God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) by Kurt Vonnegut

In this book, Eliot Rosewater suggests that some science fiction writer should write a science fiction book about money which is what Kurt Vonnegut has chosen to do. While Vonnegut, as always, touches upon many themes throughout the book, the overarching theme is about money, inherited wealth, and the wide gap between rich and poor created by capitalism. It's about how wealth is concentrated among so few and how those few often did nothing to accumulate that wealth except happen to be born with the correct surname. Eliot Rosewater happens to be the main protagonist although he is only one of a dozen or more characters who also think they're the main characters (which they are, all equally, no matter how many pages they're allowed, given this is a Kurt Vonnegut novel). Throughout the novel, he is driven crazy by his responsibility to do something good and decent with the money he lucked into until he ultimately finds a quite Biblical, if not Communist (neutrally used!), solution to his problem. Basically, he spreads his seeds (figuratively) and spreads the wealth (literally).

I first read all of Vonnegut's books in my twenties and am re-reading them again now that I've hit my fifties. I loved them then, and they must have informed some of who I became in their kindness and optimism and cynicism and all of what they are, but I see them much more clearly now. I was too selfish to see exactly how they reflected the world back then, to see how clear-eyed Vonnegut was viewing the world. Conservatives will accuse any liberal or progressive view as having a modern agenda and yet Vonnegut was expressing those same views in his earliest novels and stories from the late fifties and throughout the sixties.

Here's a quote from the book I love where Trout is basically Vonnegut's pure sci-fi, pulp alter ego and the "He" in the quote is the manipulative lawyer Mushari trying to get his mitts on a fraction of Eliot's money by declaring Eliot insane although "He" could be any small-minded pundit or conservative today: "He didn't understand that what Trout had in common with pornography wasn't sex but fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world."

This novel has more heart than plot. That's a good thing, at times. Like the television show, Atlanta, it's more a variety of sketches depicting the pot holes scattered (purposefully!) across the American landscape and a few of the people trying to navigate around or through them.

There's maybe too much throughout this novel to write a concise review of it so I'd just like to quote Eliot's speech he was meant to give at a science fiction convention, a speech Mushari chooses to use as evidence that Eliot is insane. Apparently, according to lawyers and senators and anybody that embraces the status quo, giving a damn means you're crazy.

"I love you sons of bitches," Eliot said in Milford. "You're all I read any more. You're the only ones who'll talk about the really terrific changes going on, the only ones crazy enough to know that life is a space voyage, and not a short one, either, but one that'll last for billions of years. You're the only ones with guts enough to really care about the future, who really notice what machines do to us, what wars do to us, what cities do to us, what big, simple ideas do to us, what tremendous misunderstandings, mistakes, accidents and catastrophes do to us. You're the only ones zany enough to agonize over time and distances without limit, over mysteries that will never die, over the fact that we are right now determining whether the space voyage for the next billion years or so is going to be Heaven or Hell."

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (1963)

Sometimes I'll watch a television show like Star Trek: The Next Generation and think, "I wonder how many conservatives think they enjoy this show?" And sometimes I'll read a book and think, "I wonder how many conservatives think they love this book and the author in general?" I often wonder how many conservatives think they love Kurt Vonnegut specifically but that just makes me think, "They must never have read a Kurt Vonnegut novel. They just know they're supposed to appreciate his work." It's like how the best way to disbelieve The Bible is to actually read The Bible, reading a Kurt Vonnegut book is the best way to know if you're a terrible person or not. Here's a hint as to how you discover you're a terrible person: you don't agree with Kurt Vonnegut's conclusions about humanity.

I never actually wondered if any conservatives loved this book in particular because the main messages of this book, clearly stated, are "Humans are stupid and vicious," "War is terrible," "God doesn't exist," "Religion sucks," and "Life is inherently meaningless." There's a good reason for Kurt Vonnegut to believe these things and he was always quite open about it: all of his books were attempts to reconcile his surviving the carpet bombing of Dresden. What he has come up with in Cat's Cradle seems pretty succinct if not terribly well plotted or profound (at least not profound for a reader who has already reached all the conclusions Vonnegut reaches. And I'd reached them all by the first time I read this book in my twenties. And those conclusions are just more solidified in my fifties. As if my beliefs have configured themselves in a sort of ice nine molecular pattern, you might say).

Cat's Cradle has 127 chapters across 191 pages. It's an easy read, even for a Kurt Vonnegut book. It feels like Kurt was overwhelmed by things he needed to say and so he blurted them out in short vignettes within a story about the end of the world. He has a lot to say here, most of it via a made-up religion called Bokononism which embraces lies because Bokonon understood that the only meaning life has is what we give it. At one point, Newt, the son of the fictional father of the atom bomb, describes the child's game of cat's cradle, a game he points out humans have been playing for ages, teaching it to their confused kids one generation after the other. The game uses a piece of thread to create random connections, various patterns of X's. He shows the game to the narrator and says, "No damn cat, and no damn cradle." Meaninglessness abstracted into a child's game to teach children the true nature of life.

