Behaving Decently: Kurt Vonnegut's Humanism

Kurt Vonnegut and humanism go hand in hand. In BEHAVING DECENTLY: KURT VONNEGUT'S HUMANISM, Wayne Laufert examines how Vonnegut revealed his moral philosophy through the themes and characters in his work and through his public comments. Topic by topic, Vonnegut's written and spoken views are explored, from his first novel, Player Piano (1952), through his antiwar masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), to the collections of his fiction and nonfiction that appear up till today, long after his death in 2007. His speeches, essays, interviews, and journalism, which support and expand upon the sentiments in his novels, receive proper consideration in this conversational overview of Vonnegut's life and career. Religion, war, politics, science, art-these subjects and more are seen through Vonnegut's perspective and are placed within a larger humanistic outlook. His most famous creation, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, gets his own chapter too. Vonnegut called himself a "Christ-worshiping agnostic," a term that BEHAVING DECENTLY analyzes in the context of his upbringing as a freethinker, his wartime experience, his time in the corporate world, and other factors that formed his values. Those values are perhaps best expressed by his character Eliot Rosewater, the damaged, super-rich philanthropist: "God damn it, you've got to be kind." Vonnegut's real and imagined selves were incorporated into Kurt Vonnegut the author, the public speaker, the interview subject, and even the character that appears in some of his books. After all, he wrote, "I myself am a work of fiction." That funny, wise, sometimes depressed persona was humanistic. BEHAVING DECENTLY shows the reader how Kurt Vonnegut reminded us to take small steps along hopeful paths to kindness and community and dignity and art-and farting around.

About the Author :
Wayne Laufert is a former newspaper reporter and editor who runs the Vonnegut Baltimore book club. He is a member of the humanist Baltimore Ethical Society.

Review :
"Behaving Decently is the most important book for humanists and freethinkers in over a decade. Laufert expertly weaves together the full fabric of Vonnegut's humanism from his witty rational take on history and politics to his generous-hearted approach to people and life. For the first time, Vonnegut is revealed as the complete human being he was that prioritized humanity and revealed reality through his often darkly humorous fiction. Laufert's composition of Vonnegut's work presents key humanistic goalposts for today's aspiring humanists while simultaneously suggesting that we temper our rigidity so that we can be more open to coalescing with good people of all perspectives." -Roy Speckhardt, former executive director of the American Humanist Association and author of Justice-Centered Humanism "Behaving Decently: Kurt Vonnegut's Humanism explores the profound core of an American icon. The spirit of Vonnegut's humanism is centered squarely within the civic ideals (now seemingly lost) of an America groping to find its foundation. Wayne Laufert lifts the veils of various psychological and literary readings of Vonnegut to lay bare the essential values informing Kurt Vonnegut's work." -Marc Leeds, author of The Vonnegut Encyclopedia "Wayne Laufert honors Kurt Vonnegut in a way the deceased author would approve-with humor, informality, and respect. Without putting Vonnegut on a pedestal, Laufert helps us appreciate how the author was neither saint nor villain, but rather just another person trying to embrace their fellow human beings. While he could be cranky, and "sometimes got the facts wrong," he always had empathy for common people. Perhaps this is the type of humanism our fractured world needs today." -Hugh Taft-Morales, Ethical Leader of the Baltimore Ethical Society and the Philadelphia Ethical Society