Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1994. [Vol. 2.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 22)

STUDIES - Donald E. Morse: The Joyful Celebration oflJfe. Kurt Vonnegut's Affirmative Vision in Galapagos and Bluebeard

with a wet napkin. Now, the question is: Would that have been the greatest work of art in the history of the world? (103—4)

6 Vonnegut improves on Wolfe's joke while sharpening its point by having his narrator die before he writes Galapagos and by having him write on air rather than in water! The result is an invisible novel written by an author dead for a million years. like all of Vonnegufs narrators Trout in Galápagos and Karabekian in Bluebeard are truly amateur writers, single-book authors with no previous writing experience which helps account for their "telegraphic.

.. manner" which proves as appropriate for them to use as it was for the Tralfamadoreans in Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut has one of his characters in Bluebeard, Circe Berman voice a criticism of Karabekian's style which echoes many of Vonnegut's own critics: "'How come you never use semicolons?'.

.. 'How come you chop it all up into little sections instead of letting it flow and flow?'" (38). But Berman speaks from her own perspective as a best-selling author unlike Karabekian, Trout His, or Trout pere each of whom is unconcerned about his readership, if any. Moreover, the narrative voice of each

—which Vonnegut elsewhere describes a "the voice of a child" (Palm Sunday 58)—proves admirably suited to their stories and personalities. In Galápagos Vonnegut uses both the fictional technique of an omniscient if naive narrator writing in the future for no discernible or possible audience, and the startling nature of earth's future fictional inhabitants as ways of commenting satirically on human beings' incredible penchant for self-destruction. The narrator's often incredulous tone, as he observes what humans appear to do best, accentuates what Vonnegut elsewhere calls "the unbelievability of life as it really is" {Palm Sunday 297) which in this novel centers on human stupidity, short-sightedness, and unthinking brutality towards one another and the planet Leon Trout 6 Compare Rabo Karabekian's disappearing paintings which might as well have been painted with tapwater or Kilgore Troufs inability to find any writing implement in Breakfast of Champions (67). 114