All entries in this blog are freely submitted by members of the Kurt Vonnegut Book Club and are uncensored. Opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, its staff, or its management.

We met again via ZOOM to discuss KV’s 1987 novel “Bluebeard.”  Those taking part in the discussion were Gene Helveston, Sarona Burchard, Cheryl Carroll, Kathleen Angeline, John Clair, John Sturman John Hawn, Bill Briscoe, and Dave Young (who attempted to keep everyone on track).

As Vonnegut is winding up his writing career, he addresses two themes which have popped up in some of his previous novels.  First is his difficulty in working with females both as characters in his novels and in his personal life.  The second theme has to do with his understanding of modern art.  This novel seems to be less autobiographical than most of his work and has none of the time-shifting, science fiction elements that we have come to expect.

Most of the females in his previous novels were passive or merely sex-objects, viz. Montana Wildhack.   In this novel, KV features two strong women (Marilee Kemp and Circe Berman)  whose characters he carefully develops.  Throughout the novel, he drops hints about the painting in the locked, secretive potato barn.  Our group was convinced that the potato barn was a “McGuffin” or a device used to move the plot along.   When the protagonist, Rabo, finally opens the barn and displays the painting to the world, we learn that it is titled “Now It’s The Women’s Turn.”   KV seems to be telling us that men have messed up the world and now it is time for women to take over.   The huge painting is a fusion of representational art and modern art.  It appears to be pointillism but each of the 5,000 points upon close examination represents a carefully detailed human being.   An autobiographical tie-in to KV’s service in WWII (as depicted near the end of Slaughterhouse Five) could be Kurt’s experience when his POW detail was liberated by the Russians and he and his comrades were left free in a sunlit meadow with a large number of others who were suddenly confronting a whole new way of life.  We went over what we knew of Kurt’s life.   He had a strained relationship with his mother,  herself a frustrated author, and his two marriages were less than perfect.   We thought that the character Circe was inspired by his second wife, Jill.   Someone noted that the minor Greek Goddess, Circe, had the power to turn men into swine.  Kurt was probably a difficult person to live with and we never get to hear Jill’s side of the story, so maybe this is a little unkind.   The one female whom he held in high regard was his muse and older sister,  Alice Vonnegut Adams, who died an early death.  Kurt often said that she was the audience he was writing for.  Near the end of his career, KV finally learned how to handle the female character.

Kurt must have seen himself as a renaissance man as he dabbled in the arts and seemed to have been fascinated by painters.  He broached the subject of representational versus modern art as he discussed Hitler’s paintings in “Dead Eye Dick”and followed up in the novel under discussion.  Photography made representational painting almost superfluous.  Painters had to keep painting.   What to do?  

Wilson Taylor in the Vonnegut Review goes to great lengths to describe the aesthetics of transformation of Rabo (a possible alter ego for Vonnegut, the “telegraphic schizophrenic”) through various stages:  Memesis, aesthetic, dialectical realism, and revolutionary art.   Here is the link:  http://www.vonnegutreview.com/2013/08/bluebeard.html.  “American Lazarus and the Renaissance of Rabo Karabekian.” KV brings us back down to earth with this observation “Visual art should not disappear up its own asshole.”  A nice tie-in to his favorite sketch of an anal sphincter.  

Much is made of the dualism between the body (meat) and the soul.  Thank your meat as it feeds your soul.  Circe’s role in the novel was to unite Rabo’s meat and soul. “Thank you, Meat.”

The novel ends on a relatively happy note as Rabo, inspired by Circe, opens up the potato barn and shares his masterpiece with the world.  Unusual for a KV novel to be so upbeat!

We gave this novel an 8.5 rating on the fabulous ten-point KV Scale.  Our next meeting, via ZOOM, will happen at 11AM on Thursday, April 28, 2022.   John Clair will lead us through KV’s penultimate novel “Hocus Pocus” (1990).  The protagonist, Eugene Debs Hartke, forms a novel from scraps of paper detailing his life as as a warden and inmate of an all African/American prison run by a Japanese corporation.  Many opportunities for KV to demonstrate his insights into what is wrong with America.  I will get the ZOOM link out to everyone on the mailing list (and anyone else who would like to join in for 90 minutes of lively discussion) a few days before we meet. 

*****************************************************

Excerpted from Wikipedia:

Bluebeard, the Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916–1988) is a 1987 novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut. It is told as a first-person narrative and describes the late years of fictional Abstract Expressionist painter Rabo Karabekian, who first appeared as a minor character in Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions (1973). Circumstances of the novel bear rough resemblance to the fairy tale of Bluebeard popularized by Charles Perrault. Karabekian mentions this relationship once in the novel.

At the opening of the book, the narrator, Rabo Karabekian, apologizes to the arriving guests: “I promised you an autobiography, but something went wrong in the kitchen…” He describes himself as a museum guard who answers questions from visitors coming to see his priceless collected art. He shares the lonely home with his live-in cook and her daughter, Celeste.

