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Ed Comentale

Utopian Lanes: The Project Logic of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater | Comentale on God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Ed Comentale   As self-appointed dean of Salo University, an institution dedicated fully to training in the liberal arts, I have been tracking Vonnegut’s shifts in thinking about the human and his uneasy relationship with humanism as a system of thought and value. As I see it, his first few novels are marked by an increasing pessimism about human nature …

The Weaponization of Knowledge in Cat’s Cradle | Comentale on Cat’s Cradle

Ed Comentale   Aren’t we all getting a little tired of this crap? Here at Salo U, we have to fight for knowledge on two fronts. Looking above, to the institutions of power, we confront shabby resources, political posturing, a fickle market, and meddlesome administrators. Looking below, to the public we hope to help, we find suspicion, resentment, outright hostility. …

Facts I Can and Cannot Do Without: Vonnegut’s Mother Night and the American Totalitarian Mind | Comentale on Mother Night

Ed Comentale   Apparently, Kurt Vonnegut—beloved hippie hero of postmodern literature—almost became a Nazi. That’s what we learn, at least, in the first few surprising pages of Mother Night. Vonnegut opens his 1961 novel by describing the wealthy German Hoosier clan into which he was born. He recalls “the vile and lively native American fascists” he grew up with in …

Death by Degrees | Comentale on Player Piano

Player Piano as Educational Dystopia Ed Comentale In a recent interview with Bloomberg News, billionaire investor Mark Cuban offered some surprising advice for college students and their future employers. “No finance,” he proclaimed, “that’s the easiest thing—you just take the data and have it spit out whatever you need. I personally think there’s going to be a greater demand in …