Two Reviews: Armageddon In Retrospect and 40 Hour Man

Sorry, lovers and haters, for missing last Thursday.

Casa de Teehan is considering a move in time and space and as such it's made life a bit topsy-turvy. Add to that some paying-gig deadlines for yours truly, and I'll rest when I'm dead.

Thanks go to Great Editor Blitz for looking the other way when my regular scheduled hauntings of this site go a bit awry. Good on him.


I was going to have ready for this entry a review of Was Superman a Spy? by Brian Cronin. That's going to have to wait until next time. I'm still digesting what I think of the book and you dear readers deserve reviews fully digested.

That's disgusting.


Okay, instead we're going to look at two books I've recently enjoyed and would like to share. First up...

Armageddon In Retrospect
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr
Putnam
April, 2008

What pulled me to the book was the discovery of "Hey, a new Kurt Vonnegut Jr. book!"

Turns out his son, in the fine tradition of many offspring of famous writers, compiled a posthumous collection of unpublished writings to celebrate their sire.

No harm. No foul. (Unless you're Christopher Tolkein and don't know when to turn it off.)

What made me buy the book was the photo reproduction of a 1945 letter Vonnegut wrote as a recently released POW during World War II--the first communication he was able to send to his family that he was even still alive. Vonnegut as a young man!




It seems we all have one basic image of Vonnegut--a cranky, but brilliant, old man--that it's hard to think of him as a kid who couldn't grow decent facial hair and who might have still had a spark of optimism in mankind. It's like finding a hand-made mother's day card from a six-year old Mark Twain. You just don't expect to ever run across something like that.

What's interesting is how the letter represents what was probably the single most influencing event of his writing life--his internment as a POW during the Dresden fire-bombing and the subsequent clean-up.

This is a man who saw what hell on Earth really looks like, and who had the ability to convey this to the masses. No romance. No idealization of the forces of democracy triumphing o'er evil. This is war, all warts. No roses. No sad songs sung bittersweetly because it's all just too horrific to even summon the breath to sing.

What follows the letters are a series of unpublished short stories--remeberances--which describe his experiences in this hell-hole of history.

It's dark, it's bleak. There are few heroes. Most everyone is a victim of one kind or another. Is there hope? Sure. Vonnegut was young once and even in the face of such destruction, such large-scale killing in the name of what's right, that he had some faith in humanity. But it's mostly bleak and it's ugly and it's very human. I've heard it said that W's Iraqi War broke his spirit and depressed him terribly. I think there's always been a sort of mourning of humanity in his works, and some of these earlier writings just serve to demonstrate that.

Yet somehow Vonnegut also transmits a little bit of whimsy in his writing. His careful choice of words and phrases paint vivid pictures and weave a good, thoughtful story. Look for the story of the first 21st century baby born in New York. Yeesh.

And it's not all bleak, anti-war stories. I highly recommend the commencement address he was meant to give prior to his passing, but was instead read aloud by his son Mark.

What lessons do we take away? War is bad. We should be unusually kind to one another. We should stop being so serious. Jokes help. Get a dog.

Recommendation? Highly recommended. If you're not already a fan of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., this won't make you one, but it might spur you to check out his earlier works. (I'd recommend Mother Night, Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle. If you're a fan already, you'll want this in your collection.

So it goes.

* * *

40 Hour Man
Stephen Beaupre, with art by Steve Lafler
Manx Media
June, 2006

I picked this up at a remaindered bookstore, so you might have trouble finding this on current bookstore shelves, but you should be able to find it in remaindered piles, or in the dusty back shelves of some comic book stores.

More's the pity, because it's not a bad book.

I speak of 40 Hour Man by Stephen Beaupre with art by Steve Lafler.

I think the biggest problem with the book is it lacks a large audience. While listed as a graphic novel, it's more a series of short vignettes from Beaupre's life working crap jobs.


Each vignette includes a cartoon illustration by established comic artist Steve Lafler who's employing an very underground, Kurtzman-like style.

Subject-wise, it's the story of Beaupre's work history--a series of low-level jobs at thinly disguised versions of places like Strawberries Records and Digital.

Buaepre is a first generation slacker, starting his slackerdom in the 70s which makes a lot of his experiences a little ancient for most young readers who have little concept of the horrors of disco or even know that once upon a time many computers were the size of a washing machine. Older readers may not be in touch with comics and graphic novels enough to have known the book even came out. I got lucky. I fall between Beaupre's generation and the current generation of snot-nosed kids. And I keep my eyes open for good indie-style graphic novels.

But I'm only one man.

It's a quick, enjoyable read.

The artwork complements the narrative perfectly. As for any "moral" that Beaupre offers, it might be that our jobs should not define us. That's good advice at any time. Work is a means to an end. Not the end itself.

I recommend it heartily, but will warn the snot-nosed generation that you won't get a lot of the "historical" references without having to ask someone. Older readers might be a little embarrassed with facing memories of what kind of music was once deemed popular and how stupid our hair looked. It's no wonder pot was so popular. Took your mind off how tacky the 70s and 80s were.

So yeah...it's a recommended read with those caveats.

* * *

This week, we'll come back to our regularly scheduled review at our regularly scheduled time.

Cheers!