Really enjoyed this one, and a lot more than I'd anticipated I would...first read it in the 90s, but after immersing myself in his "mature" mode, and so perhaps I didn't appreciate the lengths KV went to try to shoehorn that inimitable style of his into a conventionally-plotted mid-century novel (his Vonneguttiness still oozes from every seam, of course).

There's a paper to be or perhaps already written on Player Piano, Dickens's Hard Times and commodity fetishism—the "melancholy-mad machines" (HT) come off as more alive for much of both books than the unhappy citizens of industrial and post- post-industrial capitalism.

There's another paper to be/already written about early Pynchon-Vonnegut and Norbert Wiener's cybernetics—as that unhappy tourist, the Shah of Brahtpur wants to ask of the giant computer, EPICAC, "What are people for?"

And still another on KV and the plight of art and the artist (especially re: the novel/novelist in particular) under late capitalism.

I'm not gonna write any of those papers, though—I'm gonna go read another Vonnegut novel, or soon. But I'll leave you with a really long passage from this'un about the present future, as KC saw it in 1950, of reading and writing—our future present:

She dried her eyes. “My husband, Ed, is a writer.”

“What’s his classification number?” said Halyard.

“That’s just it. He hasn’t one.”

“Then how can you call him a writer?” said Halyard.

“Because he writes,” she said.

“My dear girl,” said Halyard paternally, “on that basis, we’re all writers.”

“Two days ago he had a number—W-441.”

“Fiction novice,” Halyard explained to Khashdrahr.

“Yes,” she said, “and he was to have it until he’d completed his novel. After that, he was supposed to get either a W-440—”

“Fiction journeyman,” said Halyard.

“Or a W-255.”

“Public relations,” said Halyard.

“Please, what are public relations?” said Khashdrahr.

“That profession,” said Halyard, quoting by memory from the Manual, “that profession specializing in the cultivation, by applied psychology in mass communication media, of favorable public opinion with regard to controversial issues and institutions, without being offensive to anyone of importance, and with the continued stability of the economy and society its primary goal.”

“Oh well, never mind,” said Khashdrahr. “Please go on with your story, sibi Takaru.”

“Two months ago he submitted his finished manuscript to the National Council of Arts and Letters for criticism and assignment to one of the book clubs.”

“There are twelve of them,” Halyard interrupted. “Each one selects books for a specific type of reader.”

“There are twelve types of readers?” said Khashdrahr.

“There is now talk of a thirteenth and fourteenth,” said Halyard. “The line has to be drawn somewhere, of course, because of the economics of the thing. In order to be self-supporting, a book club has to have at least a half-million members, or it isn’t worth setting up the machinery—the electronic billers, the electronic addressers, the electronic wrappers, the electronic presses, and the electronic dividend computers.”

“And the electronic writers,” said the girl bitterly.

“That’ll come, that’ll come,” said Halyard. “But Lord knows getting manuscripts isn’t any trick. That’s hardly the problem. Machinery’s the thing. One of the smaller clubs, for instance, covers four city blocks. DSM.”

“DSM?” said Khashdrahr.

“Excuse me. Dog Story of the Month.”

Khashdrahr and the Shah shook their heads slowly and made clucking sounds. “Four city blocks,” echoed Khashdrahr hollowly.

“Well, a fully automatic setup like that makes culture very cheap. Book costs less than seven packs of chewing gum. And there are picture clubs, too—pictures for your walls at amazingly cheap prices. Matter of fact, culture’s so cheap, a man figured he could insulate his house cheaper with books and prints than he could with rockwool. Don’t think it’s true, but it’s a cute story with a good point.”

“And painters are well supported under this club system?” asked Khashdrahr.

“Supported—I guess!” said Halyard. “It’s the Golden Age of Art, with millions of dollars a year poured into reproductions of Rembrandts, Whistlers, Goyas, Renoirs, El Grecos, Dégas, da Vincis, Michelangelos …”

“These club members, they get just any book, any picture?” asked Khashdrahr.

