Mother Night

by Kurt Vonnegut

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Vonnegut warns that this is his only story whose moral he knows: and not that he thinks it’s a marvelous moral, he just happens to know what it is. If anything, the 3 1/2 pages of introduction are worth the entirety of the book.

As much as I love Catch-22 (and I do love it so much), I’m half-wondering how the two haven’t been switched, half-surprised that Mother Night isn’t the same ubiquitous reference as Heller’s masterpiece. It’s certainly less of a labyrinth, even while Vonnegut is at his best, circuitously slicing to the bones of things, and it’s certainly just as haunting.

Someday I might have to choose, but for as long as I can I won’t.