In this patchwork of literary remnants [Palm Sunday],… Vonnegut reasserts his simple, perennial theme: most human behavior is innocent. Slaughterhouse Five exposed the banality of evil underlying the bombing of Dresden by the United States; Jailbird argued that both HUAC and Watergate stem from the same fumbling stupidity. Unfortunately, Vonnegut once again deliberately blurs facts and genres to turn his sound argument for civil liberties into one more strained appeal for beatific laughter. Rather than analyze the genuine roots of the social loneliness and civil repression he so deplores, Vonnegut acquiesces to the madness and depravity of everyday reality—he is content to confess, smile, and merely endure.

"Notes on Current Books: 'Palm Sunday'," in The Virginia Quarterly Review (copyright, 1981, by The Virginia Quarterly Review, The University of Virginia), Vol. 57, No. 3 (Summer, 1981), p. 98.