Memoir: Kurt Vonnegut is back, after a self-imposed silence. "I thought I'd done enough," he explained recently in a BBC Radio 4 interview. "But a couple of members of my children's generation rescued me. They did for me what Jesus did for Lazarus. I really was dead: I stunk. But here I am, back at the age of 83."
Actually, he wasn't dead at all, but was gasping away in the Chicago-based independent monthly, In These Times, on whatever took his fancy. His one-time Saab dealership, the heroism of librarians, the nature of humanism: all were grist to his ancient, yet finely tuned word mill. But mostly, his essays were fuelled by his exasperation with the ignorance and arrogance of the current administration in the White House. A selection of these pieces has been brought together in A Man Without a Country (which is subtitled: A Memoir of Life in George W Bush's America). It is a slim volume, and is illustrated with inscriptions of his curious aphorisms: "Evolution is so creative. That's how we got giraffes." "Do you think Arabs are dumb? They gave us our numbers. Try doing long division with Roman numerals." And so on.
But let's travel back through time (as the author is so fond of doing) to 1969, and Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, his sixth novel - yet his first to be taken seriously. It is a brilliant, unruly, anti-narrative piece of work, with the merciless fire-bombing of Dresden (witnessed by Vonnegut) during the second World War at its heart.
Its publication was timely. The US was engaged in an unpopular war in Vietnam, and Kurt Vonnegut's edgy, irreverent voice was spot on. The black humour and stench of chaos in the novel demonstrated the senselessness of war, while the horrible randomness of death was continually and chillingly noted by the shrug-shouldered catch phrase, "and so it goes". The book became an anti-war classic, and was followed by another eight novels (including Breakfast of Champions and Slapstick) and numerous other writings.
Shoot forward nearly 40 years to today, and the US is again involved in a morally-troubling and costly war. And here comes Vonnegut again. Sure, he's old (as he keeps reminding us, as old people are wont to do), but he's still angry and he's still questioning everything. And he's still funny, floating home his spiky points on cushions of humour: "Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn't the TV news is it? Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on."
Vonnegut is also terrified, especially at the thought of who is running America: "George W Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences".
But fear, as he notes early in the book, often induces humour "as an almost physiological response". So it can only be horror that has prompted this gloriously bad-taste remark: "The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon".
Despite (or perhaps one should say, including) that last foray into puerility, Vonnegut is an elegant, and even inspiring writer. He is the man who said, "We could have saved the Earth but we were too damn cheap", and "I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee".
He writes movingly about honour, honesty and looking out for our fellow human beings. Indeed, Vonnegut extols the same qualities as Bush does when the latter is wearing his lopsided and genial Caring Guy mask. The two men may utter the same sentiments, but one wouldn't hurt a fly, while the other runs a country now involved in killing people in "industrial" quantities.
And it is in showing the difference between the real truth and the oft-trumpeted falsehoods of convenience that Vonnegut excels. Gently and insistently he leads the reader to his conclusion: that those in power in the US, be they in corporations or in government, have ignored the lessons they should have learned from history, science and experience. Life for them, he suggests, is all about providing even more stuff for those who already have insane amounts of money and influence.
As for the rest of us who ponder "What is life all about?", Vonnegut put "the big question" to his son, a paediatrician. "Dr Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: 'Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is'."
The irony, of course, is that those who are likely to read this book know that already, and that those who need to read it, never will. So it goes.
Jane Powers is an Irish Times Magazine columnist. She spent her childhood between the US and Ireland
A Man without a Country: A Memoir of Life in George W Bush's America By Kurt Vonnegut. Bloomsbury, 146pp. £ 14.99