Word: vonnegut
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...EDEN EXPRESS by MARK VONNEGUT 214 pages. Praeger...
...Vonnegut is not a bad name to have on a book if one is simply interested in marketing a name brand. But Mark Vonnegut, son of Kurt, has considerably more on his mind. He has been diagnosed as a schizophrenic. Eden Express is his attempt to describe the slippage in and out of madness, to distinguish between the chaos in his head and the confusion of the world and, finally, to achieve a balance between romantic myths about sick minds and the cold evidence that his own disorder is the product of abnormal body chemistry. The result...
...Vonnegut, 28, was wise to the ways of innocence. At Swarthmore College he majored in religion and registered as a conscientious objector. At his draft physical, his erratic behavior earned him 4-F military rating. Mark, his girl and some other friends then bought an abandoned farm in British Columbia...
...Vonnegut seems more resigned to such a future than truly happy about...
...conjecture. Yet in the end, Eden Express is a painfully honest document of a life in transition. The shift is even evident in the book's style. The early pages contain the sort of hippie jargon that franchises experience into junk food for thought. But by the end, Vonnegut has found a truer, more subdued voice that reaches out of his agony and concern. It is not quite grace under pressure, but it is that necessary first step, growth under stress...