“I should say not! A lot of research goes into what’s run off, believe me. Surveys of public reading tastes, readability and appeal tests on books being considered. Heavens, running off an unpopular book would put a club out of business like that!” He snapped his fingers ominously. “The way they keep culture so cheap is by knowing in advance what and how much of it people want. They get it right, right down to the color of the jacket. Gutenberg would be amazed.”

“Gutenberg?” said Khashdrahr.

“Sure—the man who invented movable type. First man to mass-produce Bibles.”

“Alla sutta takki?” said the Shah.

“Eh?” said Halyard.

“Shah wants to know if he made a survey first.”

“Anyway,” said the girl, “my husband’s book was rejected by the Council.”

“Badly written,” said Halyard primly. “The standards are high.”

“Beautifully written,” she said patiently. “But it was twenty-seven pages longer than the maximum length; its readability quotient was 26.3, and—”

“No club will touch anything with an R.Q. above 17,” explained Halyard.

“And,” the girl continued, “it had an antimachine theme.”

Halyard’s eyebrows arched high. “Well! I should hope they wouldn’t print it! What on earth does he think he’s doing? Good lord, you’re lucky if he isn’t behind bars, inciting to advocate the commission of sabotage like that. He didn’t really think somebody’d print it, did he?”

“He didn’t care. He had to write it, so he wrote it.”

“Why doesn’t he write about clipper ships, or something like that? This book about the old days on the Erie Canal—the man who wrote that is cleaning up. Big demand for that bare-chested stuff.”

She shrugged helplessly. “Because he never got mad at clipper ships or the Erie Canal, I guess.”

“He sounds very maladjusted,” said Halyard distastefully. “If you ask me, my dear, he needs the help of a competent psychiatrist. They do wonderful things in psychiatry these days. Take perfectly hopeless cases, and turn them into grade A citizens. Doesn’t he believe in psychiatry?”

“Yes, indeed. He watched his brother find peace of mind through psychiatry. That’s why he won’t have anything to do with it.”

“I don’t follow. Isn’t his brother happy?”

“Utterly and always happy. And my husband says somebody’s just got to be maladjusted; that somebody’s got to be uncomfortable enough to wonder where people are, where they’re going, and why they’re going there. That was the trouble with his book. It raised those questions, and was rejected. So he was ordered into public-relations duty.”

“So the story has a happy ending after all,” said Halyard.

seriously loved this book 100%

Disappointed in this one, it was underwhelming. I hadn't read Vonnegut in a long time and was excited to read this. Unfortunately I found the characters rather unlikable, obnoxious, one-dimensional caricatures, while the narrative operated like a chess game in which I could guess most every move before it was made. I also found the messaging heavy-handed. Yeah, I agree or at least am concerned with most of the themes brought up, but it was done with a lack of subtlety that grated on me.

In terms of the societal and cultural critique I generally align with many of Vonnegut's positions. The critique encompasses worship of technology, efficiency, productivity, growth, meritocracy, materialism above all else. There is critique of elites hoarding opportunities, classism, all powerful and dictatorial corporations that strip away our rights couching it under the guise of "freedom" and "progress", the rules and rigidity of corporate management and bureaucracy, marriage of corporations and police state. In this atmosphere the powerful use their moralizing as a cudgel on "poorer" people (the underclass) to strip away their humanity (sound familiar?). Warps into a vulgar sort of anti-humanism camouflaged by grandiose and caricatured moralizing.

In this book elites tell themselves they are heroes, moral heroes, saving the rest of humanity while in actuality most of their actions and motives are self-serving and based on consolidating or increasing their power. Vonnegut makes commentary on all that. The one aspect he doesn't touch on is the environmental aspect and worries from an unrestrained system that cannibalizes everything in sight, and for me I see that as one of the most important issues that could lead to global civilizational crisis. But it's completely understandable that he doesn't hit this aspect because I don't think it was in the cultural zeitgeist of the times, it would take a few decades before this concern would really start to blossom in the culture.

