Mother Night Mass Market Paperback – January 1, 1974

Howard W. Campbell, Jr., an American who moved to Germany in 1923 at age 11, sits in his jail cell in Israel awaiting trial for war crimes during World War Two, writing his memoirs. Campbell was a well-known playwright and Nazi propagandist, recruited as a spy by an American agent shortly before WWII started.The story follows Campbell and his rise through Goebbel’s Nazi propaganda organization, the war, and his eventual return to America. In New York City he is discovered by white supremacists, who consider him a hero. Not to give away much more of the story, I’ll leave off here.The novel was fantastic. (Disclaimer: Kurt Vonnegut is a big favorite of mine, so…) There was also a jarring thought I had early into the reading: This was published in the early 1960’s, but actual, authentic, confirmed and dedicated Nazis are alive and well, going stronger than ever here in good old America. In 2017!! Everywhere. Not famous or obvious, just otherwise ordinary people. Nazis! Completely depressing and horrifying, and true.And it’s Vonnegut, so of course I’m going to rave. Highly recommended.

This is not one of Vonnegut's most popular or well reviewed books. In his bibliography, it probably falls under the heading of "neglected."I think I have read all of Vonnegut's novels, and most of them at least twice. But this one, despite its obscurity, hangs onto me the hardest. It's all about that grey line between doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, and doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, being a subject to everyone else's agenda, and how your own responsibility for your actions can become lost in the noise of everyone else's agenda and expectations.And, in a more concrete sense, I find it impossible to think of the post WW-II hunting and trials of Nazi war criminals without thinking of this book.This might not have the punch of Cat's Cradle, the strident anti-Warness of Slaughterhouse 5, or even the dark cynicism of his later works, but I still find it to be the most emotionally and intellectually compelling of his novels.

You are what you pretend to be. This was a disturbing tale of deception and patriotism. Should one fight for individualism or nationalism? I enjoyed this novel but it wasn't my favorite Vonnegut read. I appreciated the struggles of the characters. I'm not sure how I would act in similar situations but I guess that is the point of the book. What is the cost of individual lives in the big scheme of things? Howard Campbell, Jr. suffered great personal losses. Vonnegut's style and story telling is in full force with Mother Night. A recommended read that will get you thinking.

THIS IS THE ONLY story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvelous moral; I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.Vonnegut, Kurt (2011-08-21). Mother Night (Kurt Vonnegut Series) . RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.This is an odd book to describe. It's not a "serious" book, at all. However, it deals with a serious subject. It presents absurd characters and situations, but doesn't push the absurdity into total farce. The writing is pleasant to read and easily assimilated; Vonnegut is adept at capturing the vernacular and rhythms of mid-Century, Middle-America, and, occasionally, Vonnegut pens an aphorism that is insightful and humorous at the same time.The book begins with Vonneguts "editorial note" about how he received the purported manuscript of Howard W. Campbell, Jr, a former Nazi acolyte of the dark arts of Joseph Goebbels. The real value in the note is Vonnegut's description of his time as an POW in Dresden and his survival of the fire-bombing of Dresden.The plot - such as it is - involves Campbell's recruitment as the deepest cover American spy in Nazi Germany. Campbell's "cover" is so perfect that he is widely held to be one of the Nazi's best manufacturers of Nazi anti-semitic propaganda in the Third Reich. In fact, after the war, in New York, Campbell points out to the reader that the various racists and anti-semites he falls in with are telling stories and using prayers he wrote.//The prayer appealed to so vicious and bigoted a God that it attracted the astonished attention of Pope Pius XI.Keeley was unfrocked, and Pope Pius sent a long letter to the American Hierarchy in which he said, among other things: "No true Catholic will take part in the persecution of his Jewish compatriots. A blow against the Jews is a blow against our common humanity."Keeley never went to prison, though many of his close friends did. While his friends enjoyed steam heat, clean beds and regular meals at government expense, Keeley shivered and itched and starved and drank himself blind on skid rows across the land. He would have been on a skid row still, or in a pauper's grave, if Jones and Krapptauer hadn't found and rescued him.Keeley's famous prayer, incidentally, was a paraphrase of a satiric poem I had composed and delivered on short wave before. And, while I am setting the record straight as to my contributions to literature, may I point out that Vice-Bundesfuehrer Krapptauer's claims about the Pope and the mortgage on the Vatican were my inventions, too.Vonnegut, Kurt (2011-08-21). Mother Night (Kurt Vonnegut Series) (pp. 73-74). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.The characters that Vonnegut introduces are absurd, but almost real. I researched Robert Sterling Wilson - "The Black Fuehrer of Harlem," a colored man who went to prison in 1942 as a Japanese spy" - because it seemed just possible in this crazy world that there was such a figure - it seemed to absurd not to be true. Father Keely is a knock off of Father Coughlin, obviously, and there must have been someone like "Vice-Bundesfuehrer Krapptauer." As for the racist-dentist Reverend Doctor Lionel J. D. Jones, D.D.S., with his theory that jaw and tooth formation determines the hierarchy of races,that kind of crackpot is far too real to be a mere invention.[By the way, Mother Night "connects" to Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle: A Novel by way of Jones' degree mill, i.e.,The Western Hemisphere University of the Bible, which is where the not-Catholic, not-Protestant minister of "Papa" Manzana received his divinity degree.]The story moves along and is enjoyable to read. The style reminded me of the "New Wave" science fiction written by various writers who I imagine were close to Vonnegut but didn't make the leap out of the "science fiction ghetto" in its hectic, episodic, aphoristic, and, frankly, disjointed style. For example, although they were worlds apart in terms of ideology, Vonnegut's story about Bodovskov - who plagiarizes Campbell's writings - reminded me of Heinlein's vignette about "The Man Who was Too Lazy to Fail" in Time Enough for Love.Here are some of the passages I enjoyed://That may be so. I had hoped, as a broadcaster, to be merely ludicrous, but this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate. So many people wanted to believe me!Vonnegut, Kurt (2011-08-21). Mother Night (Kurt Vonnegut Series) (p. 160). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.And://I doubt if there has ever been a society that has been without strong and young people eager to experiment with homicide, provided no very awful penalties are attached to it.Vonnegut, Kurt (2011-08-21). Mother Night (Kurt Vonnegut Series) (p. 161). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.And://"That proves what I've just been saying!" said Jones."How's that?" said the G-man."The Jews have infiltrated everything!" said Jones, smiling the smile of a logician who could never be topped."You talk about the Catholics and the Negroes--" said the G-man, "and yet, here your two best friends are a Catholic and a Negro.""What's so mysterious about that?" said Jones."Don't you hate them?" said the G-man. "Certainly not," said Jones."We all believe the same basic thing.""What's that?" said the G-man."This once-proud country of ours is falling into the hands of the wrong people," said Jones. He nodded, and so did Father Keeley and the Black Fuehrer. "And, before it gets back on the right track," said Jones, "some heads are going to roll."Vonnegut, Kurt (2011-08-21). Mother Night (Kurt Vonnegut Series) (p. 223). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

