"Sorun şu: Gereksiz kişileri nasıl sevmeli?" (s.201)

I've been a long-time fan of Kurt Vonnegut ( born in Indianapolis, IN November 11, 1922 and died in New York City April 11, 2007)--but I had never read this one, published in 1965. It's the story of Eliot Rosewater, president of the incredibly wealthy Rosewater Foundation. He's considered insane--but he has a very sane vision of society.
Another brilliant satire of our society in which Vonnegut takes aim at human follies.
Interestingly, Rosewater was involved in WWII--like Billy Pilgrim in "Slaughterhouse-5" (and Vonnegut himself) and war had its effect on the rest of Rosewater's life. And there's a brief appearance by that wacky sci-fi writer, Kilgore Trout... But, as much as I enjoyed this one, I feel it's not one of the stronger of Vonnegut's books. I still prefer "Slaughterhouse-5" (1969), "Mother Night" (1961), and "Cat's Cradle" (1963) as my favorites. But, hey--it's Vonnegut!

I do love a good rant in a novel. And although this work might feel light on plot, it contained some really funny bellowing speeches that made up for it - a good few on behalf of Senitor Rosewater - whose son Eliot, the forty-three-year-old protagonist, is quite literally driven insane - or should that be oversane - by his quest for equality. Heir to a multi-million dollar fortune, he renounces his life of being a playboy and heads from the eastcoast to the run-down midwest town where his ancestors first made their mark, and takes up poverty as a vocation, with his heart set upon helping the undeserving poor by offering sums of money through the Rosewater Foundation. A drunk, and lover of science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, Eliot - who has several nervous breakdowns behind him, leading back to his days serving in WW2 - is out to prove that the dislike of useless people, and the cruelties that are inflicted upon them for their own good, need not be part of human nature. There is a problem though, in the shape of the lawyer Mushari. And it's here the narrative switches to another Rosewater. Mushari is out to prove that Eliot is clearly wacko, and that the heir to the fortune should be Fred Rosewater, a much poorer member of the Rosewater family, who is an insurance salesman with bags of low self-esteem and a wife & child who bearly speak to him. Vonnegut looks at the themes of wealth inequality, class systems, charity, and of course, money (he even in his first sentence says a sum of money is the lead character) and how, depending on how much or how little, it effects our self-worth. What I particularly liked about this novel - along with Eliot who is now going to be impossible to forget - is Vonnegut's brilliantly constructed sentences, that feature many a great quote on what felt like almost every page. Nope, I haven't had a bump on the head when I say I much preferred this to Slaughterhouse-Five.

The Rosewater Foundation has more money than God. When Eliot Rosewater, the current head, starts making people nervous with all his talk of redistributing wealth, Norman Mushari decides to put Eliot's sanity to test in court and reaches out to the Rhode Island branch of the Rosewater family.

Kurt Vonnegut takes on capitalism and socialism in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, the fourth book of his I've read. I'm still not sure how I feel about the esteemed Mr. Vonnegut. I think his writing is exceptional but his plots are all over the place.

To put things as simply as I can, Eliot Rosewater goes off his nut and finds salvation in the form of hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and being a volunteer firefighter in the town of Rosewater, Indiana. His generous behavior, coupled with his alcoholic lifestyle, worry his family's lawyers enough for Norman Mushari to try to hijack the Rosewater legacy out from under him. Hilarity and some convoluted antics ensue.

Like all Vonnegut novels, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater points out the absurdities of life. In this case, generosity in a world of capitalists. Vonnegut peppers the text with pearls of wisdom, such as “There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind.”

The central message of the book seems to be that in a world where more people are replaced by robots and computers every day, even people without purpose need to be loved. Soon, we'll all be in that boat. In the end, Eliot manages to stick it to the man and all is as right with the world as it can be in a Kurt Vonnegut book.

So it goes. At the end of the day, I'm not sure how I felt about this book. I liked some parts quite a bit and others just seemed like filler. It wasn't my favorite Vonnegut but it was at least as good as Galápagos. Three out of five stars.

Another winner from Vonnegut. This one is very funny, more so than perhaps any others I've read of his. Well worth reading for his insights on corporate and personal greed but also because it's fun.

