Player Piano

It’s been almost thirty years since I read Player Piano, and all I had retained from that first read was the name of the main character, a faint recollection of the novel’s focus on a future world heavily reliant on automation, and a vague sense of not liking the book all that much despite Vonnegut being one of my favorite authors. I had hoped to like the book better as a seasoned adult, but instead I found re-reading Player Piano to be a tedious chore which surprised me, as this year I have returned to Slaughterhouse-Five, Jailbird and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and enjoyed all of them.

I began the year with Vonnegut’s recently published Letters and liked it so much that I wanted to go back and revisit some of these novels I read way back in high school. Alas, Player Piano did not have much to offer me this second time around. The story is set in a not-so-distant dystopian future, a society run by managers and engineers where machines and computers have been perfected and attend to much of life’s needs. Regular folks like you and me (unless you happen to be a manager or an engineer) lead mundane lives outside the enclaves of these giants of industry (in a way Margaret Atwood has created a similar society in her Maddaddam trilogy with her Compounds populated by elite genengineers while the rest of the population lives in the chaotic pleeblands), but their dreary lives have been robbed of satisfaction because machines have taken away most of what they have done in the past to find meaning in their lives.

For a dystopian society, the world of Player Piano is a fairly mundane place, with no Thought Police or Hunger Games, but the effect on the everyday citizen is still soul crushing. It’s a little like The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit meets the world of Fahrenheit 451, minus a fire department whose job it is to burn books. Interestingly, however, Vonnegut has written his book before either of those two novels. Paul Proteus leads the perfect life. He is head of the Ilium Works, married to a beautiful wife and being groomed to take over Pittsburgh (humorously, in 1952 an author might have seen Pittsburgh as the future locus of industry and technology!). But despite having it all, Proteus feels like something is missing, and it is…his dissatisfaction leads him regularly to visit Homestead, the gritty town on the other side of the river to see how the other half lives, and his pretty little wife just doesn’t understand these longings he has for breaking out of the mold and doing his own thing. Proteus will remind you a bit of Guy Montague, and you’ll probably feel a sense of familiarity with the world of Player Piano. Vonnegut isn’t the first one to explore these themes, and he certainly wasn’t the last, but after having read so many similar books and watched numerous episodes of The Twilight Zone about similar characters searching for a way out of the grey flannel rat race, it all feels rather dreary and dull, even if Vonnegut is doing it so much earlier than many of these other authors.

And therein lies perhaps the best reason to continue reading this book, even if it isn’t one of Vonnegut’s best. If anything, it can be delved into as a sort of artifact and a pretty interesting one at that. It is, after all, Vonnegut’s first novel, published just seven years after he is released from a German POW camp. He’s been to graduate school at the University of Chicago and not done so well there, and then he’s been to work for GE and experienced firsthand its monotonous bureaucracy, and he works all of these threads into the story which introduces many of his themes that he returns to again and again in his later works: the worth of the individual in a society that values conformity, the role of free will versus determinism, an ironic understanding of the absurdity at the core of human life, a concern with progress that fails to take into account the needs of the people it is supposed to be serving, and a tremendous love of humanity tempered by the sure understanding that we human beings are hella stoopid.

But what’s missing from Player Piano is that Vonnegut voice and style that readers have come to expect from him. Here, in his first novel, he goes for plodding linear narrative, third person narration, and pedestrian character development, three techniques that he abandons over the next ten years. There is plenty of black humor at work here, but he has yet to embrace his pared-down style, the digressive randomness and the bleak whimsy that begin to appear in his next Sirens of Titan and which he has mastered ten years later in Cat’s Cradle. Nonetheless, the reader can see a hint of what is to come in later books, especially in the subplot weaving its way through the novel with the comic figure of the Shah of Bratpuhr who is taking a tour of the United States accompanied by a State Department handler. He visits Ilium, takes a tour of a planned community, meets the president, and visits the Carlsbad Caverns to view the massive supercomputer, EPICAC XIV. The Shah, drinking heavily from his flask of sacred liquor of Sumklish, is curious about all the sights of America, but calls EPICAC a false god when it can’t provide the answer to his riddle, and, to his handler’s consternation, keeps referring to the common Americans he meets on his journey, as Takaru, slaves…

No, his handler tells him, “No Takaru…Ci-ti-zen.”

