Mother Night
Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.
Stats for nerds
23recommend
54mentions
43people
2012–2026years
54% recommend46% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I think the writer might enjoy Vonnegut's Mother Night.
> Vonnegut is not, I believe, talking about mere inauthenticity. He is talking about engaging in activities which do not agree with what we ourselves feel are our own core morals while telling ourselves, “This is not who I really am. I am just going along with this on the outside to get by.” Vonnegut’s message is that the separation I just described between how we act externally and who we really are is imaginary.
https://thewisdomdaily.com/mother-night-we-are-what-we-prete...
- Agree. It's just not a very good Vonnegut novel though. You can see him without (yet) a voice in the novel.
If "Breakfast of Champions" is a little too nutty though, I think I might like his "Mother Night" best. (But maybe we like nutty Kurt?)
- Mother night was my favorite Vonnegut book.
- "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
- Kurt Vonnegut, "Mother Night".
Good book that is a direct answer to your question.
- I'll take Kurt Vonnegut, from "Mother Night":
I have never seen a more sublime demonstration of the totalitarian mind, a mind which might be linked unto a system of gears where teeth have been filed off at random. Such snaggle-toothed thought machine, driven by a standard or even by a substandard libido, whirls with the jerky, noisy, gaudy pointlessness of a cuckoo clock in Hell.
- I would wager that more than a few are climate deniers only because it's politically expedient. The Trump era of US politics has revealed how quickly many politicians will fall in line when necessary to retain their political power. I'm sure it's always been this way, but it's been painfully obvious the past few years with Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, etc... reversing course when it's clear not doing so will cost them their power.
Vonnegut's novel "Mother Night" (one of my favorites) warns:
> "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be".
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