1982; 270 pages. New Author? : No. Genres
: Humorous American Fiction; Satire; Character Study. Overall Rating: 6*/10.
Allow me to introduce you to Rudy Waltz. He's 50 years old, and was born in 1932. He’ll be your narrator in this book.
He’s a pharmacist by trade, as
was his father, Otto. Otto was also an
aspiring painter, although that career never got far. Perhaps it was because people knew Otto’s
favorite artist was Adolph Hitler.
Rudy is presently living in
Haiti, where he owns a hotel. That’s
because the town that Rudy grew up in, Midland City, Ohio, has been completely
eradicated by a neutron bomb. It was
probably accidental, but who knows for sure.
The main thing you should know
about Rudy is his nickname: “Deadeye Dick”. It’s an appropriate moniker since, as
everybody in Midland City was once aware of, Rudy is a two-time killer. Shot them with a rifle, no less.
What’s To Like...
At its heart, Deadeye
Dick is a satiric character study of our narrator as he strives to
move beyond a very unfortunate event in his youth. That may sound like a recipe for a boring
book, but not when the author is Kurt Vonnegut, who manages to infuse humor,
pathos, and irony into the tale.
Despite the book being more
than 40 years old, a number of timely themes are subtly addressed,
including gun control, nuclear power dangers, sexual
orientation, authoritarian governments, and modern art.
The story is told in the
first-person POV (Rudy’s), and for the most part takes place in the aforementioned fictional small midwestern town of Midland City, Ohio. Rudy’s
family relationships with his core family—father, mother, and brother—are one of
the major themes of the book.
I liked the way Kurt Vonnegut
develops Rudy’s life. His dream is to
become a successful playwright, despite his dad insisting he carve out a career
in pharmaceuticals. Rudy even eventually
manages to get one of his plays to open one night on Broadway, and the
obvious literary thread here would be for him achieve his dream in the theatrical arts. Alas, Vonnegut deems otherwise.
The ending is unforeseen and
interesting, but it doesn’t really “complete” any part of Rudy’s life. It screams for a sequel, but ANAICT none of
Kurt Vonnegut’s four novels written after this fulfill that role.
Ratings…
Amazon:
4.3/5
based on 1,346 ratings and 149 reviews.
Goodreads: 3.84/5 based on 31,267
ratings and 1,440 reviews.
Kewlest New Word ...
Busby (n.) : a tall fur hat, often adorned
with a bag-like ornament. (Google it.)
Excerpts...
To the-as-yet unborn, to all innocent wisps
of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.
I have caught life. I have come down with life. I was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness,
and then a little peephole opened quite suddenly. Light and sound poured in. Voices began to describe me and my
surroundings. Nothing they said could be
appealed. They said I was a boy named
Rudolph Waltz, and that was that. (pg. 1, and opening
paragraph)
Father made a ritual of lighting a cigar,
and then he shook out the match and dropped it in what was left of the Linzer
torte, and then he said again, “Be a pharmacist! Go with the grain of your heritage! There is no artistic talent in this family,
nor will there ever be! You can imagine
how much it hurts me to say so. We are
business people, and that’s all we can ever hope to be.”
“Felix is gifted,” I said.
“And so is every circus freak,” said
Father. (pg. 131)
I was the great
marksman, anyway. If I aimed at nothing,
then nothing is what I would hit. (pg.
69)
The cussing in Deadeye Dick is sparse. I noted just 8 instances over the first third
of the book, one of which was a racial epithet.
There is a bit of drug usage later on, mostly ingestion of uppers.
There were a couple of typos, the most
glaring of which was a character’s last name, Morrisey,
being misspelled later on: Morissey. Methinks the publisher is to blame.
Several weird literary devices
are used throughout the book, including a whole bunch of recipes, and a couple of passages written as playlet script excerpts. I wasn't impressed.
The biggest issue is the
storyline. Simply put: there wasn’t any. Rudy tells
us about his life, but it never becomes n overarching tale. He ends up living in Haiti, but nothing
special happens there. Midland, Ohio is
annihilated by a neutron bomb, but we never find out who did it, or why.
Fortunately, Vonnegut’s
writing skills are sufficient to elevate Deadeye Dick from a boring novel to a passable one, but not a stellar one. It kept me
interested, but only because I was sure that sooner or later a plotline would emerge. It never did.
6 Stars. One last thing. One of the frequently seen internet memes
apparently got its start here. Namely:
“To be is to do.” (Socrates)
“To do is to be.” (Jean-Paul Sartre)
“Do be do be do.” (Frank Sinatra)
I never knew its source before.
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