Deadeye Dick

At this point, the formula for a Kurt Vonnegut novel is so clear and familiar that it's almost completely transparent, but they're still so enjoyable to read that it's hardly worth caring. Like a lot of his work, Deadeye Dick is less a novel with a plain, straightforward narrative and more of a jumbled memoir of a character who seems like some possible version or aspect of Vonnegut himself, examining the absurdities of life and America and society through events that range almost everywhere on the scale between hilarious and depressing. He had his method down to a science by the 80s, and the result is yet another easy to read book that I liked a lot and wouldn't mind going through again.

This particular book is about Rudolph Waltz, a man born in the 1930s to very silly parents and whose entire future is affected when he accidentally does something horrible when he's twelve years old. We learn a lot about his life and the lives of his close family members, and also little snippets about the various other residents and famous events in Midland City. As far as recurring Vonnegut elements go, the novel returns to science fiction with the concept of a neutron bomb that can wipe out the residents of a town without actually affecting the non-living landscape, and it shares a location and some characters with Breakfast of Champions. I'm not sure that the two stories can actually be reconciled into a single continuity, but that was never the point of Vonnegut's writing anyway. Deadeye Dick isn't his most innovative or surprising work, but it's still a very entertaining and occasionally poignant novel, which is pretty much the writer's real trademark.

Jailbird

I've probably said it before but it bears saying again. While Kurt Vonnegut is best known as an author of unusual, satirical science fiction, some of his best work takes place in the real world, or at least something very close to resembling it. Jailbird proves this once again, and after I found his previous book to be underwhelming, it was nice to read another great Vonnegut novel again. He was getting older at this point, which is reflected in the story's main character, a man in his sixties who's seen the world change a lot over time and has stopped taking it entirely seriously. Jailbird reads more like a fictional autobiography or memoir rather than a traditional novel, and has the protagonist telling the story of his first couple days of freedom after being jailed for two years for his involvement in the Watergate scandal, though it's fairly rambling, covering at different points many different periods in his earlier life and also obliquely referring to his state at the time of the writing a few years later. There's also a very long prologue (it is literally more than 10% of the book's text) written from Vonnegut's own perspective which mentions things that inspired pieces of the story and also expands on some fictional events that are referred to but left unexplained in the main text.

So there's the typical Vonnegut playfullness in the writing, and the topics he decided to brood on here are pretty expected as well. He talks pretty harshly about the history of the treatment of certain American citizens, from laborers who wanted to start unions to communists who were persecuted by the government after the war. He weaves the different characters into the fabric of America from the 30s to the 70s, as the protagonist goes from a reluctant Harvard man to a successful bureaucrat during World War II to an unemployed loser to a forgotten small part of the Nixon administration before his eventual incarceration. The RAMJAC corporation is a creation of Vonnegut that pops up repeatedly and proves essential to both the plot and his most biting condemnation in the book, giving not just corporations but our entire economic system a pretty thorough lashing. For all of it's preaching though it wouldn't be a very enjoyable book without his trademark oddness and sense of humor, and luckily both are also fully intact here. As he gets older he seems more willing to touch on taboo subjects, and some of the laughs in Jailbird are as strange and biting as they've ever been. It's not quite one of the best books he's written, but it's certainly right up there with other great things he's done.

Slapstick

Vonnegut's eighth novel is not exactly one of his best, but I still found it pretty enjoyable. He calls it "the closest thing" he'll ever write to an autobiography, and it begins with a relatively long prologue that is both funny and surprisingly poignant, where he writes about how he came to write the book and reveals where a lot of the pieces of the plot came from before you actually know they're in there. The novel itself follows at a very brisk pace, with this being one of the quickest to read Vonnegut books I've tackled. The writing style just lends itself to being absorbed in huge chunks, because it's very disconnected with extremely short chapters. Despite the small word count the plot itself isn't very dense, so it's quite simple to just power through in a couple sittings.

And you don't mind doing so because it's pretty funny and has some weird new ideas. The whole thing is written as the late-life memoir of a pretty strange man, born a freak with an unusual attachment to his twin sister, eventually growing to be President of the United States as the country slides into anarchy as the result of some strange diseases. Some of the stuff from his youth gets pretty uncomfortable, and the descent of civilization is just downright odd. While capable of providing a few laughs, the strongest part of the story might just be its structure, with the way it slowly fills in the picture from both directions, and a few pretty good bits of foreshadowing just from putting two and two together with the way it was written. Again, not really one of my favorites, but still a pretty enjoyable book from a great author.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Of the seven novels by Kurt Vonnegut I've read, this was definitely the funniest. I've talked about how the two biggest recurring elements in his work are depressing uses of technology and dark humor, and the scale is pretty much fully tipped towards the latter here. Eliot Rosewater is one of Vonnegut's favorite characters, appearing in multiple books after this one, and I have to say I enjoyed his starring story a whole lot. It struck me at a certain point that it was sort of like one of the less serious Coen brothers movies in novel form, which was sort of an epiphany on my taste. Whether on film or in print, I sure like off beat and occasionally black as night humor.

