Bu yazının orijinali (ve daha iyi görüneni) canlabirsene'de yayınlandı.

Kurt Vonnegut inanılmaz zeki, inanılmaz komik ve biraz da kara mizahçı bir adam. Öyle ki, Allah Senden Razı Olsun Bay Rosewater'ı okurken çoğu zaman katıla katıla gülerken buluyorsunuz kendinizi ancak sonrasında "ben neye gülüyorum yahu?" diye de biraz kötü hissediyorsunuz. Pek çok eleştirmen Allah Senden Razı Olsun Bay Rosewater hakkında "belli bir anlatımı yok, her şey her yerde, bir anlatıcıdan hikaye dinliyorsunuz, bir bakıyorsunuz mektuplardan bölümler okuyorsunuz" diye hayıflanmış. Bence bu, Vonnegut'un zekasının ve ne kadar iyi bir yazar olduğunun kanıtı çünkü bu 'anlatım tarzı olmayan anlatım' kitabın konusuna, absürdlüğüne o kadar paralel ki!

Olayımız şu: süper zengin Rosewater Ailesi, vergi ödememek için Rosewater Vakfı adı altında bir oluşum kurmuş. Eliot Rosewater da haliyle süper zengin bir adam. Bir de New York'ta, ailenin varlığını yöneten bir avukatlık bürosu ve bu büroda çalışan Trout var ve bu adam Eliot'ın deli olduğunu kanıtlayarak varlığına konmayı kafasına takmış durumda. II. Dünya Savaşı'nda rol almış, sonradan itfaiyecilik ve itfaiyecilerle kafayı bozmuş, karısıyla tuhaf bir ilişkisi olan ve kendini insanlara (kendi tuhaf yöntemleriyle de olsa) yardım etmeye adamış Eliot'ın deli olduğunu öne sürmek ve insanları da buna inandırmak pek zor değil.

Amerika'yla, inançlarıyla, toplumsal görüşleriyle, zenginin fakiri, güçlünün güçsüzü ezişiyle oldukça başarılı bir şekilde dalga geçen bu kitabı okurken toplu taşımada siz de kendi kendinize gülüyor olacağınız için deli muamelesi görebilirsiniz; dikkat!

Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces. (Matthew 7:6)

Kurt Vonnegut was ahead of his time. How many people in 1965 were concerned about the gap between rich and poor? The drawbacks of capitalism? Or the environment? As he said elsewhere, we were rolling drunk on petroleum at this point in history. All these ideas were just getting started, shaking up the status quo. Here in the early 21st century, they are much more influential.

The author isn't subtle about setting up Eliot Rosewater as the holy fool who believes that he can use the Rosewater fortune for good. He is continually casting his pearls of kindness and compassion before the swine of the capitalist system, and they do try to tear him to pieces. Being subtle is a good way to be overlooked, after all.

I love this book because it introduces Kilgore Trout, the unsuccessful science fiction writer whose works seem to end up almost exclusively in pornography shops. Is Trout an alter ego for the author? I suspect so, as he wanders through Vonnegut's published works at will.

The problem is this: How to love people who have no use? In time, almost all men and women will be worthless as producers of goods, food, services, and machines, as sources of practical ideas in the areas of economics, engineering, and probably medicine too. So—if we can't find methods for treasuring human beings because they are human beings, then we might as well, as has so often been suggested, rub them out.

It seems to me that this Covid-19 (doesn't that sound like Vonnegut named it?) pandemic has started to push us closer to this with the idea of the guaranteed income. Recognizing that everyone should have the basics, whether they've been successful or not. That jobs are decreasing as robotics and artificial intelligences take on more roles.

I first read Vonnegut as an undergraduate in my 20s and I loved his questioning of the system and irreverence for Western society's sacred cows. Today, in my late 50s, I find myself focusing on what I think is one of his main ideas: Babies, God damn it, you've got to be kind. Kindness for not only our families and friends, but also for those less fortunate and even for those who are supposedly more fortunate. A trip down memory lane.

Cross posted at my blog:

https://wanda-thenextfifty.blogspot.c...

n  3.5 bumped down to 3n

I loved the social commentary in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and, similar to my experience with Cat's Cradle, found it to be a provocative read. Still, other than agreeing with a number of Vonnegut's insights and enjoying his humor, I didn't find myself the least bit invested in the characters.