There is a strong critique of techno-utopianism here, and that's cool. I'm fine with that, although Vonnegut comes across as more pessimistic than me on technology. Technology is mere tool, it is how humans use and apply it that matters. Technology, with proper policy and decent thinking, can benefit broad swathes of humanity. I don't fear machines, I don't fear technology, but I worry about the humans behind the machines who leverage these things for their power. The question is will the powerful keep co-opting technology in order to keep funneling and consolidating power and control for themselves, further walling themselves off from the rest of society? or will we have sensible policy and management of these technologies that allows a diverse range of people to benefit? I think we need to work hard to make sure society as a whole benefits.

I don't know a lot about the Frankfurt School, I've only read a few articles. But I wouldn't be surprised if Vonnegut was strongly influenced by their ideas and cultural critique because his own critique pretty much mirrors many of their views. In their views there is a cultural and spiritual sickness plaguing the modern world, with a cult of instrumental reason driving the way: https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-frankf...

It is easy to critique materialism, and the cult of materialism. Unfortunately I think it is valid, there is a spiritual and cultural vacuum and this materialism is filling the void in our culture and our lives. Materialism wouldn't matter as much if we had more solid foundations in spirit and culture. I do think the pendulum may be starting to swing the other way against hyperconsumerism, but it's hard for me to say for sure. In the end I just don't think hyperconsumerism is sustainable, not just in regards to the environment, but not sustainable in the economic, societal, and cultural aspects.

I do appreciate this book for its themes, its prescience, and its relevance to today's problems. I love Vonnegut in general but like I said, in spite of the themes I was disappointed with story-telling, characters, and ideological heavy-handedness. The themes do pose very important questions, questions that we will keep struggling to answer in the coming generations.

Is it acceptable to call a soft sci-fi dystopian novel badass? Does that reveal the total nerd at the core of my character?

The only reason I can see for this book not to be mentioned as one of Vonnegut's greats is that it's edged out by the half-dozen or so outright masterpieces in his canon. But for a first novel, this is ace. It's Vonnegut's most conventionally structured novel, and possibly even his least original. The plot is more or less a tweaking of Huxley's 'Brave New World' (Vonnegut himself has admitted this). Yet frankly, I like it better than that dystopia, as 'Player Piano' is more focused, has better flow, and the satirical elements don't rely as much on suspension of disbelief.

Kurt Vonnegut was not a luddite. This is important to keep in mind when considering the book's premise. The idea of mechanical labor replacing human workers is simply the means around which Vonnegut builds his multi-tiered assault on corporate aristocracy, to borrow an excellent and underused term from David Korten. The satire is wicked-sharp. Consumerism, the class divide, barriers to entry of higher education, and even peace-time mentality all get their comeuppance in Vonnegut's portrayal of a near-future America where socialism and manufactured material desires are used to sate the drive of the lower class (most of the population), while ass-kissing mono-talents get drunk off their own wealth and power. It's socio-political satire that's refreshingly more socio than political, and it's no less relevant now, 55 years after its first pressing, than it was then. Somewhere in the book's final third, the resistance movement gains a strong voice, and the writing may coax the reader into aligning with it. The wit and intellect of the author really comes through here: does this story have any heroes, or are the revolutionaries really just anarchists who by their nature must shake up whatever order there is?

After this, his first novel, Vonnegut went on to write far more original and versatile works, many of which I've read. Absent here are the non-linear narratives, single-word commentary sentences, chatty introductions and frequent narrator editorializing which would become his M.O. However, reading 'Player Piano' should make it obvious why he soon created his own rules for writing a novel: with his very first, he'd already done all he could within the bounds of conventional composition. 'Player Piano' is Vonnegut's most straightforward narrative, but also possibly his harshest and most thorough satire; his social discontent and bitterness does not jump out in short bursts here, but is more cool and collected, and therefore able to seethe beneath every word of this carefully constructed and brutal depiction of the powers-that-be and the trail of human wreckage left behind in the name of "progress".