As far as Vonnegut plots go, Mr. Rosewater's is fairly mundane. He was born into money, and is the president of a foundation that manages his family's fortune. An ambitious lawyer discovers that any president of the foundation that is found insane must relinquish control, and since Eliot has failed to have a child with his European wife, that means the power would transfer to his schlub of a cousin in Rhode Island. The lawyer believes he can get a huge chunk of that inheritance if such a transfer were to occur, and with only a minimum of digging finds that an insanity case might end up being pretty easy.

There's sort of three phases to the book. The first and second explore the lives of Eliot and his cousin respectively, less concerned with hurrying the plot along and just sort of exploring what their lives are like. The funniest bits tend to be whatever comes out of Eliot's mouth, though even when he's not around it's hard to read for any length of time without something humorous coming up. The last act is pretty brief and fairly climactic, a bit confusing on first read but explaining itself fairly well in the last chapter. If there was a Vonnegut book I wouldn't have minded being a bit longer, it was this one, but it was still an excellent, quick read and certainly in the top tier of his work.

Player Piano

Kurt Vonnegut's first novel is sort of an interesting case. It's his wordiest work that I've read, and in some ways it's unique because it doesn't seem like only he could have written it. His style is visible but not fully formed yet, and it's like he wasn't sure who he was yet. A lot of his trademarks are there, like interesting applications of then-cutting edge but now old fashioned technology, a dystopian view of mankind's overall mentality, and some black humor. But it's just missing that economy of language and particular wry wit that would make it distinctly his. It was a pretty good book, but not one of his greats.

It's interesting trying to figure out when the book is supposed to take place, too. It was published in 1952, and is clearly set in a future where machines have too much control of society, but it's hard to say how far in the future. It takes place a generation or so after "the war", the United States' supposed final military conflict before they set up their new, more efficient society. But while it might have been World War II (albeit an alternate version of it), it seemed more like another one after it. The prominent use of now-dated technology like tape recorders to control various automated functions makes it unclear how far forward he intended it to take place, although I would guess sometime before now. It makes for an original setting that probably won't be replicated, and a curious backdrop for the story.

It's about Paul Proteus, an engineer and son of a legend of a man who was one of the most powerful in the country before he died. The world is placed before him in his career, but he grows increasingly displeased with the system and his life, while one of his old friends becomes involved with an organization that wishes to overthrow the machines' power in the society. It ended up taking on a more traditional story structure than I really expected, and some of its ideas seem kind of quaint now, but it had a surprising amount of things to say that would be relevant now. His ideas have always been a bit too nuts to take their warnings too seriously, but Kurt Vonnegut could probably make a compelling argument about anything he wanted. It was a bit preachy in places, but it was overall a pretty good first work by one of my favorite writers.

Mother Night

While Mother Night is still distinctly and definitely written by Kurt Vonnegut, it is without a doubt the least Vonnegut-like of his novels that I've read. By that I mean it doesn't have a lot of the calling cards of his other books. There aren't any science fiction elements, it's not overtly satirical, and it's also not particularly funny. There are a few instances of brutally dark humor, but they're pretty sparse. He's obviously done other relatively serious stories, but even Slaughterhouse-Five was fairly odd in places. Mother Night is very grounded and serious as it tells a story with what he calls the one one of his with a moral, and it's one that shines through the entire time.

Mother Night is about an American-born member of the Nazi party facing trial in Israel. The first few chapters introducing his living space and the various men who keep him under guard, and the novel is written as though it is a work that doubles as both his autobiography and his defense. He was a minister of propaganda in English, and claims he was hired by the government to use his platform to deliver secret messages to the allies. He has no proof of this however, and the situation doesn't look good. While his broadcasts may have had an ulterior motive that helped the war effort, they were also filled with vitriolic hate speech as they were supposed to, speech which definitely pushed the Nazi agenda and assisted their goals. The question isn't even which side he helped more. If he spoke so well for the Nazis, does it really matter why he was saying it?