Perhaps this is because Vonnegut's writing style is less exemplary story telling and more witty satire that reads like a cautionary tale/parable. So while his thoughts and ideas are worthwhile, this book left me wanting something more. I guess when I read a novel (even a short one with an agenda), I like to feel as if I'm entering the characters' world, and relate to or bond with at least one of the characters (the absurd ones included).

Bottom line, while I can appreciate his talents, I'm not sure it's my "thing", or at least not my favorite kind of "thing" to read. Still worthwhile, just not something to get excited over.

Will continue to work my way through his writings with Slaugtherhouse-Five next on the list. I think I'll hold my recommendations until I finish the Library of America collection.

Beautiful Vonnegut.

One of the more outright funny novels by Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is a scathing social satire about greed, hypocrisy and good, though misshapen intentions. One of the most starkly telling scenes for me is near the end when Elliot has taken up tennis and lost all the weight, and it is as though he has awakened from a long sleep.

First published in 1965, Vonnegut shares the story of Eliot Rosewater, an heir to a rich estate who is restless and looks to find his way amid various philanthropic misadventures, helping the poor, becoming a volunteer firefighter, etc.

As a story, Vonnegut is his usual hilarious self, letting his character as narrator drop several times and revealing personal asides. Beneath the surface, the author conveys an allegory about our spiritually hollow lives, a not so subtle dig at capitalism, having more money than sense.

and so it goes

**** 2019 re-read

Re-reading this for the second (or third) time I am again astounded – YES! astounded is the right word – at Vonnegut’s cool, minimalistic narrative ability.

Telling the story of Elliot Rosewater, a trust heir who devotes his life to helping the poor, the downtrodden and the luckless, Vonnegut presents one of his best stories about the haves and have nots and one of his more scathingly cynical works.

Stepping aside from his more playful works, this one as an edge swimming just under the surface throughout. There is still certainly his wit, humor and homey charm, but his passion for this subject burns through acidly, and even as the reader smiles and laughs along with the comedy, Vonnegut’s liberal sensibilities prickles and teases us to think about wealth distribution.

In Elliot, we have one of Vonnegut’s most poignant protagonists. His heroism is tragicomic, being touched as it is by legitimate mental health issues but also by the supposed psychosis of guilt for his riches. Vonnegut is too good to leave us with merely a morality tale about social consciousness – he also asks questions about the effectiveness of blind welfare.

Elliot is also a big fan of Kilgore Trout and Vonnegut’s ubiquitous science fiction writer has a cameo. There is also more than a few Shakespearean references, especially to Hamlet, and another painful visit to the firebombing of Dresden. The Rhode Island scenes with the fisherman are some of my favorites in all of his canon.

Lawyers and Money
2 November 2012

tThere are a number of Vonnegut books that I wish to read again, but this is not one of them. It is not because it is a bad book, or badly written, but that it is somewhat to what I expect from him. I somehow enjoy the irony of how a science-fiction writer casts his main characters as failed science-fiction writers (despite him not being one, though I suspect that when he started writing this would have been the case). However, Vonnegut's genius is not that he is a modernist and absurdist writer, but rather that he uses his writings to expose the darker side of modern society (which is why he is a modernist).

tThe definition of a lawyer pretty much defines this book, 'a lawyer is a person who takes money from one person, gives it to another, and takes a bit for himself', though the reality is that they don't take a bit, they take a lot. However, that is true, and it is this that gives lawyers a really bad name. For instance, the divorce lawyers who drag out a divorce and end up pocketing most of the money that the couple had and leaving both of them destitute. Similarly with the wills and estate lawyers who encourage clients to challenge the will so that those who should inherit the money end up with nothing while the lawyers walk away with the entire estate. That may make being a lawyer sound really good, except for the fact that it can be very hard to break into the profession, and even if you do, it is harder to maintain your honesty and integrity in the middle of a dispute knowing that the counsel on the otherside is syphoning all of your client's resources, and that you also must make promises that you have no intention of keeping simply to get that client in through the door.

tIt may sound that I am having a go at lawyers, but it is the sad fact that the lawyers seem to take all of the flack when this is essentially how the modern capitalistic society works. Take for instance the insurance broker who pretty much does nothing except take your money and gives a lesser amount of money to the insurance company. In fact, I know brokers that pretty much do nothing other than that. Or the accountant that arranges your tax return, but does so much work on it that it ends up costing more for the accountant than that what you get back from the tax office.