There was a period in my life when I read all the Vonnegut I could get my hands on, which is mostly a very rewarding experience, but oh man, this is terrible. It's his first novel, and it really should've been a short story - even as a short story, it would've been forgettable. Classic scifi man/machine themes unleavened by the irony I would usually expect from Vonnegut, drawn out far too long, with characters who lack depth or interest. Read, I dunno, anything else by Vonnegut instead, and you'll be okay.

Vonnegut's first novel (circa 1952!) bears little relation to his later, greater works, barring the subject matter. Player Piano is an ambitious speculative story about evil man-made machines turning society into one big fascist corporation. Yes, yawn, but this was seven years after D-day. Time has not been kind.

His storytelling is lucid, amusing and real, but falls away in the second half. This book is twice the length of his other works, and too self-consciously first-novelly to sustain interest until the final court scene. (Yes, an actual court scene! And there's a rousing speech from the hero too!)

Think of this as a piece on a par with the short stories he wrote in the '50s: writing with purpose, vision and coherence from a writer who would break into absolute genius at the turn of the sixties. For Vonnegut completists only.

“‘The machines are to practically everybody what the white men were to the Indians. People are finding that, because of the way the machines are changing the world, more and more of their old values don’t apply any more. People have no choice but to become second-rate machines themselves, or wards of the machines.’”

Two weeks ago, it occurred to me that it might be a fine idea to read Kurt Vonnegut’s novels in their chronological order because I really enjoyed Slaugherhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle a couple of years ago, and so I bought myself the Library of America’s edition of Vonnegut’s novels and started with his first novel Piano Player. My first thought after finishing it was, “Damn, why didn’t you make notes from time to time? This way, you could have written an in-depth review on this remarkable novel, pondering on where Vonnegut proved prophetic or especially insightful with regard to human nature instead of just saying how much you liked it.” However, this book cast such a spell on me that I was too avid going from chapter to chapter and did not feel like stopping for a moment to jot anything down.

Drawing from his experience at General Electric, where he worked as a publicist, Vonnegut envisions an American society, after World War III, in which mechanization has vastly replaced the need for human labour and society is run according to the principle of efficiency. What used to be regarded as a “free market” has now, under the influence of the last war, become a planned market economy, where people are classified according to their I.Q.s and their lives are mapped out for them from their birth onwards and depending on their readiness to adapt to social norms, such as school exams. Individual choice plays no decisive role in anybody’s life anymore, and those who are deemed to be superfluous to the economy, the vast majority, are either enlisted in the Army or into the Reconstruction and Reclamation ranks, basically units of road builders – occupations that are more or less intended to give them something to do for the sake of keeping them busy. No one in this society can be said to suffer from unfulfilled physical needs and they also have a fair share of luxury, but still, the awareness of no longer doing something really useful, of mattering as an individual, is ubiquitous and gnawing away at many people, to different effects. Vonnegut uses the Shah of Bratpuhr, a foreign visitor to the United States, as a means of showing his readers various aspects of this dystopian society, with the Shah’s insouciant outspokenness raising questions that his guide prefers to sideline, e.g. when in the face of the super-computer EPICAC that now runs the American state and takes all major decisions, the Shah asks what people are still needed for. The storyline around the Shah is quite typical of dystopian novels in that it makes us travelling companions of someone who is unused to the social mores of the country he visits, just like in Swift’s satirical travelogue Gulliver’s Travels. The second strand of the novel, however, is centred around Doctor Paul Proteus, a 35-year old engineer whose career has been, up to now, exemplary but who nevertheless feels dissatisfied with his life. All of a sudden, Paul has to make up his mind whether to join the insurrection of the Ghost Shirts, a group of malcontents who, having infiltrated the state, want to take a stand against the inhuman mechanized economic system, or to betray them to those in power for the sake of continuing in his career. Ironically, at first, he does not so much as take a decision but tumbles from one fait accompli into another.

