Palm Sunday Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Christopher Lehmann-haupt

Critical Essay by Christopher Lehmann-haupt

"Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage" [is] a race down to the wire between the good stuff and the bad stuff, in which the good stuff wins by a nose.

One of the drawbacks to a collection of this sort is that it requires the use of material in which certain gags are repeated. This gets to be such a habit in "Palm Sunday" that Mr. Vonnegut starts repeating himself even when he doesn't have to….

The other drawback to "Palm Sunday" is Mr. Vonnegut's charm. The main ingredient of this charm is a facility for saying it before you can, for calling "Palm Sunday" a "blivet" before you can call it a piece of junk, of giving it a C on the report card of his life's work before you can give it a C-,… or of saying he feels guilty about having profited from the bombing of Dresden before...
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