tIn a way the modern economy is like a river, almost to the extent that terms that come from fluid dynamics are used to describe the stock market. A stock is liquid or illiquid (and that defines how easy it is to buy or sell it). A company floats its shares on the stock market, we describe the financial health of a company in terms of liquidity, and when you have lost money on a position you are described as being underwater. To an extent this is true: capital is supposed to flow, and a financially healthy system ideally has money continually flowing through it, however that is not actually the case. Instead, it flows from the net spender to the net saver. I would say it tends to flow from the poor to the rich, however that is not actually the case because a poor person who is a net saver does not necessarily remain poor while a rich person who is a net spender does not necessarily remain rich.

tAnother aspect of this book is the idea that in a capitalist society, the idea of one of the wealthy being a philanthropist and working an ordinary job (in this case as a fireman) is an aberration to the point that the antagonist of the story (a lawyer) goes out of his way to declare that this person is insane. I remember reading this book, and all I seemed to be focusing on was the lawyer's plot to get the money from the rich man and give it to the failed insurance salesman, and not actually realising that in doing this the lawyer was undermining the type of person that shows the good side of humanity. You end up becoming so caught up in the lawyer's scheme that you lose track of what the novel is about, and that is that capitalism hates philanthropy, and that somebody who acts in such a way is not so much mad, but dangerous. The idea is to impoverish people, and when they are impoverished, to then impoverish them more. It is economic evolution, a means of destroying the masses so that the world may be left for the wealthy to stretch out and enjoy (if there ends up being anything left that is).

This is a fantastic book. Written 54 years ago -- and unfortunately not as much of as success as it deserved -- it is brilliantly applicable today. It is, in fact, not at all difficult to imagine the despicable character of Eliot Rosewater's father, Sen. Lister Ames Rosewater of Indiana, living and working (in the same political party, incidentally) today. The message of the book is profound and as deeply earnest as any could be. But Vonnegut wrote it with such a generous amount of humour that it can be enjoyed on several levels at once. I can recommend it to just about anyone.

n  We can be nice to people. We don't have to be cruel to be kind. Things can be better for everyone.n

Re-read Aug 2023:
SLURP!
It's sad to see that society has only gone further downhill, with apparently no inertia provided by this little bump of a book. Many passages perhaps describe America better today than they did Mr. Rosewater's insane society:

It's the way they have of thinking that everything nice in the world is a gift to the poor people from [the rich]. (this includes the ocean, the moon, the stars and the U.S. Constitution, of course).

Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw... that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.

The flag of Enlightened Self-Interest: the black and white Jolly Roger, with these words written beneath the skull and crossbones: 'the hell with you, Jack, I've got mine!'

Original notes:
This thin novel encapsulates the major recurring theme of KVJ's work: To be charitable--to love the unlovable--in this world of greed, fraud, hate, war, etc., one must be more than a little insane. Or one of the few truly sane in a mad, mad world.

Good to have Kilgore Trout deliver the penultimate punchline: "If one man can do it, perhaps others can do it, too. It means that our hatred of useless human beings and the cruelties we inflict upon them for their own good need not be parts of human nature."

Oh, man...I love this novel. Like all my favorite novels, I will never get tired of reading it over and over again.

What I love about Vonnegut is that he is so cynical about his own opinions, and that his characters are so often pitiable, likable, and irritating all at once. I love that the protagonist (Eliot Rosewater) is a kind of lovable, asexual loser hippie idealist who thinks love will cure capitalism, etc...and you can start to feel like, "hey man...maybe it can..." while you never have any illusions about how he's a loser hippie idealist who won't actually change much in the long run, and probably neither will you.

Vonnegut does have his moments - in all his books - where you think (well, where I think), "ugh...why does he have to go and get all post-WWII masculine on us...and just when it was going so well?" He is extremely bad at writing women. They are often bitches and/or crazy and/or sexually problematic in one way or another. BUT...I don't really mind. It's well worth it for the moments of hilariously cynical brilliance.

