Edition: 2nd Printing
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam Books, Westminster, Maryland, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1995
ISBN-13:9780440158530ISBN:0440158532
Description: Fair. No Dust Jacket as Issued. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. Book shows moderate to heavy wear/ spine tight/covers creased and scuffed; slightly soiled; moderate edge wear/ corners, spine hinge and spine creased/ readers slant/ pages ahve underlining and margin notes/ several page tips creased or wrinkled/ good reading copy. read more
Description: Fair. Book shows definite signs of wear. Pages may be marked and/or written but complete. Cover may be missing or damaged and spine cracked. read more
Edition: 9th printing-Bard edition-1972.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Avon Books, New York
Date Published: 1967
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Cover shows minor wear with darkening from age/handling; pages are tanned but appear to be unmarked. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Dell Publishing Company
Date Published: 1974
ISBN-13:9780440158530ISBN:0440158532
Description: Fair. No dust jacket as issued. a good clean reading copy, pages have yellowed slightly with age. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 192 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass market pb
Publisher: Dell Publishing, New York
Date Published: 1974
ISBN-13:9780586036495ISBN:0586036490
Description: Fair. No dust jacket, as issued. Cover has wear and creasing; stain on inside back cover and last page; pages age-browned. Unknown printing. Illustrated by. 192 p. ; read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Dell
Date Published: 1976
Description: Very Good. Fiction. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. Very good condition mostly black and blue pictorial paperback. Dell, 1976. Light overall wear, small round sticker to front, light page toning, slight pulling to binding, slight mustiness. read more
Edition: Fourth Printing Thus
Binding: Paperback (5883 $1.25)
Publisher: Dell, New York
Date Published: 1974
Description: Fair. Some top margins stained and bled. FInside covers and some pages foxed. Pages toned. Casing lightly creased and worn. xii + 192 pp. read more
"Right up front Kurt Vonnegut explains the moral of this short novel: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." We then are shuffled rapidly through a cast of post-war men and women wearing masks, decked out to publicly play an adopted role, whilst concealing their true feelings and being underneath. The champion dissembler is Howard W. Campbell Jr., a former deep-cover American operative in the heart of Nazi Germany, who so brilliantly espoused propaganda and spat venom he did not believe in that he convinced the world of his rabid support for a cause he was secretly fighting against.
Years later he is living a quiet and faceless existence in New York City, his service to his country never acknowledged, the damage of his words reverberating still. As is its wont, life decides to alter the tempo of the music of its pageant, and whilst this new dance steers Howard inexorably towards a date with the hangman, a parade of new and old faces enter and re-enter his life; love once more warmly kisses and then coldly bites; and certain old truths and beliefs are shown to have been lies and illusions all along.
My expectations for Mother Night were quite high, having read so many glowing reviews over the years. I feel like I should have loved it, whereas I could only muster up an appreciative like; I knew I wanted something further from the story and yet couldn't quite assemble a concrete grievance from my lingering dissatisfaction. Like many books, it should benefit from a second reading down the road, and a reappraisal made of its more mature charms."
"I rated Mother Night possibly higher than it deserves. It is a fantastic book, and one I would suggest to any young reader, but it isn't a classic that will echo through the ages. The reason I did rate it so high is very personal. When I was fourteen my reading experience was limited to Dr. Seuss, Where the Wild Things Are, Goosebumps, damn near every Stephen King novel, and the Star Wars saga. Pretty limited, especially for the son of an English Professor. My mother wanted to expand my horizons and requested I read something new off her shelf. First I picked up The Lord of The Rings, which was way too pompous and wordy for me at that age. She suggested Vonnegut. The picture on the front was a cowboy on a dachshund waving an American/Nazi flag. Plus, it was a small book.
So I started reading. And I didn't stop. Seriously, I read it through without stopping, then ate a burrito and went straight into the rest of his library. For three days I read without sleep, took an hour or two nap, and started again. I devoured everything he had ever written in about two weeks. And it opened my eyes to how amazing the world of books can be. From there I read Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. I read Brave New World, The Catcher in the Rye, and The Grapes of Wrath. John Fowles, Mark Twain Orson Scott Card, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and lots of others followed. It was almost like loosing my virginity (which partly because of my obsession with literature was a few years off), and I'll tell you one thing. I never read another god-awful Star Wars novel again."
"Mother Night is a book by the renowned author Kurt Vonnegut, a fictional story from the perspective of Howard W. Campbell Jr. Campbell Jr. was an American citizen who lived in Germany during World War II, and became a Nazi propagandist. Mother Night is a good read for anyone who has studied or is interesting in World War II, because it shifts your opinion of right and wrong: should Howard W. Campbell Jr. be considered a war criminal, despite the fact he was working for America by sending them signals through his Nazi propaganda? On the second page, Howard W. Campbell Jr. says "I am behind bars. I am behind bars in a nice new jail in old Jerusalem. I am awaiting a fair trial for my war crimes by the Republic of Israel." The book, written from Campbell Jr.'s perspective, takes place in his jail cell. He reminisces outside of the cell, tells stories of happenings leading up to and during the War. Vonnegut's precise way of story-telling makes this book a page turner, although WWII junkies would perhaps enjoy this more than the average person. However, everyone who appreciates a good story could for sure enjoy Mother Night."
"Howard Campbell is a man of many faces. By reputation, Howard Campbell is a Nazi ... but not just that, he is the voice of hope and moral justification to a Holocaust Germany. To a very select number of Americans, Campbell is an undercover spy, and one of the greatest American heroes of the war. To Howard Campbell, he is a simply an artist who cares nothing of politics and war, outside of the boundaries of the love he has for his wife and his writing. He merely lives his life from day to day, speaking as a Nazi figure head, while simultaneously giving key information against Germany into America's willing hands, both sides feeling an invisible hold over his true nature. He says of himself,
"I had hoped, as a broadcaster to be merely ludicrous, but this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate. So many people wanted to believe me!" ... "And I did fool everybody. I began to strut like Hitler's right-hand man, and nobody saw the honest me I hid so deep inside."
But what can a man be deep down inside, when his actions do not echo his beliefs? Can you be a monster and a martyr at the same time? After the death of his wife and the end of the war, these types of questions cease to matter to Campbell, as he spirals down into a 'stateless existence,' without any true purpose or reason for living apart from his sense of curiosity about the world. The different masks begin to merge as Howard hides himself away from the world in an old apartment in New York, the place he has fled to escape persecution for 'war crimes.' While in New York, Howard recalls certain friends and events that force him to re-evaluate what decisions he has made and the consequences of his actions. He starts to see in others' examples how a mind can ignore certain truths in order to protect the masks that people wear."
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