Favourite quotes:

The sound "must have scared Charley Warmergram half out of his secretary".

"E pluribus unum is surely an ironic motto to inscribe on the currency of this Utopia gone bust, for every grotesquely rich American represents property, privileges, and pleasures that have been denied the many."

"I think it's a heartless government that will let one baby be born owning a big piece of the country, the way I was born, and let another baby be born without owning anything. The least a government could do, it seems to me, is to divide things up fairly among the babies. Life is hard enough, without people having to worry themselves sick about money, too. There's plenty for everybody in this country, if we'll only share more."

Once I realized and accepted the fact that I will never completely understand what Kurt Vonnegut writes, it became a lot easier for me to read his books. My first attempt at reading his work - Cat's Cradle resulted in me staring at the page, mentally shouting at Kurt Vonnegut, "What are you even TALKING about?" Reading Slaughter-House Five went slightly better, and by the time I read Mr. Rosewater, I was completely at peace with Vonnegut's "maybe this all has deep meaning and maybe I'm just pulling it out of my ass" style.
Confusing possible-symbolism aside, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is an intriguing look at wealth and charity in America. And why lawyers are evil.
Also, I was happy to see that the infamous Kilgore Trout, my favorite recurring Vonnegut character, made another appearance in the story of Mr. Rosewater.

I began this book with uncertainty. I couldn't decided whether I liked Vonnegut's style or whether I hated its dry humor. I apporached the plot with morbid curiosity. The protagonist is a trainwreck, and I couldn't tear myself away from the book. it seems that this is the authors intention. I was uncomfortable watching Mr. Rosewater's life fall apart, until I realized that Rosewater enjoyed it. He is a an insane philanthropist, iresponsible with his money. But by the end of the book their is so much more to it. I realize that he never wanted to be responsible with his money. Further, I felt that the human response to wealth was disturbing in this book. The philanthropist was taking from the greedy and giving to the greedy. Rosewater was the only truly charitable character in hte book. By the end I was wondering if he really was crazy or if he was naive to the extreme. I really want to read more books by this author.

I was surprised at how much I liked this! I underlined and bracketed many passages, which were so odd, singular and honest that they made me smile. I loved the main message of this book, which was (I believe), "God damn it, you've got to be kind." This just goes to show that some authors I'm not interested in can be good matches for me. I'll certainly look at Vonnegut with less of a side-eye in the future.

Like most of Vonnegut, this was a pretty quick read for me. I tend to lean towards his spacier works (like everyone else, I read Slaughterhouse Five first because it's so famous) and this one relegates that sort of stuff to mentions of Kilgore Trout novels.
Instead of speculations of Earth's hopeless future, Vonnegut sticks to questions of what we qualify as insanity in this one, a question which makes it worth reading if you've got some time, but otherwise I would recommend other Vonnegut novels before this one.

Best book ever.

Having recently finished Vonnegut's Letters, I've been revisiting some of his novels I read long, long ago. At this point in my life, Rosewater wouldn't receive a five-star rating. I'll leave it up there because that's how I remember it from the first time I read it, but right now I'd say Jailbird is the better book, although as a lad I didn't think as highly of it.

Be that as it may, here's a book for Mitt Romney to put on his "to read" list. He's got the time these days, and he might learn a thing or two from Eliot Rosewater, the idiot manchild inheritor of millions from a powerful politically connected father...

Eliot fought for his country, though, which is something Mitt took a pass on. And Eliot knows a bit more than Mitt about compassion, even though he too was born on the banks of the Money River and slurped from that mighty river to his heart's content. Eliot tells his father, "When one of us claims that there is no such thing as the Money River I think to myself, 'My gosh, but that's a dishonest and tasteless thing to say.'"

This is “a really good science-fiction book ... about money” (23), even though it’s not really a science-fiction book. The science-fiction is supplied by Kilgore Trout, who tells the same story as his creator.

In Oh Say Can You Smell? a dictator solves the problem of odors by eliminating noses. In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, the wealthy solve the problem of poverty by eliminating conscience.

And if that doesn’t work, they can borrow a page from 2BRO2B and build purple-roofed Ethical Suicide Parlors to solve the problem of “useless human beings” (269).