That's Absurd

Beowulf, by Robert Nye An adaptation and interpretation of the Beowulf story for younger readers. I was first exposed to this book (unknowingly) in my senior year when Mrs. Richardson read us a bit of it for an assignment (without mentioning the author) about re-writing a classic in our own words. Didn’t know it was Robert Nye, whose adult books I discovered in college. Got this edition and recognized it in the first few pages and made the connection. A cover by Jean Leon Huens. Ranking: Keeper. File Code: Children’s Novel. Paperback.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, by Tom Stoppard. Read this play in my senior year of SHS and felt sophisticated and world-weary; bought a copy from one of the last book sales I ever went to in high school. A highly amusing ‘metafiction’ on two minor characters from “Hamlet” and their existential situation as they try to figure out their role given only the clues they witness when they’re ‘on’ in Shakespeare’s play. Made into a rather unsatisfactory movie. Ranking: Keeper. File Code: Drama. Paperback.

Welcome to the Monkey House, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. A collection of his early short stories. I remember reading one, “Harrison Bergeron”, in middle school, and being impressed. That sparked a vague interest, and with enough gossip that interest developed until I got a few of his books for a quarter each at a garage sale. This was one of them. I’ve never agreed with his limited philosophy, but he always has something interesting to say, a limpid prose style, and viewpoint that seems valid enough to argue with. Ranking: Keeper. File Code: Short Stories. Anthology. Paperback.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. A man gets ‘shaken loose in time’, and seems to experience the past, the present, and the future all at once, including a visit to some aliens who all see time this way, which leads him to a fatalistic point of view and ends in his assassination. Vonnegut’s opinion is that everything, including the human race, is a machine that has no freedom, but must proceed to an inevitable end. I think this is analyzing life using a philosophy, rather than developing a philosophy from observing life. Experience shows me that free will does exist, even if desired results are not guaranteed. Still, as I say, his arguments do arise to the dignity of debate. Ranking: Keeper. File Code: Science Fiction. Paperback.

Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Another classic among hipster nihilists, attacking the materialistic values of the post-war prosperity and suggesting that humans are machines with pre-determined functions. Vonnegut is the bitter jester that shakes up facile preconceptions but offers no satisfying answers, merely shrugging and stating, “And so it goes.” It’s an entertainingly ironic farce, and how does it end? With an instance of completely human yearning. Ranking: Keeper. File Code: Science Fiction. Paperback.