Admittedly, this novel is primarily meant as a criticism of capitalism and its tendency to regard human beings merely and foremost in terms of their usefulness for the market. This becomes obvious in the character of Rudy Hertz, a former worker in Dr. Proteus’s factory, whose skills have been translated into a pattern according to which the machines that have taken over his job run – just like the eponymous piano player works:

”And here, now, this little loop in the box before Paul, here was Rudy as Rudy had been to his machine that afternoon – Rudy, the turner-on of power, the setter of speeds, the controller of the cutting tool. This was the essence of Rudy as far as his machine was concerned, as far as the war effort had been concerned. The tape was the essence distilled from the small, polite man with the big hands and the black fingernails; from the man who thought the world could be saved if everyone read a verse from the Bible every night; form the man who adored a collie for want of children; from the man who … What else had Rudy said that afternoon? Paul supposed the old man was dead now – or in his second childhood in Homestead.”

Already the first sentence of the novel, a reflection of Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, makes us expect the advent of civil war, and there will be a civil war alright later on iin the novel, but with a result that may be as surprising as it is able to show Vonnegut’s clear insight into human nature. Still, for all the pessimism that comes across in the ending of the novel – pessimism, which, nonetheless, is not devoid of a deep attitude of humanism –, the book seems to boil down to a message we had better consider in times where politics appear to hand over the sceptre to “science” – whatever this means, in the singular – and where figures and statistics clandestinely acquire the power to decide whether individual rights can be still afforded or are to be seen as a danger to all of us, namely:

”That there must be virtue in imperfection, for Man is imperfect, and Man is a creation of God.
That there must be virtue in frailty, for Man is frail, and Man is a creation of God.
That there must be virtue in inefficiency, for Man is inefficient, and Man is a Creation of God.
That there must be virtue in brilliance followed by stupidity, for Man is alternately brilliant and stupid, and Man is a creation of God.”

Those who claim that happiness may not be grand must have excluded dignity as one of its prerequisites.

I was working as a janitor the day that Kurt Vonnegut died. Sweeping the floors, I listened as the news came over talk radio and I remember distinctly standing up stiff and staring hard at the speakers while the news sank in. I had recently heard in interviews and read Vonnegut sharing his feelings about his own death. That he had reconciled himself to it and felt that he had done much with his life, that he was ready to go (I'm paraphrasing, of course his words were funnier and more acidic). Still, standing there with my broom in an abandoned diner, I cried for Kurt. I wasn't crying because he had gone too soon, or because it was unjust or shocking, I cried for all of us who have to live in a world without him. His voice, his fierce, sentimental, hilarious and acidic cultural commentary shed light on our lives in a way no one else can. No one could ever hope to call "bullshit" so effectively, concisely, and with as much heart as Vonnegut spent his life doing. I have never read a book by Kurt Vonnegut that I didn't adore and this novel is perhaps one of his best.

A beautiful book about the reckless and relentless escalation of technology and automation, questioning if the inexorable rise of gadgetry in our time has really improved the quality of our lives. This was Vonnegut's first novel and it has a decidedly different feel than his larger body of work. It is a bit bleaker in tone and lacks the same degree of absurdist whimsey which Vonnegut later mastered. The humor is still there, but there is a desperation and darkness which is not softened by Vonnegut's typical absurdist shrug.

Written during the technological boom in the wake of WWII, this book was a dystopian projection of where that technology may lead. A significant element of the plot is the massive supercomputer EPICAC, buried in the winding caves of Carlsbad Caverns, a not so subtle reference to ENIAC, the world's first computer, which had gone online just 6 years before this book was published. This computer, which works on paper punch cards, vacuum tubes and magnetic tape, is very much dated with the popular technology of the time. However the dated nature of all the technology central to the story, only reinforces the theme of technology and automation escalating faster than humans can possibly understand the implications.

