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.
If you're politically correct, chances are you're not coming to one of my shows. I get to go onstage and say things that everybody thinks all the time, but can't say out loud.
Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.
There was always another side to a joke, the side of the victim.
People would say I never censor. As Billy Crystal says, 'I don't have that button.'
I think that what comes through in Chicago humor is the affection. Even though you're poking fun at someone or something, there's still an affection for it.
People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any forum that would require me to stop talking for three hours.
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