It's about time.

This was recommended by a good friend who knows about these sort of things. I was impressed in no small measure.

A really loose narrative which I feel is something Mr. Vonnegut was heading towards his whole life, loose in the best sense of the word. Very thought provoking and joyously philosophical but always a pleasure to read. Mr. Vonnegut has a brilliant way of reminding us that none of this really matters.

Anyone who enjoys concepts that simultaneously seem deep and farcical will adore this book.

“You are not enough people!”

Worth reading just for this quote.
A lot of fun...

Sigh. The more I read of Vonnegut, the more I feel that he is just fucking over-rated. This is my fifth Vonnegut novel, and definitely not one of his better ones. I have yet to read Slaughterhouse 5, but I did read Mother Night which to date is the best book of his I have read (though it's not without it's issues)

A couple of years back, I bought a lot of good condition Vonnegut books off eBay, 12 or 14 books, for 75 bucks. I thought it was a good deal for an author I've heard plenty about, but after 5 books, I can't help but feel like that 75 bucks was a waste.

This novel - although I doubt it really qualifies as one, compared to a standard novel - is a rambling, meandering mess that's more about Vonnegut's own family (so this book is semi-autobiographical?) than about the timequake that this book is supposed to be about, which was why I started reading this book in the first place - I wanted to read about the fucking timequake instead of Vonnegut's half-assed rambling about his family and his Gary Stu, Kilgore Trout. Fucking waste of my time.

L'universo ha una crisi di autostima e decide di interrompere la sua espansione e tornare indietro di dieci anni (il cronosisma, appunto) facendo così rivivere agli esseri umani gli ultimi dieci anni e nessuno può cambiare le proprie scelte, ripentendo così anche gli stessi errori.

Vonnegut ci lascia con questo umoristico e satirico romanzo, visto che sarà la sua ultima opera che scriverà. Ma non c'è solo una storia di fantascienza, bensì il libro contiene anche aneddoti personali dell'autore, sempre raccontati con la sua lucida e mordace ironia.

State a sentire: siamo sulla terra per cazzeggiare. Non credete a quelli che vi dicono che non è così!

Le donne sono tutte psicotiche. Gli uomini sono tutti coglioni.

"Ancora e per sempre: perché dannarsi [a scrivere, n.d.r.]? Ecco la mia risposta: molta gente ha un disperato bisogno di ricevere questo messaggio: «Io sento e penso quanto te, mi preoccupo per molte delle cose di cui ti preoccupi tu, anche se la maggior parte della gente non se ne preoccupa. Non sei solo»."

Sicuramente un libro insolito, che non ti aspetti, dove l'autore in un certo senso ti parla faccia a faccia, davanti a una buona birra.

بر من ثابت شد که هیچ یک از نوشته های ونه گات سلاخ خانه شماره پنج نمی شود
زمان لرزه را در ادبیات پست مدرن دسته بندی کرده اند
روایت های تو در تو همراه با فاصله گذاری و دخالت دادن زندگی شخصی و ارجاعات درون متنی و برون متنی متعدد
و استفاده از زبان طنزآمیز
از ویژگی های این نوع ادبیات است
که در زمان لرزه به وفور استفاده شده
هر چند نهایتاً نفهمیدم که نویسنده چه هدفی را دنبال می کند
و چندان از داستان سر در نیاوردم
اما خواندنش لذت بخش بود

As has been pointed out elsewhere this isn't a novel per se. More Mr Vonnegut ruminating on Life the Universe and Everything. But he's always able to come up with interesting stuff

I suppose it would be fair to call this a rant. Essentially, this is a summary of a novel Vonnegut struggles to write mixed with reflections from his life. The two main characters in this semi-auto-biographical novel are Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut's alter-ego, and the author himself. The fact that much of the narrative consists of tangential reflections on actual events in the author's life make it difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction in this book.

Obviously, there was no "timequake" in 2001; the universe did not randomly begin shrinking, launching us ten years into the past, ten years into our past, which we were then forced to relive in precisely the same way we lived it before. And Obviously anything Kilgore Trout says and does is fiction--or is it? Anyways, through this clever metafictional stew Vonnegut is able to wax philosophical on a number of issues, ranging from free will to marriage.

Though much of the novelistic rant is characterized by lengthy non-sequiturs, plenty of delightful nuggets of Vonnegut wisdom surface throughout the text. He talks about his marriages, explaining his belief that many marriages fail today because we are no longer connected to our extended families. He talks about growing old, about his craft, about art generally, about the government, dead authors, science, and he posits his cantankerous opinions all along the way.

