"Kurt Vonnegut - Bluebeard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vonnegut Kurt)

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Delacorte Press, New York, New York.

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ISBN: 0-385-33351-X
Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press

Manufactured in the United States of America
Published simultaneously in Canada

October 1998

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BVG




Author's Note
This is a novel, and a hoax autobiography at that. It is not to be taken as a responsible
history of the Abstract Expressionist school of painting, the first major art movement to originate
in the United States of America. It is a history of nothing but my own idiosyncratic responses to
this or that.
Rabo Karabekian never lived, and neither did Terry Kitchen or Circe Berman or Paul
Slazinger or Dan Gregory or Edith Taft or Marilee Kemp or any of the other major characters in
this book. As for real and famous persons I mention: I have them do nothing that they did not
actually do when tested on this proving ground.
May I say, too, that much of what I put in this book was inspired by the grotesque prices
paid for works of art during the past century. Tremendous concentrations of paper wealth have
made it possible for a few persons or institutions to endow certain sorts of human playfulness
with inappropriate and hence distressing seriousness. I think not only of the mudpies of art, but of
children's games as well -- running, jumping, catching, throwing.
Or dancing.
Or singing songs.
K. V.




"We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."
-- Dr. Mark Vonnegut, M.D.
(Letter to Author, 1985)




This book is for Circe Berman.