“Ahhhhh,” said the Shah. “Ci-ti-zen.” He grinned happily. “Takaru—citizen. Citizen—Takaru.”

And lines like that one right there are proof of why, even if this book is a bit of a drag to read, Vonnegut is such a great writer, and why even his weaker books should be read again and again and again.


Here's my review for Slaughterhouse-Five:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

and Jailbird:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

For some reason I had thought that I had long ago run through the works of Kurt Vonnegut. He was one of the first writers whose books I can remember consciously deciding that I needed to read each and every one of. The moment is still clear in my memory- I had just been introduced to Kilgore Trout and his trunk of pulp novellas in Breakfast of Champions. I'm not quite sure what happened with that goal, but I'm guessing I lost the thread of the quest sometime after reading Galapagos back in high school. So it was with much joy that I received the news that my book club had decided to read Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano, published in 1952.

Dr. Paul Proteus lives in an allegedly utopian world. All industry has been mechanized, the sweat of the worker's brow replaced by the drip of oil from the pistons and pulleys manufacturing all the household goods, widgets and whatsits that EPICAC, a giant computer inhabiting the immenseness of the Carlsbad Caverns, has computed that Americans need in order to be happy. Only those who can program or repair the machines still have jobs in the traditional sense, the rest of the country's vast labor pool being forced to join either the army or what amounts to the Works Project Administration building bridges and roadways. As a member of the elite cadre that maintains the machines, and thus their power, you would think Proteus would be far more satisfied with his life. Yet he's not. He feels more at home slumming in bars with the disaffected across the river than he does in his immaculate home with his status-seeking wife and it's only a matter of time before this dissatisfaction with the world becomes out and out rebellion.

This book is classic Vonnegut in the sense that he has clearly seen the future repercussions of what his society was moving toward and railed against it as best he knew how. I can't help but draw comparisons to the rampant unemployment of today and the growing hordes of dispossessed unable to find even the most mundane of jobs. A service economy with no one to service. Vonnegut knew that, regardless of how often we rail against the strictures of employment, the majority of people derive satisfaction in earning an honest dollar. Remove this obligation and you are also likely to remove the sense of self worth a person has. Regardless of whether or not it's healthy to base one's self worth on their employability, this is the cultural message we inherit at birth- the value of honest labor. Of course, it's easy to rail against a system that disenfranchises millions but, as Vonnegut shows in Player Piano, it's damn near impossible to root it out.

What is missing from Player Piano, and the reason I can't give it that fifth star, is the trademark sense of humor that runs rampant through his other books. Sure, he's got his dystopian world and his biting satire but there is no sense of detachment or whimsy here. This is Vonnegut at his most acerbic, the cynicism that he would return to in his final years of writing during the Bush reign. This is a book written by a man who fully understands the harm that humans inevitably wreak upon ourselves and our world, but who has yet to admit to himself that it's all just one giant joke and the best thing we can do is lean back, sip our whiskey, and say "so it goes."

In his first novel, published in 1952, Vonnegut envisages a dystopian future where nearly all jobs have been rationalised away by increasing automation. But, just when things seem most hopeless, a saviour appears in the form of a brash, uncouth but lovable billionaire, who, despite having no previous political experience, rides a populist wave to become President. He immediately expels all illegal immigrants and starts a war against an alliance of Middle Eastern and Asian countries. Within months, America's downtrodden poor are again leading full, meaningful lives as fruit pickers, hotel staff, prostitutes and cannon fodder, and the country enters a new golden age.

Player Piano felt different from other Vonnegut books: the sentences weren’t as bare, the pages were full and his fingerprint felt more spread out. Chapters ran twenty pages long which allowed for little details to creep in (like how a phone becomes moist after talking on it for a few minutes) and the main message of the book felt more sunken into the story than usual. If Vonnegut’s prose is fast food and James Joyce a steak house, then Player Piano falls somewhere around Applebee’s but with good food.

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Something close to Paul Proteus dies, and in an emotional state, he orders that its body be brought to his office. It isn’t until he sees the corpse in his office that he realizes his order made no sense. Empathy impedes reasoning.

People have all kinds of special skills which give them money, purpose and meaning. When people had jobs that used their special skills they complained about their jobs, and when jobs were scarce they complained about not having a job. We instinctively look at the ‘other’ and desire it; to be content is to not be human. Desire impedes gratitude.

