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

of the planet simply fails to reproduce, hence dies out, except for a small saving remnant on the new ark of the Galápagos Islands. To tell this tale of humanity's evolving "a million years in the future," Vonnegut invents an ideal omniscient, invisible narrator Leon Trout (son of the nefarious Kilgore Trout) who reads minds, discerns motivation, predicts events accurately over the millennia of his tale. He describes his role as writer as: "Nature's experiment with voyeurism, as my father was Nature's experiment with ill-founded self-confidence" (82). Moreover, Leon writes purely for his art's sake, since he has not "the slightest hint that there might actually be a reader somewhere. There isn't one. There can't be one" (257). The ephemeral nature of Trout's writing along with his total lack of an audience raises issues central to most discussions of contemporary art that Vonnegut explores more fully in Bluebeard. They are also cogently posed in Tom Wolfe's story in The Painted Word (1975) of the masterpiece created by the greatest artist in the history of the world: Suppose the greatest artist in the history of the world, impoverished and unknown at the time, had been sitting at a table in the old Automat at Union Square, cadging some free water and hoping to cop a leftover crust of toasted corn muffin.

.. and suddenly he got the inspiration for the greatest work of art in the history of the world. Possessing not even so much as a pencil or a burnt match, he dipped his forefinger into the glass of water and began recording this greatest of all inspirations.

.. on a paper napkin, with New York tap water as his paint. In a matter of seconds.

.. the water had diffused through the paper and the grand design vanished, whereupon the greatest artist in the history of the world slumped to the table and died of a broken heart, and the manager came over, and he thought that here was nothing more than a dead wino 113