The protagonist, Paul Proteus, is a gifted and successful engineer on the verge of a breakdown due to his disillusionment with his profession and growing disbelief in the benefits of a fully automated world. He begins to sympathize with the dispossessed working class, which has been segregated by IQ into pointless lives where they have the choice of joining the military or doing construction work. Through this ordering of society by mechanistic intelligence, Vonnegut satirizes capitalism, hierarchical societies and the spiritually and emotionally void nature of a culture which worships the escalation of technology above all other concerns. The novel escalates from there in typical Vonnegut fashion as the reasonably likeable and humble Paul Proteus is pinballed around a world gone crazy.

Despite the novel being 60 years old (an aeon in terms of technological advancement these days), and most of the references to technology being at this point naive, antiquated and understated, this book is not only still relevant, it is more relevant by the second. We live in an age of transition so dramatic and technological in nature that the themes of this book define our era, and there is no writer I would trust more to call bullshit on our brave new world than Vonnegut.

Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut

Player Piano is the first novel of American writer Kurt Vonnegut, published in 1952. Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul’s rebellion is vintage Vonnegut—wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.

It depicts a dystopia of automation, describing the negative impact it can have on quality of life. The story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the need for human laborers. The widespread mechanization creates conflict between the wealthy upper class, the engineers and managers, who keep society running, and the lower class, whose skills and purpose in society have been replaced by machines.

The book uses irony and sentimentality, which were to become hallmarks developed further in Vonnegut's later works. Player Piano is set in the near future, after a third world war. While most Americans were fighting overseas, the nation's managers and engineers faced a depleted workforce and responded by developing ingenious automated systems that allowed the factories to operate with only a few workers.

The novel begins ten years after the war, when most factory workers have been replaced by machines. The bifurcation of the population is represented by the division of Ilium, New York into "The Homestead," where every person not a manager or an engineer lives, and the other side of the river, where all the engineers and the managers live. ...

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز دوازدهم ماه می سال2014میلادی

عنوان: پیانوی خودنواز؛ کورت ونه‌ گات؛ مترجم زهرا طراوتی‏‫؛ زیرنظر: علی شیعه‌ علی؛ تهران: سبزان‏‫، سال1391؛ ‬در431ص؛ شابک9786001170539؛ چاپ دوم سال1395؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م

داستان «‮پیانوی خودنواز»، در ژانر کتابهای علمی-تخیلی (ساینس فیکشن) میگنجد، و نیز ساختاری «پست مدرن» دارد؛ این کتاب نوشتاری از «کورت ونه گات» است، که برای نخستین بار در سال هزار و نهصد و پنجاد و دو میلادی منتشر شد؛ داستان در جامعه ای در آینده ی نزدیک رخ میدهد، که بیشتر کارها را ماشینها انجام میدهد، و نیاز به انسانهای کارگر از بین رفته است؛ سلطه ی گسترده ی ماشینها باعث شده، تا کشمکشهایی بین قشر ثروتمند اجتماع، مهندسان، و مدیرانی که چرخ جامعه را به حرکت درمیآورند، و قشر پایینتر جامعه به وجود آید؛ قشری که مهارتها و تواناییهایشان به برهان وجود ماشینها بدون سود شده؛ داستان مهندسی به نام «پل پروتئوس» که باید راهی برای زندگی در دنیایی بیابد، که زیر توانِش ابَررایانه است، و ماشینها آن را میچرخانند؛ داستان شورش «پل»، داستانی سرگرم کننده، خیال انگیز، و به شکلی ترسناک است؛ شخصیت اصلی این اثر «پل پروتئوس»، رئیس کارخانه ماشین سازی «ایلیوم» است؛ «آنیتا» همسر «پل» است، و آنها فرزندی ندارند؛ در این داستان، روزهای زندگی «پل پروتئوس»، برای مدیریت شرکت خودروسازی، و زندگی شخصی او، و خانوادگیش، برای خوانشگر بازگو میشود؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 10/02/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 10/11/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

4.5

страхотен Вонегът

I have enjoyed every Kurt Vonnegut book I read… until now.