My favorite character is Eliot Rosewater's father, the irritable and repressed Senator Rosewater. He announces that "the difference between pornography and art is bodily hair" (which amusingly dates both the Senator and the novel). He watches in horror as his adult son steps out of the bath and absentmindedly unfurls one of his own pubic hairs - then delights at the discovery that said hair is over a foot long.

“May I ask you a highly personal question?”
“It’s what life does all the time.”

Mr Rosewater, a young man who returns from World War II with a useless purple heart and a crippling depression, would like to ask the reader what he thinks about this world we’re living in? Is it heading in the right direction?
And, if your answer is No, what are you going to do about it?

Eliot Rosewater is in a position to do something about the world: he is the president of a Foundation established by his family in order to shield their millions of dollars from the tax men. How those millions were made in the first place is another question that the older Rosewaters would rather escape scrutiny, but when Eliot starts distributing the money to the poor and the afflicted, an opportunistic lawyer named Norman Mushari sees a chance to grab some of the pot by declaring Eliot incompetent and mentally insane.

A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees.

The theory that money corrupts society is the first half of the equation, illustrated by Vonnegut here in numerous rants, starting with the Rosewater Family Gospel about their rise to power by exploiting legal tricks and by large scale corruption, fascist speeches on the Senate floor about the Golden Age of Rome or by extensive slurping at the Money Tree.

Enlightened Self-Interest gives them a flag, which they adore on sight. It is essentially the black and white Jolly Roger, with these words written beneath the skull and crossbones, “The hell with you, Jack, I’ve got mine!”

Senator Rosewater could be easily imagined today as one of the leaders of the Republican Party: “I have spent my life demanding that people blame themselves for their misfortunes.”

Vonnegut is a writer who came to the genre of science-fiction not because it pays the bills with escapist tales of adventure, but because it is, in his opinion, the only honest way to debate the future of a humanity hell bent on self-destruction. He shares in this opinion with my favourite Ray Bradbury quote: seeing what is wrong in the world, he exclaims, To hell with more of the same, I want better!
In the novel, these ideas are presented in a speech Eliot Rosewater gives at a science-fiction convention [ “I love you sons of bitches,” Eliot said in Milford. “You’re all I read any more. ] and, for the first time in his catalogue, by the author’s alter ego Kilgore Trout, a prolific if obscure writer whose work can only be found in second hand bins at pornographic shops.

... your insistence that the truth be told about this sick, sick society of ours, and that the words for the telling could be found on the walls of restrooms can also be heard in a Simon and Garfunkel song about words of the prophets being written on subway walls.

But this expose is only the first half of the equation, as I already mentioned. Investigative journalism was supposed to do the same, before it succumbed to political pressure and internet trivia. It is left to Kilgore Trout, Eliot Rosewater and other ‘pixilated’ dreamers to come up with solutions:

Trout’s favorite formula was to describe a perfectly hideous society, not unlike his own, and then, towards the end, to suggest ways in which it could be improved.

Eliot Rosewater, heir to an obscene pile of honey-money, leaves his Park Avenue mansion, his expensive art collection and his expensive wife, and starts to roam around America, riding on fire engines and getting to know the ‘real’ people. He finally settles in Rosewater County, Indiana, a backwater place filled with the destitute folks left behind by the march for progress, as sung by the older Rosewaters.

‘I’m going to care about these people.”
“I’m going to love these discarded Americans, even though they’re useless and unattractive. That is going to be my work of art.”

For this, his peers on the banks of the Money River are ready to declare Eliot insane and a danger to society. He must be pixilated!
Renowned psychiatrists have even come out with a new disease to describe this aberration:

samaritrophia is only a disease, and a violent one, too, when it attacks those exceedingly rare individuals who reach biological maturity still loving and wanting to help their fellow men.

>>><<<>>><<<

I have used that P word twice already, so maybe I should explain why: although it is never mentioned in the novel, the plot and the main characters are very similar to the story of Longfellow Deeds, the Cinderella Man from Frank Capra’s Depression Era comedy. In that movie, a yokel from the back country who likes to play the tuba, writes poetry for Hallmark cards and rides on fire trucks, inherits a huge sum of money that soon attracts a lot of Wall Street sharks and lawyers to his New York abode. Like Eliot, Longfellow Deeds is a common sense guy who decides the money will be better spent helping the victims of the Depression, and by this I don’t mean the bankers who caused it in the first place.