The story jumps around in time quite a bit, revealing details as necessary and giving a good overview of an interesting life in a way that makes it hard to put the book down. It's an extremely quick read, one I finished in two days, and a very fulfilling one too. Some of the material is a bit difficult content-wise, but it all plays into what may be my favorite work by Vonnegut so far. It's chilling, surprising, and thought provoking. And the ending is perfect in its harshness, unexpected at first but ultimately the only way that it could have ended appropriately. I enjoy Vonnegut when he's being silly, but this is altogether something else.

The Sirens of Titan

I went back in time a bit to Vonnegut's second book, and was impressed by how clear his vision was even then, still in the beginning of his career. Titan starts off fairly normally, but gets weird as its protagonist Malachi Constant travels all over the solar system against his will. The book covers a variety of ideas as he loses his memory, is programmed to be a soldier, is manipulated by forces he doesn't understand and finally is allowed to live his life. It's sort of a mix of whimsical adventure and some pretty harsh views of humanity. A scene later on where most of Earth has taken to a new religion is basically the genesis for the story "Harrison Bergeron" which we read in school a good ten years ago (Jesus, really?), and while less developed actually comes off a bit more dystopian.

There's no Kilgore Trout in this book, although Tralfamadore does return in another capacity. I wasn't really paying full attention to that aspect for a while because it only seemed tangentially related to what was going on, though it was later actually responsible for one of the best bits in the story, and a lot of what the whole thing was about. It really is classic Vonnegut, with a mixture of crackpot science fiction ideas that actually make a little sense if you let them; bizarre, often dark humor; and a few dark things to say about life. One of my favorites of the few novels of his I've read, though to be honest I think they're all pretty awesome. I might as well call him my favorite author at this point, at least within the realm of what's considered literature.

Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five is another great book by Kurt Vonnegut. It's very much in his style of dark humor, science-fiction trappings, and self-referentiality. The book is relatively serious for him, while still being generally strange, the narrative is built around his real experience during the bombing of Dresden near the end of the second World War. As far as war novels go, Slaughterhouse really isn't one. It doesn't describe any battles in great deal, as the protagonist is never really in one. It doesn't have page after page of depressing text describing how horrible everything was. Vonnegut is very simple in his writing style, getting to the point early and letting the story move along. This is part of what makes reading his work so addicting, you never get bogged down in overbearing paragraphs. He manages to convey how terrible war can be without getting too preachy about it, which made it an easy book to stomach.

He begins and ends the story talking about his own experience getting around to writing it and how a lot of the things he talks about actually happened. Most of it is made up, although he makes a cameo or two in the story himself. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, has come unstuck in time, traveling willy-nilly to different points in his life. This gives him a unique perspective on life, and an odd tone to the book as he lives through his experience captured behind enemy lines. There are appearances by classic Vonnegut characters Eliot Rosewater and Kilgore Trout, although thanks to the strange order I've been reading his books I'm not sure when they first appeared. Slaughterhouse, like his other work, is very funny, even if you're not supposed to laugh at a war novel. The time-travel gimmick makes for a good story told in an interesting way, and it's a very quick read. It might be his best work, certainly his most famous. It would be a good book whether you're interested in humanism or just some escapism.

Cat's Cradle

One of Vonnegut's earlier novels, Cat's Cradle's narrative is pretty straightforward but told in an interesting way. The plot is really science-fiction, although this really wasn't obvious for a while. Vonnegut's known for his social satire, and a lot of the book is humorous takes on people and ideas from the time period. The nameless narrator is telling the story of how he got to where he is, and starts with him doing research for a book about the day the nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He goes to the hometown of one of the fictional creators of the device, but doesn't realize until later he came up with something much more deadly before he died. Vonnegut jokes about the arms race, McCarthyism, and religion as the setting shifts and the narrative takes a darker turn.

What's interesting is how he uses the narrator plot device as a way to increase tension and danger without actually having anything happen in the story. The main conflict occurs very quickly near the end of the book, but the writer is always dropping hints of how things will go wrong. It's very oddly structured, with over a hundred chapters despite being fewer than three hundred pages in length. There are frequent interruptions as the narrator explains concepts and teachings of Bokononism, the fake religion he practices. Besides the interesting story, Cat's Cradle is really funny. There's a lot of humor in the dialogue, even when it's expository, and funny characters, even if they only have a short amount of time to make an impact. Vonnegut has a style of writing that's all his own, which makes reading his books a unique experience, unlike very few other ways to entertain yourself. I think everybody should read at least a little of his stuff, and Cat's Cradle is a good choice.