Word: vonnegut
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Clearly, Vonnegut is generating his own customized timequake, taking his readers back in time to experience with him historical events he sees as significant-namely, events that either happened to him or somehow played a major role in his own life...
...despite its obvious preoccupation with selected ages, issues, and catastrophes, Timequake rescues itself from complete self-absorption with its anarchical and irrepressible humor-a Vonnegut trademark that has withstood both the ravages of time and countless packs of Pall Malls. By refusing to take much of anything too seriously, the book manages to avoid drowning in its own Vonnegutia or becoming The World According To Kurt (or, even worse, some sort of humanist Dianetics). Popping up all over the book, absurd little litanies such as "something the cat drug in" (what people, especially scientists, like to make each other feel...
These ruminations are not digressions: they are the book. They come in short bursts, as if the again Vonnegut, an unrepentant smoker, is catching his breath after each little revelation...
...other hand, it obviously wasn't Vonnegut's intention to create a fine, textured novel. He speaks of Timequake not so much as an opus unto itself, but as the final chapter in a body of work that spans three decades and eighteen books, all of them still in print. He notes that, unlike the many writers of his generation, he has lived to a ripe old age. "I got to look back," he crowed at the Brattle, "And I feel lucky as hell." In the course of "looking back" through the lens of Timequake, he covers...
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Timequake is the genuine celebration of life going on beneath the rant and beyond the darkly comic bitterness. Early in the book, Vonnegut quite earnestly exhorts everyone to appreciate the sublime moments of beauty that pass unnoticed. He recalls his Uncle Alex, a Harvard-educated insurance salesman who made a point of noting such moments by saying: "This is nice. If this isn't nice, what is?" It is this uncharacteristic warmth, emerging cautiously from beneath the book's crusty exterior, which ultimately makes reading Timequake a rewarding experience...