I feel like you cannot do a review of Vonnegut justice without quoting his work. In this, possibly my absolute favorite of his written works, I have dozens I could choose. But it was this one, at 2:00 am on a Tuesday morning while drinking tea and huddling into the corner space beside my bed, that brought me both to laughter and then, afterwards, to tears:

"We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on earth to fart around.
Don't let anybody tell you different."

The most powerful thing about literature, in my opinion, is its ability to allow a scrawny twenty-something like myself to reach backward in time and laugh and cry and sit pensively for hours on end with an old friend. I know many greater minds than mine have expressed this sentiment before - and I have definitely felt it - but never has that feeling been so strong as it was during my reading of A Man Without a Country. Vonnegut, in those short 145 pages, was as close to me as anyone has been.

The power of Vonnegut's writing is in it's disarming approachability. He makes you laugh, makes you nod fervently in agreement, and sometimes - as with me - makes you pause, then sob, then laugh at the joy that cry gave you. In many ways, I think Vonnegut achieved the rarely achievable in this work: he was here, unabashedly himself, his heart open and outpouring. To read something so genuine and bursting with humanity - whatever that word means - was truly a gift. As sappy as this all sounds, it is works like these that fill me up and remind me - even when I was not doubting it - why I so fundamentally love our world, and love the people in it. To me, that is the mark of an author who understands both his readers and himself. Well done, Vonnegut. I hope to remember your words as I fart around in this horribly wounded but beautifully rich world.