It's like I'm out in a big boat, and I see one fellow in a rowboat who's tired of rowing and wants a free ride, and another fellow who's drowning. Who would you expect me to rescue? Mr. Cedar - who's just tired of rowing and wants a free ride? Or those men out there who are drowning? Any ten year old child will give you the answer to that.

And, like Eliot, Mr. Deeds will be accused of being insane for being charitable, with lawyers trying to take away his fortune.
The solution is basically the same, for both Kurt Vonnegut and Frank Capra:

What puzzles me is why people seem to get so much pleasure out of hurting each other. Why don't they try liking each other once in a while? [Deeds]

“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” [Eliot]

>>><<<>>><<<

This is the novel written a few years before the author became famous with ‘Slaughterhouse Five’, at a time when he was still struggling both financially and in his emotional life. A lot of the major themes that will return in Vonnegut future novels are introduced here: Kilgore Trout and the purpose of science-fiction, the senseless destruction of the war as witnessed by Eliot in a clarinet factory in Bavaria, the toxicity of the American Dream that was hijacked by ‘sparrowfarts’, the alien observers of human folly from distant galaxies, the little bird who knows the answer is ‘Poo-tee-weet’.[I think the bird already appeared in Cat’s Cradle, though]
Also apparent here is the experimental nature of the writing, still in search of the best mode of expression for the core ideas the author wants to convey:

Maybe I flatter myself when I think that I have things in common with Hamlet, that I have an important mission, that I’m temporarily mixed up about how it should be done. Hamlet had one big edge on me. His father’s ghost told him exactly what he had to do, while I am operating without instructions.

The random nature of the narrative thread allows for a lot of parentheses and side quest, as well as some very sharp barbs thrown at the ‘sickness’ of people like the poor relatives of the Rosewaters in Maine. I have discarded about half my notes from the book in order to make the review manageable and coherent [hopefully], but I still have a few gems that I want to keep in memory:

Heaven is the bore of bores, Eliot’s novel went on, so most wraiths queue up to be reborn – and they live and love and fall and die, and they queue up to be reborn again. They take pot luck, as the saying goes. They don’t gibber and squeak to be one race or another, one sex or another, one nationality or another, one class or another. What they want and what they get are three dimensions – and comprehensible little packets of time – and enclosures making possible the crucial distinction between inside and outside.

The author is considered from a religious point of view an atheist, but I prefer the term ‘humanist’ – the same I use in my own census poll – because he still cares about human beings and believes we have a future as a species, despite massive evidence to the contrary.

He also believes in love, physical rather than spiritual, as a vehicle for the salvation of a soul. Kilgore Trout, as well as another budding writer sponsored by Eliot, are accused of pornography, but the half page paragraph from ‘Venus on the Half Shell’ has actually inspired another writer to come up with his own science-fiction novel [don’t bother! I tried it and was unimpressed by Philip Jose Farmer there. Stick to the original Vonneguts]

The author was going through a painful divorce at the time he wrote this, which makes the love letters and the poetry included in the novel even more poignant:

‘I’m a painter in my dreams, you know,
Or maybe you didn’t know. And a sculptor.
Long time no see.
And a kick to me
Is the interplay of materials
And these hands of mine.
And some of the things I would do to you
Might surprise you.’

A scene of Eliot returning by bus to Indianapolis, birthplace of Vonnegut himself, will return with a vengeance in his very next novel:
He was astonished to see that the entire city was being consumed by a firestorm. He had never seen a firestorm, but he had certainly read and dreamed about many of them.

Another tome written by Kilgore Trout is ‘The Pan Galactic Three-Day Pass’ , about information, how we get it and about how we process it. The internet and the social media firestorm were still things of the future when the novel was written, but that is why we have science-fiction writers: they see the writing on the wall earlier and clearer that the rest of us, they warn us and even come up with solutions.

Mental telepathy, with everybody constantly telling everybody everything, produced a sort of generalized indifference to all information. But language, with its slow, narrow meanings, made it possible to think about one thing at a time – to start thinking in projects.

I just finished all of the first six Vonnegut novels (except for the early Player Piano). It has been quite an experience over three weeks.

