Per scrivere questo libro sarebbe necessario generare in laboratorio un essere umano con il genoma di Italo Calvino e Isaac Asimov e farlo allevare fino all'età adulta dagli sceneggiatori di Lost.
Invece è bastato un Vonnegut, che di prepotenza cerca, ogni volta che lo leggo, di scalare la classifica dei miei scrittori preferiti.

Well, I was under the impression that most of Vonnegut's books post Slaughterhouse 5 were a bit "meh". I'm glad to say I was wrong. This is definitely up there with his very best work

“Just about every adult human being back then had a brain weighing about three kilograms! There was no end to the evil schemes that a thought machine that oversized couldn’t imagine and execute.”

No “so it goes”, but “and so on” does make the occasional appearances. This quote represents what appears to be the basic theme of Galápagos. The “big brain” is humanity’s downfall. Though I believe Vonnegut means something more subtle than that.

Galápagos is about a group of survivors of an apocalypse after (and before) the rest of humanity is wiped out, thanks to our big brains. Because this is a Kurt Vonnegut book don’t go in expecting a post-apocalypse thriller like  The Stand; best not to expect anything and just go on the wild ride. The story is mainly set in 1986 and sometimes fast forward one million years (to 1,001,986?), with multiple flashbacks to the central characters’ back-stories (linear timeline is not Uncle Kurt’s style). Still, the narrative is easy to follow because Vonnegut knows what he is doing and there is method to his madness. Most of the characters are staying at the El Dorado hotel in Guayaquil (the port city in Ecuador) in preparation to board the ship “Bahía de Darwin” for their “Nature Cruise of the Century” on the Galápagos Islands.


After a cataclysmic event destroys most of Ecuador they flee the city and board the “Bahía de Darwin” which becomes a sort of Noah’s Ark for a while until the inept Captain runs it aground on an island called Santa Rosalia where they are marooned for the rest of their lives. The story is narrated by Leon Trotsky Trout, son of Vonnegut's recurring character Kilgore Trout. Leon never interacts with any of the characters, however, as he died during the construction of the “Bahía de Darwin”, and is narrating as a ghost doing a research on the meaning of life. Fast forward one million years and humanity has evolved, entirely from this group of survivors on Santa Rosalia, into semi-aquatic people with flippers instead of hands; and much smaller brains which prevent them from making the same mistake as their ancestors from the 80s.

As with other Vonnegut’s novels, the humour is front and centre but laid on a foundation of sadness and disapproval of where humanity is heading in spite because of our big brains. According to Leon the narrator the sorrows of humankind were caused by “the oversized human brain”. A point frequently reiterated throughout the book. However, it is important to distinguish between what Leon Trout thinks and what Kurt Vonnegut thinks. I believe Vonnegut’s point is that humanity is blessed with intelligence but we, as a race, have been abusing it, using it to worsen life on this planet since time immemorial. Eventually, such misuse is likely to be the cause of our downfall.

There are numerous subplots and flashbacks, initially, I did not find the narrative particularly compelling because of the jumbled timeline which seems to prevent any kind of momentum from developing. However, as I said, Vonnegut knows what he is doing and the disparate plot strands are gradually woven together into one cohesive story. The book is often very funny, full of whimsical nonsequiturs and sharp satire. However, Vonnegut is not  Wodehouse, he wants to do more than tickle your funny bones, sometimes his disgust is made quite plain. For example, the back-story of a character called James Wait features this:
“Later, when he was a prostitute on the island of Manhattan, his clients would find those scars, made by cigarettes and coat hangers and belt buckles and so on, very exciting.”

Galápagos made me laugh and feel sad at the same time, I can’t think of any other authors who can accomplish this.

Notes:
• Vonnegut seems to have foreseen smartphones and PDAs with a device called Mandarax, but as a product of our “big brain”, it is basically useless.

• There is very little dialogue in this book, but there is so much else going on you won’t miss it.

• The blue-footed boobies have an important role to play in the survival of humanity, and they are just so damn cute!


• In spite of the far future setting and the ghost, Galápagos is neither sci-fi nor fantasy. It is a satire about humanity, what we have been doing, what we are still doing to eff up the world we live in. More of a cautionary tale than spec fic, IMO.

• Thank you, Cecily, for nagging me to read recommending this book.

Quotes:
“Mere opinions, in fact, were as likely to govern people’s actions as hard evidence, and were subject to sudden reversals as hard evidence could never be.”

“Of what possible use was such emotional volatility, not to say craziness, in the heads of animals who were supposed to stay together long enough, at least, to raise a human child, which took about fourteen years or so?”

“Something is always going wrong with our teeth. They don’t last anything like a lifetime, usually. What chain of events in evolution should we thank for our mouthfuls of rotting crockery?”

“Like so many other pathological personalities in positions of power a million years ago, he might do almost anything on impulse, feeling nothing much. The logical explanations for his actions, invented at leisure, always came afterwards.”

4.5* For this mad, irreverent, hilariously funny at times book.

A million years in the future the ghost of Leon Trout, the decapitated son of Vonneguts much mentioned, sci fi writer Kilgore Trout is our omniscient narrator.
He tells us that a million years years before the main problem human beings had was their big brains and now evolution and time have turned humans into 'sleek furry creatures with flippers' and small brains and everyone is happy thank you very much.

