Characters: B-
Writing: B+
Plot: B
Pacing: B+
Poignancy: B+
I generally hate being asked "Who's your favorite author?" I like to think of myself as well-read, yet I don't seem to process books in a way that would allow me to answer such a question. There are very few authors where I can say I really like more than one or two of their books. For example: I loved The World According to Garp, but then Irving just kept re-writing it, and his recent books have been a disaster. Then there are authors like Stephen King, who has written literally dozens of solid, entertaining novels (and the best book On Writing you'll likely find), whose output to consistency ratio would be extremely hard to beat. But none of King's books on their own would make it onto my all-time favorites list, so how could he? Or what about an author like J.K. Rowling, who has written one perfect series but nothing else? Would that be fair?
Point being, Kurt Vonnegut is the only answer I got. Of the fourteen novels he wrote (in addition to hundreds of short stories and essays, published in numerous collections), I've now read all but four. A couple of his books are all-time favorites, and none of them (that I've read) were worse than mediocre. Vonnegut's bibliography is about as solid as any author can hope to achieve while still being as prolific as he was. Needing something reliable for once, I picked up one of his later works, Bluebeard. Bluebeard isn't usually considered essential Vonnegut, and while I agree that it doesn't reach the heights of his best novels, it just goes to show how strong of an author he was. Even as one of his more average books, it's still quite good. And like most Vonnegut, it's a quick, engaging read, short and "easy" but nonetheless bearing some weighty philosophical musings. Perhaps it's easily overlooked because it isn't one of Vonnegut's more ambitious novels. The story is fairly simple: ostensibly the autobiography of an Armenian abstract expressionist painter named Rabo Karabekian, the narrative rarely pushes any further than its "old man looking back at his life" structure. Vonnegut divides the story into past and present, and while the two perspectives can be a bit lopsided and don't always merge as well as they should, they successfully move the book along at a brisk pace, even adding a dash of mystery and tension rarely found in Vonnegut novels.
In Karabekian's past, he moves from his childhood home to be the apprentice of a famous American painter in NYC. Eventually, (inevitably, perhaps, since this is a Vonnegut novel), he gets involved in WWII, before returning to America and becoming part of a circle of famous painters, alongside Pollack and Rothko. Not nearly so much happens in the "present" thread — Karabekian has retired to his beach house in the Hamptons, where he debates the merits of his own art and art in general with his best friend, an old quirky writer, and a young widow who seems mysteriously keen to pry out the old recluse's secrets. The present is probably the weakest narrative, and the least developed, not focusing quite enough on these underdeveloped side characters but still dishing out a few morsels of insight. Yet for the shallowness of the side-stories, it all leads up to an unexpected, well-written denouement. It's not a complex novel, or even a particularly deep one, but this allows Vonnegut to focus and play to his strengths, developing the voice of his main character into something sharp, consistent and funny.
Vonnegut does a great job of tackling the art world, and Bluebeard could be viewed almost as art-critique, although I don't think it was intended as such. Most of the insights come in other areas, and through the strength of his signature writing style, which is so earnest and easy and playful that it could carry satire of any kind. Unlike Palahniuk, whose writing I found so forced and processed and wink wink self-aware that it became almost painfully robotic, Vonnegut has always had a natural, sincere approach to the subjects he takes on, and Bluebeard is hardly satire at all — Vonnegut, let's say, examines things, rather than satirizing them. Some of the flaws common to his later books do pop up here, but not enough to distract — the man had a habit of aping his own style almost to the point of self-parody as he aged, but Bluebeard has only a few moments of overly-silly prose.
Bluebeard deals with many of the themes that Vonnegut tackled in other books, but avoids regurgitating any of them. I wouldn't recommend it as anyone's first Vonnegut novel, since it does cover some familiar ground in a more toned-down, indirect manner. Yet for those same reasons, it's one of Vonnegut's strongest later-career novels, offering new perspectives and plenty of engaging, fresh material.
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