Pleasantly surprising.

Not my favorite of Vonnegut's work, he does a well enough job telling us a story, but I wasn't as invested as with all of his previous works I have read. Still, not a bad read and with his humor still well intact.

I must begin this review by admitting I did this story a genuine disservice. I started reading Bluebeard 3-4 years ago. I set it down about 200 pages in, mostly because I got into writing a story of my own, and I don't read other people's fiction when creating.

Anyway, at the time I wasn't that captivated by the story, which is unusual for me in regards to anything Kurt Vonnegut wrote. He is literally my favorite author. I couldn't put my finger on why, but as recently as Christmas Eve I was discussing with a friend and avid reader Bluebeard was the first Vonnegut book I had started but not finished.

That said, I decided to get off my ass and finish the story. Truthfully, I could damn near read Kurt Vonnegut's wordplay daily without care or concern for plot. That said, after picking Bluebeard back up, it did not take long for me to figure out why I wasn't enjoying it as much as other stories. I didn't particularly like Rabo. I appreciated his character's humility and frankness, but I didn't LIKE him.

The end of the book does help remedy that situation. The reveal of the mystery in the potato barn was beautiful. It made me wonder just how much Rabo was really Kurt Vonnegut. ***Spoiler Alert*** - The description of the painting at the end was wonderfully detailed, including the back stories he provided all of the characters depicted in the painting. My favorite part may have been that the giant portrait of war and death, when viewed from the side, was described by Circe as looking like a beautiful array ("fence") of jewels. The obvious contrast between beauty and the horror of war is compelling.

In the end, although Bluebeard was a little tougher for me personally to navigate, the brilliance in the writing and the message shone through, and I found Rabo Karabekian's final painting redeeming of his character. Although there are a lot of potential themes that can be pulled from this book, Bluebeard for me, expressed one theme in particular that was basically stated in Vonnegut's Man Without A Country. Loosely paraphrased here: Humans are pretty shitty creatures with few redemptive qualities. One of which, and perhaps the most important, is our ability to turn all the emotional shittiness into expressions of beauty.

My flexible neon tube + meat are thankful for the second half of this book. Almost DNF’d after the first few chapters but happy I kept going until the end.

1 ⭐️ for the first quarter
3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️ for the middle
5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ from chapter 32 onward

In "Bluebeard," Vonnegut's central theme is the value of art and, specifically, whether that value depends upon meaning. This dichotomy between representational and non-representational art had been raised a number of times in his previous novels, most notably in "Breakfast of Champions," where the protagonist of "Bluebeard," Rabo Karabekian, was first introduced. In that earlier novel, Karabekian effectively defends the proclivities of the Abstract Expressionists, but in "Bluebeard," his defense is qualified by the idea that while a given piece of art may have meaning to the artist, without an explicit subject, that meaning will forever remain a private affair, and that nothing of it will -- or can -- be communicated. In this sense, "Bluebeard" makes the case, however implicitly, that non-representational art is isolating to the individual, whereas representational art cultivates relationships and community. Despite tempering this conclusion in the form of the character of Dan Gregory (a seemingly sociopathic representational artist), it is, nonetheless, a conclusion hammered home by the novel's climax.

It is also interesting to note that the theme of isolation versus community is also a reflection of Vonnegut's own work, and that this novel, like the secret hidden in Karabekian's potato barn, is Vonnegut's way of embracing his readers. Unlike so many of his other novels, "Bluebeard" is decidedly bereft of meaningless, random occurrences. Karabekian, in fact, playfully implies, at several points, that even seeming coincidences may have meaning and purpose. This is one Vonnegut novel with a clear, unambiguous, and happy ending, in which the alienated protagonist makes peace with himself and the world which, until the climax, he holds perpetually at arm's length.

Before re-reading this work, I had pegged "Deadeye Dick" as Vonnegut's last novel-length masterpiece. I find myself revising my opinion.

"You don't have to wear pants to your own funeral"

There are two elephants sitting in a bathtub and one says to the other "Pass the soap" and the other says "No soap, Vonnegut."

This is absolutely a new favorite book of mine. The novel provides a non-linear narrative of the life of Rabo Karabekian. An artist and veteran is writing his life story, talking about events in his life between the telling of real-time events. It’s about self-destruction as much as it is creation, and it’s humorous as much as it is bitterly ironic.
There are thoughts from Rabo periodically that really make you think about America and its people and about the role of others in our lives. This was a really great read that I couldn’t put down, I finished it in a matter of hours.