Not Vonnegut’s best, but still interesting and a fairly quick read. ( )

I gave it my best for 40 pages, but finally just saw no reason to continue. This book does have a perverse sort of humor and is funny in places, but it was also off-puttingly angry. The conceit of this book is that it is the disjointed scribblings of a (possibly mad) man who is imprisoned in a library, and he decides to write his life story on random little scraps of paper he found laying about. So even as I recognize that the story's rambly structure and style is meant to illustrate the set up, I still found myself utterly unable to summon the will to keep reading. YMMV

DNF at 40/325 pages. Paperback, picked up from... somewhere, and had been sitting on my shelf for 3 years. Fly free now, little book, and I hope you end up with someone who wants to read this kind of drivel.

I was attempting to read this for The 24 Tasks of the Festive Season game, for door 19 Festivus (Dec. 23) book task: Read any comedy, parody, or satire. Instead, I'm going to listen to the audio of Carol Burnett's In Such Good Company. ( )

Mientras las bacterias más poderosas van conquistando el Universo, según el plan urdido por los sabios de Tralfamodore, Eugene Debs Hartke, teniente coronel en Vietnam, ateo, profesor de niños riquísimos con problemas de aprendizaje, tutor de reclusos negros en una cárcel regentada -con fines lucrativos- por los japoneses, tañedor de campanas, practicante asiduo de las más entusiastas variantes del adulterio, incapaz de soltar una palabrota, gran matador de hombres, está en espera de juicio por razones que, seguramente, más tienen que ver con la publicidad política que con las leyes. Mientras, en trocitos de papel, escribe un libro con los trocitos de su vida. Por arte de Birlibirloque, se quedó sin pasado, sin presente y sin futuro. Su única esperanza es un hijo con nombre de cocktail alcohólico.

The name of the main character of this book is Eugene Debs Hartke. Oddly enough, I grew up familiar with Eugene Debs even though he was not exactly a headline name in the 50’s and 60’s because as a child my mother was taken by her older brother to hear him speak, a fact she mentioned on a number of occasions. Presumably he made a big impression on a child who couldn’t have been more than 10 at the time.

Equally odd - one of my most vivid memories of that same uncle’s house is the omnipresent stack of Wall Street Journals in his living room. What would Debs have made of that?

Back to the book. It’s vintage Vonnegut, with a slippery timeline. It was written in around 1990, with the principle events occurring 10 years into that future, which means 2o years ago now. Over the course of the book Hartke recounts the life circumstances that led him to his status at the time of the narrative, a convict awaiting trial in the library of a college that has been converted to a prison. Most of the action post-Vietnam takes place in the Finger Lakes district of NY state, an area I know very well. So, another personal connection.

One of Vonnegut’s themes, perhaps the major theme, is the wealth disparity between those at the very top and the rest of us. In the book, the source of the inordinate wealth of the elite is the sale to foreigners of all the income producing assets of the US. In reality, the growth of the 2% has been due to all manner of greed, abetted by politicians and tax codes and various slimy undertakings.

But regardless of the means, we are moving ever closer to the scenario painted by Vonnegut. Which made this book a wee bit too close to reality for me to enjoy it in quite the same manner as I have other of his books, although it does carry the same acerbic, ironic sparkle as they do. ( )

Not my favorite of his, but enjoyed it. ( )