The author Kurt Vonnegut
I have started this blog with the intention of focusing my posts on the technical aspects of my life. Well that can get boring – for you and for me. I don’t want to write about nothing but code, and you don’t want to just read it. If you read my blog, you probably want to know more about me than just what does he think about code – or maybe you don’t care, and I just wrong. Either way, I have decided to start sharing my personal thoughts, likes, and dislikes. You have been warned….
One of my favorite authors is the late great Kurt Vonnegut. I only started reading him with the last year or so, but I have read all of his novels already. He is a bit odd, but good. His writings have been published in both novel and short story form, but for this post I am just going to talk about his fourteen novels (rather six of his novels, I will talk about the other eight another time).
Player Piano
This was his first novel, and to me it shows. This was not my favorite Vonnegut novel. The story deals with a near-future society where everything is automatized. Because of this, human laborers are no longer needed. This causes conflict between the well off upper class and the struggling lower class. The plot is not the problem, it was his writing. It just didn’t have that Kurt Vonnegut style that I had seen in his later books.
The Sirens of Titan
This one I liked. This is the novel that I felt Vonnegut really got his voice. If I had to describe the plot in one sentence, it would be “Mar’s failed attempt at a pathetic military attack on Earth”. There is so much more to the story though. You will just have to read it.
Mother Night
Mother Night is the story of Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American who moved to Germany and assisted the Nazis during WW2. Most of this story is told from Campbell’s perspective while awaiting his trial in an Israeli prison. Campbell makes a cameo in another of Vonnegut’s works Slaughterhouse-Five.
Cat’s Cradle
As with most of his novels, this is a weird one but a good one. Cat’s Cradle tells the story of the narrator learning about a synthetic compound that was created by a scientist responsible for the A-bomb. Following the compound (which is currently being kept by the late scientist’s children), the narrator comes to a poor Caribbean island run by a cruel dictator. The culture of the island is explored with the introduction of a new religion called Bokononism.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Personally, I think this one is just okay. It tells the story of Eliot Rosewater, the primary trustee of the Rosewater Foundation and his dealings with the townspeople of Rosewater county, Indiana. It is structured similar to that of short stories, each dealing with a certain towns person Rosewater encounters. This is the book that first introduces us to a character that shows up in most of Vonnegut’s novels after this – Kilgore Trout.
Slaughterhouse-Five
Probably his most famous novel. The story revolves around Billy Pilgrim, and as the first line of the story goes “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time”. A veteran from WW2, Pilgrim goes through his life randomly experiencing moments of it – both in the past and the future. If you were a fan of LOST, this may sound somewhat familiar to you. Other than that, I don’t want to give away too much about this one. This was the first of his books that I read, and it hooked me in.
Sometime next week, I will go over Vonnegut’s remaining eight novels.
