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.
No man ever dared to manifest his boredom so insolently as does a Siamese tomcat when he yawns in the face of his amorously importunate wife.
My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
I remember when the candle shop burned down. Everyone stood around singing 'Happy Birthday.'
You've got to be honest; if you can fake that, you've got it made.
Weather forecast for tonight: dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning.
How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good.
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