5.31.2008

8. Kurt Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect

This is a book of short stories published after KV's death.  Most of them are stories about the goings on in POW camps towards the end of WWII, others are about the havoc that followed the allied victory and there are a couple of other random ones about different subjects.

The stories are all quite sarcastic in the traditional KV style.  I particularly enjoyed the title story which is about an institute that is set up on Oklahoma to proove that people are crazy because they are possessed by the devil.  The institute is backed by a rich oil magnate who pours his entire wealth into the thing and the "scientists" there conduct experiments - and one large scale clinical trial - with devices that are supposed to rid the body of the devil.  One device is a headset that shoots a low intensity current between the person's ears.

There is some controversy about how finished these stories actually were when they were found and how much work the author's son, Mark, put into finishing them.

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