Word: vonneguts
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...dust jacket of Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut's latest (and probably last) book, promises some sort of science-fiction fantasy ride through a highly ironic universe. "Futurology!" it screams, "Ten years of deja vu all over again!" Unfortunately for Douglas Adams fans, nothing could be further from the truth. You can't really blame the poor dust jacket writer, who had the unenviable task of summarizing, in concise and entertaining prose, the essence of a book that defies easy classification...
Newcomers to the 75-year-old author's work will most likely be amused, but more confused, by the book, and even Vonnegut veterans may be caught off guard if they are expecting anything resembling a conventional story. The kind of wildly imaginative plotline that characterized his earlier and best-known satirical novels (such as the absurd, apocalyptic masterpiece, Cat's Cradle makes no appearance here. Fimequake is not so much wildly imaginative as wildly cantankerous, not so much a great read as a great rant...
...ostensible premise is that, on Feb. 13th, 2001, the universe suddenly shrinks, forcing us all to relive 10 years of experiences without changing a thing. But the plot's all just a springboard for Vonnegut's meandering, anecdotal and highly autobiographical discussion of life, death, history, religion, war, politics, family values and "the death of American eloquence" (among many, many other things...
Without a driving story, Timequake depends entirely on the author's familiar tone of weary bemusement, at times attributed to Kilgore Trout, the fictional writer who has been Vonnegut's unaltered ego in previous novels. The connection between fiction and fact is readily apparent. Trout spends the rerun rewriting My Ten Years on Automatic Pilot. Vonnegut, who took nearly a decade to complete his aborted book, works through that same material again...
...reclaimed "best parts" are such doodles of doom as, "For practically everybody, the end of the world can't come soon enough" and "Being alive is a crock..." Having a novelist's free hand to write what you will does not mean you are entitled to a free ride. Vonnegut, soon to be 75, struggled too long for his success to be naive on that point. But in a sorrowful preface he says Timequake is his last novel and asks readers to "have pity...