Bluebeard
by Kurt Vonnegut (1987)
2024 reads, 12/22
“I can remember thinking that war was so horrible that, at last, thank goodness, nobody could ever be fooled by romantic pictures and fiction and history into marching to war again. Nowadays, of course, you can buy a machine gun with a plastic bayonet for your little kid at the nearest toy boutique.”
Been a bit behind on reviews (and reading in general), but I think I’m starting to get back on track. It’s been a busy few months! Starting up again with Vonnegut’s Bluebeard, I actually finished this back in April, but never got around to writing up.
Our main character is (fictional) abstract expressionist painter Rabo Karabekian, and Bluebeard is his autobiography. His parents are survivors of the Armenian genocide, and after moving to America, he serves in WWII and loses an eye. So already, Karabekian has this layered trauma of not just his own experiences in combat, but his inherited survivor’s guilt; he thus says, “everybody who is alive is a survivor, and everybody who is dead isn’t,” and because of this, “everybody alive must have the Survivor’s Syndrome.”
Having lived through the bombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war, Vonnegut is no stranger to violence. These themes of post-war trauma in America permeate through all his novels (that I’ve read so far) in some way, shape, or form; Bluebeard is no different. But another major theme not often seen in Vonnegut’s other works is the morality and subjectivity of art.
Circe Berman, a writer who stays with Karabekian (and the one who encouraged him to write his autobiography in the first place), is a perfect foil for him. She publishes young adult fiction under the pseudonym “Polly Madison” and is constantly belittled by Karabekian. She, in turn, responds that her works are being read all over the world, while the paintings of the abstract expressionists collect dust. Does art need to have a message, or meaning? Does art need a legacy, or can it only have utility in certain moments?
I believe that Karabekian is somewhat modelled after Vonnegut himself; Karabekian is an extremely talented artist, yet chooses to create these abstract paintings in lieu of realistic or “proper” paintings à la Monet or da Vinci, in the same way Vonnegut chooses to use his skills of language and humor to write these absurd sci-fi novels. It may not be a one-to-one analogy, but it can get a little meta. This is all, of course, superbly concluded by the potato barn reveal towards the end (no spoilers!).
“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”
Though this isn’t one of Vonnegut’s most famous books, Bluebeard raises some interesting questions about what it means to be an artist, and human, in a postwar, postmodern world.