I'm rereading Bluebeard as a sort of half-cocked tribute to Kurt Vonnegut. I don't guess it'll do much good for him, but I saw the book on the shelf and thought I may as well start reading it. Actually, I looked for it.
For the couple months after my grandmother died I used to sit down and think really hard about maps, to see if I could make myself cry. Even now when something reminds me of her, the part of my brain that's just behind my forehead tenses up like it's about to think about maps.
The thing that strikes me about Bluebeard this time is the narrative voice.The book is written as the memoir of Rabo Karabekian, who describes growing up, serving in the army, his marriages, and his relationships with the Abstract Expressionists, revealing his current life in 1987 as he writes. That's a terrible description of the book on any level beyond its basic structure, but at this hour, I don't want to figure out how to describe Vonnegut's style or pacing.
Whenever I read one of Vonnegut's books, I wonder to myself about his writing: the flatness in his voice makes the more structured moments stand out in a little too high relief for me. At other times, he'll just draw me in, and so I end up vacilitating between being total immersed and withdrawing to resent his lack of writerly-ness.
This time, though, when I withdraw, my forehead tenses. I remember that a dead person wrote this book, and I feel very strongly the aliveness of the narrator's voice. I'm not sure I can explain the feeling, but it's almost the opposite of what's supposed to happen. Poets often boast that their verse will make them last forever, but my believing in Rabo Karebekian reminds me Vonnegut is dead. I just stopped writing to finish reading the book. Not to spoil too much, in the last chapter he switches from the narrative past tense into a present tense active voice. Like all happy stories, it opens up into a continual present that feels eternal.
But I just looked again at the title page. The subtitle is, "The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988)". And so it goes.
