Deadeye Dick

"Bernard Ketchum, our resident shyster here at the Grand Hotel Oloffson, says that Haitian refugees should follow the precedent set by white people, and simply discover Florida or Virginia or Massachusetts or whatever. They could come ashore, and start converting people to voodooism."

Kurt Vonnegut's Deadeye Dick is an enjoyable satire in which Rudy Waltz and his world in Midland City, Ohio  also includes numerous references to the Cold War, social norms, gender, family, art, and Haiti. In fact, there is a great book review by a Haitianist here. Haitian Vodou, the Hotel Oloffson, and the use of Haiti as a symbol for New York but also as an alternative to Europe and the US figures prominently here. Similarly, the influence of African-Americans is omnipresent in this small Ohio city (segregated, racist, and all the Waltz family servants are black), as well as the source of the 'peephole' analogy for existence Rudy picks up from an African-American woman incarcerated for attacking a racist white man. 

I think Haiti's significance and deeper symbolic meaning beyond standing for New York City is also present in what, at times, read as a critique against American civilization. So, although the novel certainly takes up the notion that life is meaningless, the novel's use of Haiti and the present tense in the Creole (Vonnegut bends truth and fiction in various ways for this novel, and one case involved a claim that Haitian Creole only uses the present tense) suggests that very point, that past and future are tied to the present in the sense of a meaningless existence, but also critical of US hegemony and the violence of whites. Thus, on the issue of race, Vonnegut's progressive views satirize Nazi racial theories, white supremacy, and even play on the farmers's conspiracy theory regarding the neutron bomb as being a plot by the Ku Klux Klan to restore slavery!

All in all, a very interesting and engaging read. Haitian 'voodooism,' conjuring up the ghost of Fairchild, wealthy heiresses, the death of small towns in America, etc. are all part of this exceedingly strange novel that, though haunting at times, is humorous. I intend to read Cat's Cradle tomorrow, which also contains clear evidence of Haitian influences in the Caribbean San Lorenzo headed by a President named "Papa" and the Bokonism which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Haitian boko.