Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Vonnegut mocks the spectacle of critics who treat novels as enemies to be vanquished rather than artworks to be understood. The image of someone in “full armor” attacking a “hot fudge sundae” highlights a mismatch of scale and purpose: a novel is a vulnerable, pleasurable, human-made thing, not a threat demanding fury. The line implies that rage says more about the reviewer’s posture—performative toughness, moral grandstanding, or insecurity—than about the book. Vonnegut’s broader ethic favors humane, proportionate judgment and reminds readers that literature is an invitation to experience, not a battlefield for contempt.