Vonnegut has a way of tongue tieing me when it comes to trying to describe why I like his books. I just do, I like the quirky, the weird, the irreverent, the dry, the humourous and all are included in this story.

Just read it yourself and see if it floats your boat is the best I can do here.

Shortly after college I used to pass my time getting severely stoned and writing down my thoughts. Epiphanies were few and far between but among the more coherent insights was something along the lines of: great white sharks evolved teeth and jaws and no one begrudges them chomping their way through the sea so humans, having evolved big problem-solving brains, had some sort of biological duty to think and think and think.

Boy, was I full of it!

Imagine my delight a decade or so later finding out that Vonnegut said it so much better in this punchy novel. As the not-often-proud owner of the sort of brain Mary Hepburn has, the sort that at times suggests wildly unhelpful things, what I wouldn't give these days to think less and less and less!

5 stars. Can I ever relate.

Beyond that personal anecdote, I feel the book is a brilliantly direct challenge to Biological Imperativism and Social Darwinism. OK, so we humans are animals and subject to all the embarrassing hindrances of the simple crayfish or what have you. But we need not compete to survive. Yes, we're prey to chemical disturbances a la Breakfast of Champions. But we need not abandon the mental/spiritual frontier on that account.

Accepting Darwin's evolutionary premises does not eliminate the wonderful accomplishments of humankind. It shifts their context something fierce but it can still follow that we humans are something special and well worth banding together to keep this marvel moving. And that's Humanism to me, in a rambling roundabout fashion.

Quoth Mandarax:

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action, how like an Angel, In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

- Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet (2.3.295-300)

I stuck with it, even though I did not like it - any of it. Why? Because I needed it for a challenge.
I'm sorry, Kurt, it was a stupid, stupid story.

This clever and amusing satire is narrated by a ghost, it’s a story of evolution of humans from a million years in the future. It’s set for the first section in a port in Ecuador and the second part on the island of Santa Rosalia in the Galapagos in 1986. Vonnegut thinks human brains are too big and are responsible for a lot of awful things (lying, weapons, war etc). So luckily the majority of humans become extinct due to a virus making all women infertile except for a small number that find themselves marooned on the volcanic island. And then evolution sorts out the rest. There’s lots of visionary stuff here, the best being a device for interpreting languages and medical diagnoses and more including coming out with appropriate poems(or not) for various situations.
It’s lightly written yet makes clear points and gets all sorts of digs in at all parts of society and I had a lot of fun reading it.

No va ser casualitat que enguany triés aquest llibre per participar al #LlegeixoCiència, i és que aquesta desconnexió bookhunter ha transcorregut majoritàriament a les Illes Galápagos. Vonnegut és un autor que fins ara m'havia costat, però llegir-lo en l'entorn on s'ambienta l'obra m'ha funcionat força; embolcall immillorable per la lectura!

El nostre narrador ens parla d'uns fets de l'any 1986, des d'un milió d'anys en el futur. La Terra ha estat repoblada, però els humans ja no són exactament com eren en aquells dies. El moment en què tot va canviar, arran d'una crisi econòmica fulgurant i una sobtada caiguda de la fertilitat, conduirà una sèrie de personatges d'allò més variats a una illa remota de les Galápagos, que esdevindrà, contra pronòstic, bressol d'una nova civilització.

Amb un estil fragmentari, ens anirà presentant els diferents protagonistes i la implicació que tenen en aquesta refundació. L'autor construeix un trencaclosques delirant, ple d'humor, ironia i un cúmul de circumstàncies que li permeten fer crítica sobre l'estupidesa humana, les atrocitats que fem i explorar la nostra naturalesa. Spoiler: no en sortirem ben parats.

La narració no està mancada de contingut científic, tant pel que fa a les explicacions sobre la fauna autòctona, com per les referències a l'evolució humana. Segons Vonnegut, sent organismes més simples ens anirà millor!

No és una lectura fàcil, Vonnegut té un estil complex, dispers i va endavant i endarrere sense parar. Però les infinites peces acaben encaixant i vaig xalar força. M'alegra haver-me congraciat amb un autor que és de culte per a molta gent. Obra enrevessada i esbojarrada, però que fa pensar i diverteix si li agafes el to. A més, té l'al·licient de saber qui és el misteriós narrador que ens va deixant pistes del futur.

(SERGI)

Чергова книжка Воннеґута, якій не можу поставити якусь конкретну оцінку.

А можна поставити десять зірочок? Це мій другий роман Воннеґута і це любов! Його філософський сарказм вводив мене в захоплений транс. Ідеальна книга!

Scusa Vonnegut! Ci ho messo un'eternità a finirti!

"Tu sei convinto che nonostante tutto negli esseri umani trionfi la bontà, che alla fine gli uomini riusciranno a risolvere tutti i loro problemi e a trasformare la terra facendone di nuovo il Giardino dell'Eden."

Prometto, che quando sarà il momento, ti riprenderò in mano ed andremo a fare la Crociera-natura del secolo insieme

Evolution. Darwin. The Galapagos. The future of humanity. It's all there.