One of the greatest aspects of Vonnegut's writing is that while he may be incredibly cynical, he is never hopeless. Sure, this book ends with the end of the world and Bokonon suggesting the actual ending should be suicide while taunting God. But ultimately, Vonnegut expresses his desire for humans to be kinder, to be better. Cynically, he points out that history has proven that man will never turn away from being as violent and stupid as possible, even with (especially with?) the violent and stupid examples of how humans have acted throughout history. But he wants them to be better. He wants them to be kinder. He wants them to move past the need for meaning and find that all we have are each other and, maybe, we should stop, maybe, buying into the foma of leaders and killing each other for granfalloon reasons. When power and money become our wampeters, we are destined to ice nine our home and everybody in it.

Chapter 114 is a particularly Vonnegutian chapter and probably my favorite. The American ambassador to San Lorenzo goes off speech at a day of celebration to earnestly discuss his thoughts on war and it's absolutely heartbreaking. It feels like the heart of the book even if it doesn't really fit with the plot up to that point or beyond. But that's because it comes from that main reason Kurt was writing. It has one night in Dresden seeping from between each word. And I can't imagine anybody reading it and thinking, "I love this and I'm a conservative."

Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut (1962)

When I first read Vonnegut's Mother Night in my twenties, I hadn't the background or experience to perceive the scope of it. I hadn't lived through anything that had prepared my mind for what Vonnegut was attempting to express. It left no great impression on my mind and I couldn't have even speculated as to the plot before picking it up again. But now that I have, and I have finished, I am aghast at how relevant this book about a Nazi propagandist is (a Nazi propagandist who claims to be a spy throughout the book, and even seems to be exonerated, but I sense too much of Pale Fire's Charles Kinbote in him. I suppose I can take him at his word, and believe the final letter he receives, although, in the end, it hardly matters. "We are who we pretend to be").

I first read this book before Fox News completely lost its mind and became not just a Republican State Media channel but an Anti-Democrat Hate Machine. The channel has no other goal than to erode the humanity of liberals and fill their audience with hatred and mistrust. Nobody could read this novel today without making the connection between Howard J. Campbell, the book's "Nazi propagandist" narrator, and most of the hosts of Fox News shows.

At one point in the novel, Howard J. Campbell writes, on meeting Adolf Eichmann in an Israeli prison while both are waiting to go on trial:

"As a friend of the court that will try Eichmann, I offer my opinion that Eichmann cannot distinguish between right and wrong—that not only right and wrong, but truth and falsehood, hope and despair, beauty and ugliness, kindness and cruelty, comedy and tragedy, are all processed by Eichmann's mind indiscriminately, like birdshot through a bugle.
     My case is different. I always know when I tell a lie, am capable of imagining the cruel consequences of anybody's believing my lies, know cruelty is wrong. I could no more lie without noticing it than I could unknowingly pass a kidney stone.
     If there is another life after this one, I would like very much, in the next one, to be the sort of person of whom it could truly be said, 'Forgive him—he knows not what he does.' This cannot be said of me now."

And thus we have to see the propagandist in one of these two ways. Do they know the harm they are spreading through their lies and deceit? Or do they believe the things they say, seeing themselves as some kind of hero . . . maybe not even believing the lies spread but believing so passionately in the result of those lies through the actions of the people who will believe them.

And which winds up being worse? They are both terrible but there's something truly cruel and inhuman about knowing you are spreading lies and knowing what kind of cruelty and chaos those lies will unleash on the world. If only there were another world after this one in which someone could judge our actions after. What would happen to Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham? What has happened to Rush Limbaugh and Charlie Kirk?

And Vonnegut doesn't let the people who believe the lies off the hook by simply concentrating on Howard J. Campbell. In the editor's note by Vonnegut in the beginning of the book, he discusses what the dedication should have been.

"I would prefer to dedicate it to one familiar person, male or female, widely known to have done evil while saying to himself, 'A very good me, the real me, a me made in heaven, is hidden deep inside.'"

How many Americans are currently that person? Doing real evil, making the world a worse place for so many others, while patting themselves on the back for being such a good neighbor, or good mother, or a good brother, acting so civilly and with such kindness to the people they know? How could they be a terrible person when they know so well how good they actually are?

The people who might recognize themselves in this book won't read it. And if they did, they wouldn't recognize themselves anyway. Because this book is about the type of people who are unable to engage in self-reflection.

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut (1959)

I've long had it in my head that Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan was an anomaly, that it wasn't much of a "Vonnegut book." Upon re-reading it, I think I understand why. Not that it isn't as much a Vonnegut book as some of his others; it may even be more so if one considers all of Vonnegut's books were him trying to make sense of what happened to him in Dresden in World War II as a prisoner of war. It does this to a further extent than I would have expected. No, what made me think of this book differently is that it's much more a pulp sci-fi novel than some of his other sci-fi novels. If Breakfast of Champions is a Vonnegut book, The Sirens of Titan is a Kilgore Trout novel.