Kroner and Finnerty find certainty in their beliefs: Kroner is a CEO of sorts and Finnerty becomes a leader of a movement to protest robots. Paul is left stagnant, not sure of what fulfills him. Uncertainty impedes progress.

There are so many little contradictions and truths spread throughout this book but everything seems to fall under the umbrella of “March Forward," which is Vonnegut’s cynical yet hopeful view of: yeah, we mess up, but keep trying to do better.

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This was my last Vonnegut novel (I still have to read his short stories,) so I thought I would do a quick recap:


I’ve always been wowed by how Vonnegut could have hope for people even after he witnessed the horror at Dresden.

In Player Piano (1952) his view of humanity leaves room for the potential of good.

In Sirens of Titan (1959) he promotes looking within ourselves as a solution to our problems.

In Mother Night (1961) he finds romance.

In Cat’s Cradle (1963) a simple Bokononist greeting using our bare feet builds human connection (you should try it, it really does.)

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) shows the root of human goodness: be kind to ourselves and others.

Slaughterhouse-five (1969) positions life as worth living in spite of the horrors we create.

Breakfast of Champions (1973) shows how once you peel back all the crap in life and get down to its bare bones, you are left with ‘beams of light’ and a simple message: be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool!

In Galapagos (1985) he advocates for burning it all down, just like the aftermath of the robot protests. Sometimes a forest rots and needs a fire to clear it out so it can Move Forward.

Vonnegut championed simplicity, he was cynical optimism personified.

My favorite Vonnegut. Epically dystopian--disturbingly relevant. Somehow it manages not to shove it's agenda down your throat but does gently haunt you.

For his first book in 1952 Kurt Vonnegut made an entry in a long string of dystopian novels stretching back to (where else) Eugene Zamyatin's 1921 classic We. It's not the best entry.

The We Lineage
In order of quality:
1984
We
Brave New World
Player Piano
Anthem

These books all deal with futures in which social class has ossified and production has mechanized. They deal with the automation of society, and with socialism (in wildly different ways).

Vonnegut was a socialist. The way he deals with it is boring. The long section in the middle set at a company team-building retreat seems padded, even before we get to the complete play contained in it. And (as usual) he has no idea what to do with women. The new machines take away work from both genders: mechanical work for men, dishwashing for women. Seriously, that's it. Lead character Paul Proteus's wife is a shrew (although she does, in fairness, get one scene that's not bad).

Shitty Wives in Literature
Edith Stoner
Mildred Montag
Dominique Francon
Rosamond Vincy
Anita Proteus

Vonnegut's point - that people need to work to feel useful - seems surprisingly valid. I say surprisingly because not having to work sounds fine to me. But we continue to see unemployment as a great personal embarrassment, and we continue to more or less invent stuff for people to do. My job is about three levels removed from anything that could remotely be considered useful. So, decent point: simplistic and boring execution.

Vonnegut famously graded his own books. His best book by a long shot, Slaughterhouse-Five, gets a cocky A+, as (more arguably) does the okay Cat's Cradle. He gave Player Piano a B. I think he was being generous.

Vonnegut is one of my favorite writers, and this is my favorite book by him. However I don't consider it exactly a Vonnegut book because it is absolutely unlike anything else he has ever written.

Vonnegut likes to brag that he has never written a book with a villain in it. To that I add that he has never written a book with a hero in it except for Player Piano. His other characters are merely protagonists, people who do not even so much as have things happen to them as observe that things happen. Proteus has ambition, drive, and the one thing lacking from most Vonnegut characters: desire. The world, however, frustrates him at every turn, trying to get him to become like the rest of Vonnegut's characters. Rather than give in, he joins the underground and tries to overthrow the world. This is a book about revolution, a book about fighting back, a book about a world where value is taken away from man, who must reclaim it. There is very little of Vonnegut's classic sense of irony here. This is a book one can agree with.

I consider this book to be part of the Revolutionary Series: four books by different authors about different types of Moral Revolutions. And by that I don't mean a revolution that is moral, but a revolution IN THE FIELD OF MORALITY. It shows that everything that we have always believed to be good is in fact not good. For that reason, I consider it to be an unofficial companion piece to--and possibly a reversal of--
Atlas Shrugged.

A commendable early attempt at greatness, this was written before Vonnegut attained his whacky genius status. His later, weirder novels are better, but this one gave us a glimpse of things to come.