If God Were Alive Today

"If God Were Alive Today" is a novella and last known work of fiction by Vonnegut, written circa 2000 but unpublished until 2012 when it was included in the posthumous collection We Are What We Pretend to Be.

Plot Summary

Gil Berman is a formerly well-known stand-up comedian. He came from a wealthy but troubled family, excelled in high school, and ultimately attended Columbia University as a pre-law major where he was exposed to the college drug and alcohol culture. While there his father, Bob Berman, committed suicide several years after unknowingly fathering a daughter with his secretary, whom she subsequently put up for adoption. After a successful run doing open-mics at a nearby comedy club, resulting in hostile praise from elderly comedian Gary Ash, Berman dropped out of Columbia and began a career as a professional comedian. A stint in Las Vegas in the early 1980s led to an LSD induced marriage with Wanda Lightfoot, a topless dancer. After learning she was pregnant, Berman—who later claimed he told her he didn't want children—encouraged her to get an abortion, which she refused. A drunken Berman then savagely beat her, which did not abort the fetus but led to divorce and Berman's first stay at the drug treatment center, the Caldwell Institute.

Berman was discharged with a supply of Desamol, a sleeping pill that also suppresses sexual functioning. After this, a large part of Berman's act became his persona as a "neuter" without sexual desire, although early in his career he was known for his sexual prowess. He later became a mainstay on the late-night talk show circuit and in 1992 he released his first comedy album, Who's Sorry Now?, which was popular on college campuses. An event in March 2000 when he was headliner at the Trump Taj Mahal and threw himself madly on a craps table led to a second stay at Caldwell that July. After leaving Caldwell, Berman remained drug and alcohol-free although eighteen years of taking Milk of Magnesia daily had left him "a carpet-bombing fart machine".

Calvin Theater, Northampton

In the midst of a campus tour of New York and New England, the now forty-two year old Berman is performing at the Calvin Theater in Northampton, Massachusetts on December 12, 2000 for a crowd largely made up of students from the many surrounding colleges. The previous week at a show in Ithaca, New York, Berman caught the attention of Martha Jones—sixty, obsessed with comedians as modern day prophets, and recently released from a mental health facility into family care—who follows him to Northampton. During his final routine, Berman states that applause are mindless and automatic, and if people really liked the show, they should cluck like chickens. At previous shows, the audience slowly but inevitably began clucking. However, Martha, thinking the audience too slow to react, yells at them to do as Berman says, because he's Jesus Christ. The audience, stunned, confused, but thoughtful, leave the auditorium in silence.

Lenny Bruce

Abbie Hoffman

Sheldon Hayes, the theater manager, burst in to congratulate the two of them for what he assumes was a planned finale, but he and Berman quickly realize that Martha is catatonic. Her niece, Lily Matthews, arrives with the police to try to take her home but Martha wants to make sure that Berman knows that he's "a reincarnation of Jesus, like Lenny Bruce and Abbie Hoffman." Lily tries to get Berman to admit that he knows he's Jesus, at which he makes a tasteless remark that alienates the rest of the room. He admits to her that he's Jesus, but Martha still won't leave. Lily says she'll have to sing to her and then everyone will have to march together to inspire Martha to leave. Lily coaxes Martha back with "Somewhere" from West Side Story after which Sheldon leads a parade of Martha, Lily, and the police out the door to "Row, Row, Row Your Boat". Berman is left on stage, alone and flatulent. Returning to the hotel, he finds a Christmas card from his sister, Kimberly Berlin, who was put up for adoption, now teaches at school in Northampton, and attended that evening's performance.

Background

In the introduction to the article "Knowing What's Nice", published in In These Times in November 2003, Vonnegut mentions "I'm working on a novel, If God Were Alive Today, about a fictitious man, Gil Berman, 36 years my junior, who cracks jokes or whatever in front of college audiences from time to time". It contains much material Vonnegut attributes to Berman but is not contained in the published novella. He states he's been working on the book "for the past five years... [b]ut it will not let itself be finished". An expanded version of this part of the article can also be found at the beginning of chapter 11 of A Man Without a Country.

Hotel Northampton

In her forward to We Are What We Pretend to Be, daughter Nanette Vonnegut dates the creation of Gil Berman and the novella to Vonnegut's period in Northampton in 2000. Having left his New York City brownstone following a fire in January that resulted in a hospital stay, Vonnegut served as writer-in-residence and distinguished senior lecturer in English at Smith College. He initially stayed at the Hotel Northampton, where the fictional Gil Berman also stays, and later at an apartment with a computer where work would be done on the novella. Nanette Vonnegut concludes that "Gil Berman was conceived and born out of the toxic circumstances of my father's life at that time. So, of course, Gil Berman and the story are quite ill". In a later interview, she stated that she saw "Gil Berman as [Vonnegut's] mouthpiece for everything that was wrong" with early 21st century America.