listening to this book after not reading it in 40 years made me instantly remember why I love Vonnegut and why this was always my favorite Vonnegut. This should be read by every human - especially in this day and age with what is happening all around us. I also wish to praise the narrator who did an absolutely astonishing job of bringing this book to life and making Howard W. Campbell live in my ears as well as my mind! This book has so much heart and so much compassion and so much humanity - read it, please!

When I bought my Kindle, there were a couple of books I promised myself I would read again forty years after the first time I had come across them. This is not only the first but possibly the greatest of all. Breathtaking, direct, subtle, witty, biting and tragic. It remains accessible and just perfect whether read slowly or hurried.

A truly fascinating novel that really stays with you. This book explores heroes, villains, good and evil but most of all human nature. Like with many of Vonneguts best books you don't realise how much the book is going to change you until a week after you readit and suddenly you're seeing the news or other people in a totally different light.

enjoyable, and retrospectively thought provoking.

I'd not read Vonnegut before I saw Breakfast for Champions on the Daily Deal. I read a couple of pages and just knew that I wanted to read a whole load of Vonnegut.

Not Vonnegut's best, but enjoyable

Accessible reading of an uncomfortable story on the ordinariness of the extraordinary. I think I will revisit this book again.

Brilliant!

I started reading this book the night before last, and didn't get any work done today because of it. Vonnegut delivers another tour de force in this novel about a Nazi spy and his past catching up to him. It is brilliantly funny at times, and crushing in its dissection of the human heart. In no other work have I found better words to describe what I have always felt to be 'true evil' than in the final confrontation between the hero and his 'nemesis.'I won't give it away.I will only say that if you read this book, like many of KVJ's, you should start it on a Friday, and plan for a long weekend.

Para los incondicionales de Vonnegut, como es mi caso. No importa sobre lo que escriba, siempre sorprende y divierte con su peculiar sentido del humor, entre negro y surrealista.

Althought in my view not his masterpiece, one more peak reached in the fine art of Vonnegut's salacious and disruptive narration. Not to miss. But I like more Timequake and Galapagos

Best modern novel I`ve ever read so far. The topic is really interesting and at the same time very controversial. Vonnegut`s style of writing is just amazing, plain, but at the same time rich and creative. One of the novels that should be read in school.

Ein ebenso interessanter wie unterhaltsamer und phantasievoller Roman über einenabgetauchten amerikanischen Agenten deutscher Herkunft im Nachkriegsamerika,der in der Nazizeit in Deutschland arbeitete.

Interesting narrative. Faking hate to survive or adapting to evil until numb to it all. Good book and well written

Fire