Saturday, January 26, 2013

IF GOD WERE ALIVE TODAY A NOVELLA by Kurt Vonnegut

Finished Fr 1/25/13

Vonnegut's last (unfinished) work. This was in a book which also contained his first work, BASIC TRAINING, and contained a foreword by his daughter, Nanette.

IF GOD WERE ALIVE TODAY is a kind of memoir by stand-up comic, Gil Berman (Gilbert Lanz Berman). His father, Dr. Robert Berman, DDS, was an orthodontist and avid golfer. He took up dentistry because the patient was never in any real danger. Magda was his wife and she was widowed for twenty-three years, and died of pancreatic cancer. Robert committed suicide--ran the car in the garage (seat belt buckled).  Gil was a student at Columbia University and got his start in comedy because there was a club eight blocks from the school. He married a stripper on LSD, got her pregnant, and then broke her jaw. She settled  out of court.  He's an ex-addict, ex-alcoholic and sexual neuter.

"The War On Drugs' might as well be 'The War On Glaciers' with the soldiers armed with ice picks and smoking joints.

"Sobriety"- The drug of choice from kindergarten to the sixth grade.

'Celibacy is like not lighting a cigarette'

'Drugs are science, Alcohol is superstition'

I spent about an hour reading this short novel, and didn't bother with the first book.


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