GOOD LORD! I love me some Vonnegut, but I have NO idea what he was on when he knocked this one out. This is some of the most original, schizophrenic KV out there, and that's saying something. It recounts a sad tale of woe (maybe?) of the King of Candlesticks, the King of New York, the former President of the United States, a doctor, and half a savant. I lament that Kurt has experienced a similar fate, and has gone to that Great Turkey Farm in the sky.
I'm 'a need a minute to recover from this one, and to beseech Whomever it May Concern for a stroke of genius to even START to say something intelligible about this one... BRB.
This is a surrealist novel of the first tier and finest order, more or less concealing scathing satire just below the surface. Farce doesn't even begin to describe it: it recounts the story of the last President of the US, who essentially presided over the downfall of civilization and become instead the King of New York who sold the one-time territory of the Louisiana Purchase to the King of Michigan. And it just spirals from there...
The primary theme of this novel is one that perhaps doesn't win as much press and the typical major foci of Vonnegut novels, war, death, apathy, and general travesty and futility. This novel instead speaks of desperate loneliness and a separation from the bonds which tie civilization together, that is, interpersonal relationships which form the basis of everything: when they're gone, so is society. The half-genius (who isn't really one at all without his sister, or even when she's more than ten feet away) and his other half strike upon the idea to form artificial families by assigning everyone a government-issued middle name and number, essentially lumping everyone into "clans," by the name of Daffodil (Pres), Peanut (his low-lying, illiterate, half-genius sister), Raspberry, and so on. Pres Wilbur believes that this randomly-generated name and number combination will allow people to form families again, even including people they don't know.
The subtitle of the novel, Lonesome No More! is Pres's campaign slogan, which he prints on lapel buttons and randomly distributes as medals of distinction, when it all goes belly-up. I wonder how much of this is borne of KV's deeply-held Luddism, and its idea that technology destroys us from within, especially in light of the criticism that it's driving us all apart, even families.
----------NOTABLE PASSAGE---------
I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other when they fight, "Please-a little less love, and a little more common decency."
My brother said this to him, tapping his own forehead with his fingertips: "If you think this laboratory is bad, you should see what it's like in HERE."
The old man was writing his autobiography. He begins it with the words which my late Uncle Alex told me one time should be used by religious skeptics as a prelude to their nightly prayers. These are the words: "To whom it may concern."
We did not itch to display our intelligence in public. We did not think of intelligence as being useful or attractive in any way. We thought of it as being simply one more example of our freakishness, like our extra nipples and fingers and toes. And we may have been right at that. You know?
Eliza and I believed then what I believe even now: That life can be painless, provided that there is sufficient peacefulness for a dozen or so rituals to be repeated simply endlessly. Life, ideally, I think, should be like the Minuet or the Virginia Reel or the Turkey Trot, something easily mastered in a dancing school.
We said it was possible that the framers of the Constitution were blind to the beauty of persons who were without great wealth or powerful friends or public office, but who were nonetheless genuinely strong.
It was not anybody's fault. It was as natural as breathing to all human beings, and to all warm-blooded creatures, for that matter, to wish quick deaths for monsters. This was an instinct.
One sacred memory from childhood is perhaps the best education. -Fydor Dostoyevski
Money isn't going to make you feel any better, but we're going to sue the piss out of your relatives anyway.
WE had only to withhold the antidote⦠and he or she or they would be exiled quickly to the afterlife, the Turkey Farm.
I'm 'a need a minute to recover from this one, and to beseech Whomever it May Concern for a stroke of genius to even START to say something intelligible about this one... BRB.
This is a surrealist novel of the first tier and finest order, more or less concealing scathing satire just below the surface. Farce doesn't even begin to describe it: it recounts the story of the last President of the US, who essentially presided over the downfall of civilization and become instead the King of New York who sold the one-time territory of the Louisiana Purchase to the King of Michigan. And it just spirals from there...
The primary theme of this novel is one that perhaps doesn't win as much press and the typical major foci of Vonnegut novels, war, death, apathy, and general travesty and futility. This novel instead speaks of desperate loneliness and a separation from the bonds which tie civilization together, that is, interpersonal relationships which form the basis of everything: when they're gone, so is society. The half-genius (who isn't really one at all without his sister, or even when she's more than ten feet away) and his other half strike upon the idea to form artificial families by assigning everyone a government-issued middle name and number, essentially lumping everyone into "clans," by the name of Daffodil (Pres), Peanut (his low-lying, illiterate, half-genius sister), Raspberry, and so on. Pres Wilbur believes that this randomly-generated name and number combination will allow people to form families again, even including people they don't know.
The subtitle of the novel, Lonesome No More! is Pres's campaign slogan, which he prints on lapel buttons and randomly distributes as medals of distinction, when it all goes belly-up. I wonder how much of this is borne of KV's deeply-held Luddism, and its idea that technology destroys us from within, especially in light of the criticism that it's driving us all apart, even families.
----------NOTABLE PASSAGE---------
I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other when they fight, "Please-a little less love, and a little more common decency."
My brother said this to him, tapping his own forehead with his fingertips: "If you think this laboratory is bad, you should see what it's like in HERE."
The old man was writing his autobiography. He begins it with the words which my late Uncle Alex told me one time should be used by religious skeptics as a prelude to their nightly prayers. These are the words: "To whom it may concern."
We did not itch to display our intelligence in public. We did not think of intelligence as being useful or attractive in any way. We thought of it as being simply one more example of our freakishness, like our extra nipples and fingers and toes. And we may have been right at that. You know?
Eliza and I believed then what I believe even now: That life can be painless, provided that there is sufficient peacefulness for a dozen or so rituals to be repeated simply endlessly. Life, ideally, I think, should be like the Minuet or the Virginia Reel or the Turkey Trot, something easily mastered in a dancing school.
We said it was possible that the framers of the Constitution were blind to the beauty of persons who were without great wealth or powerful friends or public office, but who were nonetheless genuinely strong.
It was not anybody's fault. It was as natural as breathing to all human beings, and to all warm-blooded creatures, for that matter, to wish quick deaths for monsters. This was an instinct.
One sacred memory from childhood is perhaps the best education. -Fydor Dostoyevski
Money isn't going to make you feel any better, but we're going to sue the piss out of your relatives anyway.
WE had only to withhold the antidote⦠and he or she or they would be exiled quickly to the afterlife, the Turkey Farm.
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