71-year-old Rabokal Carabezia, a former World War II soldier, former painter and now a well-known collector, is single, reclusive and rich, living alone in a mansion on Long Island, New York, stubbornly guarding the secrets of his potato warehouse.
However, one day, a rash, lively, and curious widow suddenly breaks into his life, forcing him to look back on the first half of his life, pestering him to open his secret warehouse and tell the story of his life...
This story, which originates from the well-known fairy tale "Bluebeard", is the masterpiece "Bluebeard" written by Kurt Vonnegut, a representative of American heavyweight black humor literature in the late years.
The Chinese Simplified edition of this fictional autobiography has recently been officially released, and Ashin has prepared the following 10 things to take you to know more about Kurt Vonnegut and his Bluebeard.
"I know who I am, a few pounds," Kurt Vonnegut once said, "I wrote so well, it was really offensive to everyone." ”
Young Vonnegut
But Vonnegut may have this confidence, after all, his "fans" are all over the world and are well-known: Doris Lessing, Haruki Murakami, John Owen, Kenzaburo Oe, Norman Mailer...
Vonnegut at work
On American college campuses in the 1960s, Vonnegut's novels were almost universally available, and Norman Mailer called them "the idols of generations of American youth."
At present, Vonnegut's works published in the mainland include "Slaughterhouse No. 5", "Breakfast of Champions", "Prisoner Bird", "Welcome to the Monkey House", "2081", etc., all of which are popular masterpieces.
Regarding Vonnegut's personal style, it can be seen in the evaluation of him by several well-known media:
"Vonnegut is a combination of George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and The Flash... A funny and crazy scientist. --Time Magazine
"A laughing doomsday prophet." —The New York Times
"Our most outstanding black humorist." - Atlantic Monthly
Vonnegut studied chemistry at Cornell University: "Hanging on to junior year"; later studied anthropology at the University of Chicago, where his dissertation was unanimously killed by all the professors.
Twenty years later, he was allowed to submit his famous work "The Cat's Cradle" as a graduation thesis, which led to his master's degree.
Bluebeard is the first edition of the Chinese Simplified since its original was published in 1987 and more than thirty years later. Translated by Yang Xiangrong, translator of Stoner, The Bluedest Eye, and Crocodile Street.
One dimension that Vonnegut is known for is his "counter-mainstream anti-classics" as a writer: black humor, postmodernism, science fiction... He was even "expelled from serious literary circles" by some critics in the 1960s.
But in his later years, "Bluebeard", instead, in its usual playful satire, somewhat subtly "returned to realism".
Kurt Vonnegut's books are always about World War II and its trauma, America's middle and upper class life, absurd times and deranged lives—Bluebeard adds something else, such as Vonnegut's new understanding of women and late 20th-century American postmodern art.
It was the first of Vonnegut's novels to deal seriously with the relationship between men and women, and for the first time there were strong female characters speaking up for women in his novels.
In "Bluebeard", the protagonist Rabokal Karabecchia has indeed been married several times, but his personality is "honest" to the point that he is even a bit "nesty", of course, he cannot kill his wife, but in the end, Karabecchia still opens the warehouse door to this curious widow, which is the secret of his life and the absolute sound of his life...
The book incorporates many of the themes of Vonnegut's early novels, including personal identity, the social role of the artist, the importance of the family, the American hierarchy, and the physical and emotional costs of war, and is a great "summative" creation of his life.
An important masterpiece of Vonnegut's later years
Wild humor and pungent taunts
In this fictional autobiography, they are intertwined
-End-
2022.2.14
Edit: Yoyo | Audit: Sangsang