One afternoon, Circe Berman, a woman living nearby wanders onto Karabekian’s private beach. When he reaches out to greet her, she catches him by surprise with the forward statement “Tell me how your parents died.” He tells her the story and proceeds to invite her back to his home for a drink. After a drink and supper, Karabekian invites her to stay with him, as Paul Slazinger, a friend of Karbekian does. After a time, he begins to find her charm “manipulative“, as she typically gets her way. Mrs. Berman does not respect his abstract art collection, including works by Jackson Pollock. She explores every inch of Karabekian’s home, constantly asking him questions. The only place that is off-limits to her is the potato barn.

The potato barn is the home of Karabekian’s studio and holds his “secret”. The barn has no windows, and Karabekian has gone through the trouble of nailing one end shut and immobilizing the other with six padlocks. The mystery of the potato barn has enticed collectors to make outrageous offers and to raise suspicions of stolen masterpieces. Upon help from Berman, Karabekian comes to a realization in his life, that he was merely afraid of people, and opens the painting in the potato barn to the public.

Characters[edit]

  • Rabo Karabekian — Karabekian is a 71-year-old, one-eyed, first-generation Armenian-American painter. He lives in a 19-room house on the waterfront of East Hampton, Long Island, which he has inherited from his second wife Edith.
  • Circe Berman – Circe selects Rabo’s home as a place to research and write about working-class adolescents living with multi-millionaires. While living there she more or less takes charge of Rabo’s life and tells him to start writing an autobiography, which he does. After she impulsively renovates Rabo’s foyer without his permission—removing many of the things Rabo’s dead wife had used to decorate it in doing so—the two get into a heated argument which results in her departure, although she soon returns and is accepted back. This is the most notable example of Circe’s disregard for other people’s privacy and personal space. Although Rabo does most of the things she wants him to, he will not tell her what is in the potato barn no matter how much she pressures him to do so. She is a well-published novelist under the pen name “Polly Madison.” Her novels, although very popular, are criticized for tainting the world’s youth.
  • Paul Slazinger – Slazinger is a poor, wounded World War II veteran. Though he owns his own home, he stays with Rabo and eats from his kitchen. He refuses permanent residence on the grounds that “he can only write at home”. He has had eleven novels published, but is not in the league of Circe Berman. Circe is pretending not to be Polly Madison, so Paul looks down on her and condescendingly gives her writing advice.
  • Dan Gregory – Originally named Dan Gregorian before moving to America and changing his name. A magazine article estimates him to be the highest-paid artist in American history. That he is Armenian like Rabo’s family causes Rabo’s mother to believe he is a great man, an example of an Armenian who has become a success in America. She insists that her son write to “Gregorian”, as she calls him, to ask for an apprenticeship. Rabo became “Gregorian’s” apprentice at the age of 17. He is extremely pro-fascist and is obsessed with Benito Mussolini, whom he greatly admires. His high opinion of Mussolini results in him getting into arguments with such men as W.C. Fields and Al Jolson, who subsequently refuse to associate with him. He eventually goes to Italy to work directly for Mussolini during the Second World War. He is accepted by Mussolini, who welcomes the public support of such a famous artist, but is finally killed in battle by British troops.
  • Marilee Kemp – Marilee is Dan Gregory’s mistress, who persuades Gregory to take Rabo as his apprentice. She eventually becomes Rabo’s love interest and later the two of them are expelled from Gregory’s studio when he catches them leaving the Museum of Modern Art together. They have a very brief affair which Marilee ends, claiming that Rabo is not the man she needed at the time. Through a series of events she becomes a rich Countess in Italy.
  • Edith Taft – Edith is Rabo’s second wife of twenty years.
  • Dorothy Roy – Dorothy is Rabo’s first wife. She has left with their two boys, Terry and Henri.
  • Rabo’s Parents – Rabo’s parents are survivors of the Armenian genocide who are then tricked by a con man into buying a fake deed for a house in San Ignacio, California, where they move in order to create a better life. His father, having been a teacher in Turkey, ends up becoming a cobbler when they reach their new home. When the Great Depression hits the family falls on very hard times.
  • Allison White – She is Rabo’s live-in cook, though he never refers to her as anything besides that until she becomes upset with him for never using her name. She has a daughter Celeste, who also lives with them.