When reading Player Piano, I couldn't help thinking of how much it felt like a version of Mike Judge's Office Space for the 50s. This book reminded me, in quite a few major aspects, of Alan Moore's Watchmen and Douglas Adam's Mostly Harmless. One of the main characters in this book, Winston Niles Rumfoord, is a man who, through an accident, has been removed from linear time. He might not be as powerful as Dr. Manhattan, but he has the same perspective. But he's also Ozymandias in that he lives in isolation keeping tabs on everything that's happening (and has happened and will happened because remember he's also Dr. Manhattan) with his large pet Kazak (a dog rather than some exotic cat-thing). Niles also creates a plan for an invasion of Earth which will unite all humans and create a new era of peace. That's the main plot. It's Watchmen before Watchmen (not to be confused with Before Watchmen of which I'm sorry I just now reminded some of you).

The part that reminds me of Douglas Adams' Mostly Harmless is kind of the plot beneath the plot. Maybe it's sort of the theme, part of Vonnegut's working through why he survived the carpet bombing in Dresden. It's a part of the story that's only really hinted at until the final chapter and concerns an alien race from Tralfamadore (See? Kilgore Trout!). Like the new model Hitchhiker's Guide in Mostly Harmless, the Tralfamadorians can manipulate space/time so that a thing they want to happen eventually happens when it needs to happen. The entire human civilization of Earth effectively exists to deliver a part for one of their own's broken down spaceship on Titan. Everything that ever happened to Earth and the Earthlings on it was manipulated to get that part delivered. It's the same idea as everything that happens in Mostly Harmless was a manipulation by the New and Improved Hitchhiker's Guide model to make sure Earth was destroyed.

This is Vonnegut's second book and the ideas within it are as good as any Vonnegut has put forth. Maybe the writing is a little rough here but then that's probably why he came up with the idea of Kilgore Trout. He probably saw the differences in this book, and Player Piano, and what his style of writing would become. But at the heart of this book (and Player Piano) is a writer who somehow balances cynicism and earnestness to a seemingly impossible degree. You can truly feel his pain as he systematically deconstructs society's terrible beliefs, traditions, and accepted social mores which caused, and continue to cause, that pain.

Kurt Vonnegut is a genius and I can't wait to re-read everything else because it just gets better.

Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut (1952)

When I first met the woman my father-in-law would eventually marry, she asked me what my top five favorite books were. It really wasn't until that moment, after examining the answers I gave that day (the list always changes. If you ever want to make sure I'm eventually locked out of an Internet account, make sure the security question asks what my favorite book is. Because I'll never remember the answer I gave at the time I first answered it), I realized all of my favorite books had protagonists battling against an unjust society and, when they eventually realize they can't actually win, simply escape. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Catch-22. The Grapes of Wrath. House of Leaves. Okay, maybe not House of Leaves. But maybe House of Leaves! Just prove that it isn't! I mean, where is Navidson going anyway and is Johnny even alive?! Or was it a brother who died in birth driving Pelafina mad?!

You know what? This isn't a House of Leaves review. This is about Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano! A book which fits the description of my other favorite books except that the main character doesn't escape at the end. So it's a bit more depressing. Also a cat dies in the first chapter which is why this book loses a star. Sorry, Vonnegut, but you know the rules. Oh wait. You don't? Well the only rule is that if an animal is killed in a book or a movie, it automatically gets downgraded in my ranking. Unless the point of the book is that we're all supposed to kill our own dogs and murder our best and only friend. Then I guess I can see the point. Who wouldn't want to learn that lesson when reading a book?!

I first read this book in my twenties and now I'm in my forties and oh boy is it a different experience. In my twenties, I probably took the whole "revolution against the status quo" for granted and then was annoyed that the powers that be won in the end. But this time, every chapter was a revelation after which I had to check, over and over, how old Vonnegut was when this book was published so I could look up from my book and say, out loud, "How was he so perceptive?!"

The only modern problem with this book is that, if you wanted to ignore the philosophical and ethical underpinnings of the story, and pretend to misread the themes and character motivations, it could be read as the story of Q-Anon leading up to the attempted American coup. I only mention this because the kind of people who would believe Q-Anon nonsense would also approach this book in the disingenuous manner which I laid out at the beginning of this paragraph.

But if you read the book correctly (Oh, do not argue that point. We all know there are correct and incorrect ways to read every book. People who think any way to read a book is "a correct way" are just lazy and narcissistic readers), you'll know this is as effective, touching, and damning of the status quo as anything written by Douglas Coupland or Joseph Heller or Kurt Vonnegut. Oh wait, it was written by Kurt Vonnegut. Well, that explains that then!

Damnit, Vonnegut. I'm still thinking about that poor cat.