In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Vonnegut clearly and relentlessly makes his case for Humanism. As a cry for all of us to love one another without reservations, and without expectation of material rewards for such love, the book is effective. However, as a work of engaging literature it falls short. I tired of the many pages of the Rosewater family history. Also uninteresting was the bland midwestern town of Rosewater: of course that's how Vonnegut deliberately portrayed it, but I felt queasy after reading a few chapters of the dead-end lives there.

So, after reading the six early Vonnegut novels, Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle are the standouts - entirely original and deeply moving. Mother Night (which is a separate tightly focused tragedy, distinct from his other early novels) and Sirens of Titan are also classics in their own right. I thought Breakfast of Champions very funny but ultimately too over-the-top crazy even for me.

Summary:

Sirens of Titan (1959): 5 stars

Mother Night (1961): 4 stars

Cat's Cradle (1963): 5 stars

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965): 3 stars

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969): 5 stars

Breakfast of Champions (1973): 3 stars

Hail to Kurt Vonnegut! Your spirit is out there traveling in a chrono synclastic infundibulum to Tralfamadore and the universe beyond!

When, in the beginning, the Father created Man and Woman, he took a good look at everything that he had made and declared that, indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning. He then left these hairless talking apes to graze for a time in his luxury garden. But when he realised they were discussing the merits of their naked bodies and eating up his orchard, thus leaving next to nothing for his divine apfelstrudels, he scratched his beard and reconsidered. The hairless apes ended up booted out of Eden, on account of some lizard, and they became henceforth subject to floods, wars, unemployment, decrepitude and global pandemics. Much, later, came the Son. He was trying to be kind to the world, yet the world knew him not. Some found his attitude a bit eccentric, and since mental institutions did not exist at the time and people were a bit more expeditious, he ended up on a cross on a sizzling hot day, with little more than a drink of vinegar. And the Holy Ghost, perched atop the cross and frankly a bit perplexed by the whole situation, sang. “Poo-tee-weet?” But I digress.

Getting back to the subject — In God bless you, Mr. Rosewater (1965), something similar happens. Senator Lister Ames Rosewater, the father, is a wealthy politician and businessman. His goal in life might be to care for his constituents, but the truth is a bit less romantic: he couldn’t care less, as long as they vote for him and let him have his cake and eat it. And so are his parasitic lawyers! His son, Eliot Rosewater, on the other hand, is an idealist, maybe a bit “mad north-north-west”. He travels back to his family’s hometown and gives away everything he’s got, money, time, love, all to the little people and the nobodies, all these men and women modern society has made loveless and useless. Eliot won’t end up on a cross, but close enough.

Kurt Vonnegut’s fifth novel is a bit of a valley between two peaks (Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five). So, a bit underwhelming for Vonnegut’s standard, but still, by and large, excellent. It is mostly a form of engaged literature, revealing the dehumanising properties of wealth and “swim-or-sink” competitive ideology, and rooting instead for social equality, generosity, plain human decency and unconditional kindness — a sorely missed set of values in our present time. Mr. Rosewater has a few biblical undertones and, in a way, is a morality tale in the vein of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Similarly, perhaps, Mr. Rosewater could be construed as an anti-Atlas Shrugged (1957)... Perhaps, might you say, it is all a bit naive? Maybe so. If anything, Mr. Rosewater is the work of a big-hearted man.

At any rate, Vonnegut fights injustice with the tools of a masterful modern author, switching his angles, tone and style, jumping from one thing to the next at every turn, in a way that might feel a bit disorienting at times, but exhilarating always. He manages to be at once hilarious and warm, scathing and compassionate, pessimistic and hopeful, effortlessly astounding in many ways.

Kilgore Trout, a pulp sci-fi writer and possibly Vonnegut’s alter ego (also appearing in Slaughterhouse-Five), expresses the prophetic pith of this novel, towards the end, in no uncertain terms:

“The problem is this: How to love people who have no use?
“In time, almost all men and women will become worthless as producers of goods, food, services, and more machines, as sources of practical ideas in the areas of economics, engineering, and probably medicine, too. So — if we can’t find reasons and methods for treasuring human beings because they are human beings, then we might as well, as has so often been suggested, rub them out.”

“Americans have long been taught to hate all people who will not or cannot work, to hate even themselves for that. We can thank the vanished frontier for that piece of common-sense cruelty. The time is coming, if it isn’t here now, when it will no longer be common sense. It will simply be cruel.” (LoA, p. 332)

Nuff said!