Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Interpretation
The quote humorously criticizes overly harsh literary critics by comparing them to someone overreacting to something pleasant.
In this quote, Kurt Vonnegut uses a whimsical analogy to highlight the absurdity of reviewers who respond to literature with extreme negativity. He suggests that such reviewers are as ridiculous as someone who, upon encountering a delicious dessert, chooses to attack it with full battle gear rather than enjoy its sweetness. This reflects a deeper commentary on the subjective nature of art and the joy it can bring, contrasting sharply with unnecessary aggression.
In practice
In a book club discussion about an overly negative review.
But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.
I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.
How subservient to Jesus, or to a humane God Almighty, were the leaders of this country back in the 1840's, when Marx said such a supposedly evil thing about religion? They had made it perfectly legal to own human slaves, and weren't going to led women vote or hold public office, God forbid, for another eighty year.
All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States - and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - "God damn it, you've got to be kind."
If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.
I've seen racism in my audiences. For example, I've seen people laugh at every other group, but then clam up when it comes to their community. You can't laugh at everyone else and then not laugh at yourself. You shouldn't be at my show if you can't laugh at yourself.
GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.
I was number 1 on the who's likely to die list for 10 years...I was really disappointed when I fell off that list.
At times of the severest depression, humor is what binds people together.
Life is too short to be taken seriously.
Well, you don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind. You don't pull on the mask of old Lone Ranger and you don't mess around with Jim.
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