Player Piano is Vonnegut’s first novel but his other books that I have read are so very good that I could not help but have high expectations for this one even though it is his debut. It is set in a future where society has been fully mechanized, humanity is fully served by machines resulting in demarcation among the masses who were formerly of the workforce, and a social divide where the managers and engineers are the elites living luxurious happy lives while the rest are bereft of purpose. The narrative mainly features Dr. Paul Proteus a disillusioned engineer who is beginning to feel that something is wrong with society and is disturbed by the meaningless lives of the masses. He eventually decides to do something about it.

What I love about Vonnegut’s books are his wonderful idiosyncratic humour, his snappy, witty prose, the eccentric short chapters, and the recurring refrains he uses in his later works. Player Piano is lacking in these beloved features, while it is not mundane or conventional it is oddly turgid and not compelling. This is one of the few of his books that were labeled as science fiction. If I remember correctly (do let me know if I am mistaken) only this book,  The Sirens of Titan and  Cat's Cradle were published and marketed as sci-fi. While his other works such as Slaughterhouse-Five and Galápagos use sci-fi elements like aliens, time travel, the far future, and such, they are used as satirical props rather than the main focus; and they are much better than Player Piano. The trouble is Player Piano does not work as sci-fi, we are told society is fully mechanized but it is not supported by any kind of vivid world-building that would give us a sense of what this world looks like. Machines are vaguely described in passing as automated but Vonnegut is not interested in describing any machine in any detail, only the resultant ennui they are causing to the people. Consequently, it is difficult to imagine how it would feel to live in this society.

Putting aside the sci-fi issue, the narrative suffers from a lack of focus, Vonnegut goes off on so many tangents that it plays hell with the narrative flow. Looking back at my review for  Breakfast of Champions he did something similar there too, but the difference is  Breakfast of Champions is often hilarious but Player Piano has a much lower quotient of humour. There is also no pacing to speak of, just when things are getting interesting the author goes off on a dull tangent that stops the flow of the plot, after a while, he resumes the story of Paul Proteus, but soon veers away again. I was interested in Paul’s attempt to change his life and what his wife’s reaction will be given that her values are the polar opposite of his. Unfortunately, Vonnegut keeps moving away from this storyline to introduce numerous other characters that I can not keep track of until I stopped caring. Eventually, I just gritted my teeth to plow through the novel and finish it. I should have abandoned it before the halfway point but Vonnegut keeps enticing me with the Paul side of the narrative.

I don't want to be overly critical of this book because I am a fan of Kurt Vonnegut, and this book is loved by many. While I have very little appreciation for it I am sure that its finer points must have escaped me. An author of Kurt Vonnegut’s caliber should always have the benefit of the doubt. Suffice to say that I personally cannot recommend this book but if you want to read it you may want to get opposing opinions elsewhere, or simply dive into it.

اين اثر از "كورت ونه گات" ترسيم دنيايي تماما ماشيني است، كشور آمريكايي كه در آن همه ي كارخانه ها و خدمات بطور اتوماتيك صورت مي گيرد و كاري براي انجام، توسط انسانهاي با هوش متوسط وجود ندارد. همه ي اطلاعات افراد و استعداد ها و توانايي آنها توسط ماشين ها محاسبه و دركارت شناسايي هوشمند آنها ثبت شده و افراد باهوش جامعه وظيفه ي كنترل كارخانه هاي اتوماتيك را داشته و جدا از مردم عادي زندگي مي كنند.
مانند ساير داستان هاي علمي تخيلي مشابه مانند "دنياي قشنگ نو" و "ميرا" و"١٩٨٤" اين اثر نيز فضاي تلخي داشته و انسان هايي مخالف با اين نظام ماشيني وجود دارند، كه در پي تغيير شرايط موجود هستند.
البته اين رمان نسبت به موارد مشابه نام برده، حالت واقع بينانه بيشتري داشته و در واقع دنياي آغازين كتاب هاي فوق را ترسيم مي كند.
خواندن اين اثر از اين نويسنده ي توانا خالي از لطف نيست.