This is the kind of book that would be really horrible to read if it were written by most people's grandpas, even though the content would be virtually the same. At it's core, Timequake is an old fart asserting his opinion on a number of topics. What makes this book fun, is the fact that the old fart is Kurt Vonnegut. Each page is imbued with wit, humor, irony, insight, and truth. Vonnegut was one of the few who got it, whatever it is.

Timequake is billed as Vonnegut’s last “novel” but it’s neither his last, nor a novel. Hocus Pocus was the final novel from the Master, and A Man Without a Country his last book. This is almost entirely autobiographical, with a few digressions on the career of Kilgore Trout to keep the fictional proceedings going.

No complaints from me. Kurt is on fine form, wisecracking and wise, settling into his batty old grandfather role with ease. What is surprising about this volume is the candour he displays when talking about his own family, a matter of contention among the Vonnegut clan. But his personal life was always entwined with his writing: from way back to his early 70s novels, when he began to write personally detailed prefaces.

This book’s catchword: Ting-a-Ling!

یکی از عجیب‌ترین رمان‌ها!

می‌شه گفت که کل رمان مثل یک سخنرانی بود. مثل یک معاشرت بود. حرف زدنِ نویسنده از چیزهای مختلف و جلو بردنِ آهسته‌ی یک خط داستانی.
اما پر بود از داستان و خرده‌پیرنگ و نقل‌قول و نصیحت و حرف و حرف که پشت سر هم میومدن. از لحاظ کلاژ بودنش می‌شه گفت که حسابی پست‌مدرن بود.
خط داستانیِ اصلی بسیار کمرنگ بود. حرف‌های ونه‌گوت هم طوری بود که گوشه‌هایی‌ش رو توی کتاب‌های دیگه‌ش شنیده بودی. مثل اکثر کتاب‌هاش البته.
دوتا جوک خوب هم تعریف می‌کرد :))

کتاب رو به یک علاقمند به ونه‌گوت پیشنهاد می‌کنم. اما نه کسی که بخواد اولین کتابش رو از این نویسنده بخونه.

Sådan her må være måden, at skrive en science fiction selvbiografi på.
Verden har slået en bøvs på ti år, og alting gentager sig.
Hvad der herefter sker, når dagen for gentagelsestidspunktet passeres, står centralt i bogen med dette citat:

"Du har været syg, men nu er du rask, og der er masser af arbejde at gøre."

Undervejs i bogen fortæller Vonnegut om sig selv gennem de mennesker og historier, der har påvirket ham - virkelige såvel som den fiktive Kilgore Trout.

Det er humoristisk, og formår endda at være sjovt.

Come the half way point or so in this book I was rather indignantly thinking how wrong all the harsh criticism of it is. As usual Vonnegut was making me liberally annotate as I wrote. Here: Yes! There: Haha! Somewhere else: Ting-a-ling!!! By the end, however, it was a chore. Those explanation points! Those ting-a-lings!!! I wanted to get right into the very paper of the book and kill them!!!!

Maybe it’s worth reading as a piece on how writers suffer when they can’t write – or think they can’t write, since obviously they can.

But it is worth reading for the insights into life.

They say the first thing to go when you’re old is your legs or your eyesight. It isn’t true. The first thing to go is parallel parking.

It is worth reading for his regret,

rest here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpre...

When an author goes out of his way to explain that the novel you are holding in your hands is the result of a failed attempt to write a novel and is obviously cobbled together with no apparent structural or narrative concern in mind, do not proceed.

Vonnegut is an uneven writer. That's not a sin. If you've ever tried to read the worst of King or Poe or even Hemingway you'll discover that for yourself. Nevertheless, there's no use downplaying it. This novel was a bloody mess. Vonnegut stumbles from topic to topic, ranting, bitterly cynical with one or two lumps of sweetener just to keep it interesting. It doesn't really help. The book does not take long to read and so in that regard is painless. Yet I can't help but wonder why, if the original Timequake he keeps referring to as a story that "didn't want to be written," did he then, for whatever reason, decide to write a novel called Timequake? The story--if you want to call it that--works primarily as a distraction from the autobiographical segments that were smeared over the original idea. Why he couldn't publish a memoir, especially so late in his career, is the most mysterious aspect of the work. It certainly looks as if that's what he really wanted to do.

If Timequake is the only thing between you and completing the Vonnegut canon, all right. If not, do not proceed.