortable life. There was no need for this demeaning drivel.

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David Brudnoy

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who disapproved of his language, and he wrenches out of deserved and seemly abandonment yard after yard of paltry speeches made to commencement audiences, mourners at the funerals of friends, and unwary student activists assembled to hear rock music and inveigh against nuclear power. In these maunderings, he is disorganized, trendy, superficial, and stupefyingly boring. That last, no doubt, a familial trait inherited from his uncle John, who presented him with a history of his ancestors that would make a Barry Manilow record sound punchy, and which Vonnegut has the common gall to excerpt at great length, under the title “Roots.” There is no point to any of this stuff, which he found lying around the house and should have left to molder where the Lord had put it.

This is the kind of book that one heartily wishes had been saved, however narrowly, from publication. Vonnegut has his audience, the canon of his works, an understandable pride in his progress, a devoted family, a tendency to boast that he’s quit drinking (if this sort of work is what comes of sobriety, it’s the worst blow to the temperance movement in years), and funds adequate to support a comfortable life. There was no need for this demeaning drivel.