“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! Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile”
I spent a good portion of the book debating whether or not to condemn or sympathize with Campbell. My early thought was that over the course of the book, sympathy would win out but I can’t say that it did. If anything, I am leaning more towards condemnation, but that seems harsh. And yet.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote that the moral of the book is that “[w]e are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Transposed into the story, Campbell, by pretending to be a Nazi, is in fact a Nazi. And then I got bogged down by the fact that he was approached by Wirtanen et cetera, et cetera… I think this book frustrates me because I want to wrap it up in a neat bow and place it in a box.
Nuance is the enemy of absolute judgment. For how can we unreservedly judge when we struggle to properly assess the weight of each truth against an opposing and equally valid truth? Our judgments become more refined, more specific, only relevant to the specific situation and unable to be applied as a blanket, as a precedent.
Campbell incited hatred and inspired violence in his broadcasts, strengthening the Nazi regime. Campbell passed along information to the Americans in his broadcasts, strengthening American intelligence. But to what extent was he successful in each? Vonnegut does not explicitly tell us how important Campbell’s intelligence proved, although he notes FDR’s gleeful listening to the broadcasts, alluding to its national importance. So how can I judge? And yet all I want is to judge, to put Campbell in a nice neat box. We like clear identities. They are good, they are evil. But it’s not usually that clear. Vonnegut wrote: “this book is rededicated to Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a man who served evil too openly and good too secretly, the crime of his times.”
I loved this book. I love Vonnegut’s direct and succinct writing style. I loved the premise and the plot and everything in between. I love how after I finished the book, I sat there ruminating, unable to simply move on and go about my day. Is Campbell guilty? Is he not? I thought about who I pretended to be. I thought about action versus intention and how perhaps the result does indeed matter more than the original aim. I thought about judgment. I thought about truth in all its complexity. And I thought about how grateful I was to have been recommended this book and to open myself up to such an important and interesting subject matter.
Please read this book. It is fantastic.
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