N’s Reviews > A Man Without a Country > Status Update

To go from “Humor is a way of holding off how awful life can be, to protect yourself. Finally, you just get too tired, and the news is awful, and humor doesn’t work anymore.” To “I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘if this isn’t nice I don’t know what is” in 3 pages is crazy work.

Essay 7 should be required reading.

When (if) I am an old man, I can only hope to babble 10% as eloquently as 82-year-old Vonnegut. Introspective and witty as ever, this collection of essays exemplifies exactly why he is so celebrated as one of the greatest of all time.