God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - Kurt Vonnegut

[Dosed]

Ahoy hoy,

I'm currently reading my books in this order: Vonnegut, someone else, Vonnegut, someone else, etfreakin'cetera. I'm currently on a life long goal (read 2 month long goal) to read an author's full works and I decided to choose Mr. Vonnegut.

I just managed to finish Mr. Rosewater today after roughly 2 weeks or so of dragging myself through this book. Has anyone else had the misfortune of reading this little story? As you may be able to tell I was thoroughly disappointed with the novel as a whole. I felt that it was incredibly dull, the protagonist wasn't anywhere near as interesting as his other novels and the supporting characters were nothing but irritating. Normally I find them all to be very bizarre and unrealistic characters but at least they're interesting.

I also found the criticism of "rich peepl r bad" was just incredibly heavy handed considering that's essentially what the entire story is about. I feel like this story would have been better off as one of Kilgore Trout's stories that Vonnegut has the habit of affording 2 or 3 paragraphs to illustrate some strange little tale.

I realise that he's written plenty of stuff so obviously there's going to be lesser quality writing somewhere along the line. Did anyone else have similar gripes to me? Or is this anyone's favourite Vonnegut book?

[Nappi]

Definitely not one of his best, but I thought it was still OK. I don't remember much about it anymore, though.

Which of his books have you read so far? My favorites are The Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, and Bluebeard. I have enjoyed his other novels as well, except for Player Piano and Galapagos.

[Dosed]

I've read God Bless You, Mr Rosewater (obviously), Mother Night, Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse-Five. I think my favourite one so far has to be Mother Night, I just found it fascinating and I felt so much pain for the protagonist.

I've heard (perhaps from you) that Cat's Cradle is another one of his stronger novels so I'm leaving that until nearer to the end of my goal. Have you read all of his works? What did you like in particular about Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions?

[brkl]

Read Deadeye Dick. I can't remember how strong it is on the whole, but I thought the premise was fascinating. 

[Nappi]

  On 2/15/2013 at 10:17 AM, Dosed said:

I've heard (perhaps from you) that Cat's Cradle is another one of his stronger novels so I'm leaving that until nearer to the end of my goal. Have you read all of his works? What did you like in particular about Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions?

 

I'm yet to read Jailbird, Deadeye Dick, Hocus Pocus and many of his short stories. Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions were the first Vonnegut novels I read and that was several years ago, so I don't have much to say, except that both felt very "fresh" at the time. I'm planning to revisit both of them one day. 

 

As I already mentioned in the other thread, I think you might enjoy Bluebeard.

[brkl]

Bluebeard is excellent. Earlier when I read this thread, I have to look up which novel was that good one with the painter, and blam, Bluebeard.

[Alastair]

I recently finished Breakfast of Champions, which was a pleasant surprise.  

 

My previous Vonnegut experiences, Slaughterhouse and Galapagos, had prepared me for the formula: a heavily foreshadowed outcome, a narrator only peripherally involved as a character, and a story that gradually fills in the gaps until complete.  This was fine.  He's welcome (if I may unfairly and not-at-all-seriously exaggerate for a moment) to write the same book over and over.  It's a very good book.

 

But this one really threw me off.  By the time the foreshadowed event came to pass, the focus of the book had shifted entirely to a different character, rendering the big event almost a background detail, and casting everything that led up to it in a whole new light.  After quickly coming to appreciate Vonnegut's work as literary comfort food, it was nice to be so completely blindsided.  Clearly, the man has many more tricks up his sleeve.

[Nappi]

I think Douglas Adams' comment on The Sirens of Titan is applicable to many of his works. Very much so for Bluebeard which might actually be my favorite Vonnegut novel now that I have had time to process it.

 

 

  Quote

Sirens of Titan is just one of those books – you read it through the first time and you think it's very loosely, casually written. You think the fact that everything suddenly makes such good sense at the end is almost accidental. And then you read it a few more times, simultaneously finding out more about writing yourself, and you realise what an absolute tour de force it was, making something as beautifully honed as that appear so casual."

 

Dark matter (via Wikipedia)

[Alastair]

Wow.  That's high praise coming from Adams, who by all accounts would struggle, um, ah, pace about the room, begin, stall on, scrap, restart and ultimately run a bath to avoid writing every single sentence.  Each of which, in finished form, came across as spontaneous wit.

[Dosed]

Yeah, I've just finished reading The Sirens of Titan and god damn is that a good book. I would say it's not only the best Vonnegut book I've read so far but one of my favourite books I've ever read. It's so much more colourful than his other works, as in there literally seems to be a lot more descriptions of colour and this really brings the back half of the book to life. The descriptions of life on Titan were beautiful, incredibly vivid and also unbelievably sad. I would say I hope I've not read his best book so early on my quest to read all of his works... but I think The Sirens of Titan might have just won that award. 

[Nappi]

The Sirens of Titan is $1.99 on Amazon.com Kindle store today! Well worth it if you own a Kindle.