Major themes[edit]

A number of critics have suggested that the possibility of creating art with meaning is a major theme in Bluebeard. According to David Rampton in “Studies in Contemporary Fiction,” Circe Berman’s approaching Rabo with the challenge of making meaningful, moral art is Vonnegut himself directly addressing meaninglessness in art by asking for “committed art.”[1] Rampton also proposed that Vonnegut may be questioning the possibility of truly moral art by writing about the lack of morality in the lives of many artists.[1] Critics have also said that meaningful art is Karabekian’s way of battling his own demons. Donald Morse said that Karabekian’s accomplishment in the novel is realising that “through self-acceptance, and the serious use of imagination and creativity, human beings can become reconciled to their weaknesses while still remaining outraged at human greed.”[2] Morse added that Karabekian’s final masterpiece, “Now It’s the Women’s Turn,” achieves the goal of meaningful art by developing a backstory for each of the 5,219 characters in the composition before painting it.[2]

Other themes that critics have discussed are Survivor’s syndrome, family, and relationships with women. One critic wrote that Rabo escapes the Survivor’s syndrome that his parents suffered from by painting “Now It’s the Women’s Turn.”[3] It has also been said that Karabekian’s mission in the narrative is to find a family that he feels a part of, which he achieves with the army and the Abstract Expressionism community.[3] Lastly, women are certainly a theme in Bluebeard. New York Times writer Julian Moynahan said that Circe Berman sees Karabekian’s main life struggle as strained relationships with women.[4]

Literary significance and reception[edit]

Bluebeard received positive reviews from many critics. Some considered the novel a milestone in Vonnegut’s career; Philadelphia Inquirer called it “Vonnegut at his edifying best,” and the Chicago Tribune said it was “a major breakthrough for Vonnegut,” and “a new and vital phase in his career.” Newsday said it was “worth reading twice,” and Atlanta Journal & Constitution wrote that “Bluebeard ranks with [Vonnegut’s] best and goes one step beyond.”

Bluebeard was also met with significantly negative reception. Julian Moynahan wrote in a New York Times book review that Bluebeard was a “minor achievement” and that Vonnegut “isn’t moving ahead.”[4] In Library Journal, the novel is identified as “not among [Vonnegut’s] best.”[5]

Style[edit]

There were several unique aspects of the style in which Vonnegut wrote Bluebeard. Donald Morse identified a difference between Bluebeard and other Vonnegut’s novels, which was that the protagonist was happy and satisfied at the end of the narrative. Morse also said that Karabekian as a writer is very similar to Vonnegut as a writer, and that the criticism Circe Berman gives to Karabekian about his writing is a parallel to the issues critics have with Vonnegut’s writing.[2]

Paintings[edit]

In the novel, several of Karabekian’s paintings are described in detail. The first is a photo-realistic painting of Dan Gregory’s studio. The second is an abstract painting of a lost Arctic explorer and a charging polar bear. It consists of a white background with two strips of tape, one white, one orange. The third painting is of six deer and a hunter, titled “Hungarian Rhapsody Number Six” which later fell apart in storage at the Guggenheim Museum. The scene is represented by a greenish-orange background with six strips of brown tape for the deer on one side, and one strip of red tape on the opposite side for the hunter. His most famous, which once hung in the lobby of GEFFCo headquarters on Park Avenue, is titled “Windsor Blue Number Seventeen.” The entire painting consisting of eight 8×8 panels hung side by side displays nothing but the paint by Sateen Dura-Luxe in the shade of the title of the work. However, the painting literally fell apart when the Sateen Dura-Luxe began to shred itself from the canvas upon which it was painted becoming Rabo Karabekian’s biggest embarrassment as an abstract expressionist. These very panels upon which Windsor Blue used to cover fully became the canvases Karabekian would prime back to pure white and use for his last work locked within his potato barn.

The last painting is the secret in the potato barn. The painting is an enormous photo-realistic picture of Karabekian’s experience of World War II where he and 5,219 other prisoners of war, Romani people, and concentration camp victims were dumped in a valley when the German forces realized that the war was lost. The painting, which becomes enormously successful as a tourist attraction, is meant to be the only painting that Karabekian created which contained “soul”.

In Popular Culture[edit]

  • Malcolm Gladwell‘s debut book The Tipping Point (2000) centers around a theory originally described by fictional character Paul Slazinger in Vonnegut’s Bluebeard (1987). The Tipping Point does not make any reference to or acknowledgement of Vonnegut’s Bluebeard. In Bluebeard chapter 24, Paul Slazinger is working his first volume of non-fiction titled “The Only Way to Have a Successful Revolution in Any Field of Human Activity.” Specifically, Vonnegut’s 1987 character describes: “The team must consist of three sorts of specialists, he says. Otherwise the revolution, whether in politics or the arts or the sciences or whatever, is sure to fail. The rarest of these specialists, he says, is an authentic genius – a person capable of having seemingly good ideas not in general circulation. “A genius working alone,” he says, “is invariably ignored as a lunatic.” The second sort of specialist is a lot easier to find; a highly intelligent citizen in good standing in his or her community, who understands and admires the fresh ideas of the genius, and who testifies that the genius is far from mad. “A person like this working alone,” says Slazinger, “can only yearn loud for changes, but fail to say what their shaped should be.” The third sort of specialist is a person who can explain everything, no matter how complicated, to the satisfaction of most people, no matter how stupid or pigheaded they may be. “He will say almost anything in order to be interesting and exciting,” says Slazinger. “Working alone, depending solely on his own shallow ideas, he would be regarded as being as full of shit as a Christmas turkey.”