After another World War, industrialization through automation brings peace and prosperity to the world. Just about everyone loses their jobs to go on surviving on the benevolence of an essential welfare state while the elite managers of the machines hold out the last meaningful careers as paternalistic overseers. One promising Doctor Proteus, on the verge of a career breakthrough, begins to second guess the system that leaves so many millions floating uselessly through a perfectly benign yet blah existence. This is Kurt Vonnegut's first novel. By all rights it should stand equally alongside such famed Dystopian achievements as 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451. Of course the best part is trying to decide if, like those other great works, any of its predictions came true or if it was really all that bad even if they did. We live in world loaded with automation. I still remember touring the Philadelphia Mint and discovering it had all but eliminated human workers years ago. Everyone's seen the images of complex robot arms building their cars on assembly lines. On the other hand, there are new jobs in IT and computers that no one in the fifties could've seen coming, despite conservative complaints about a potential welfare state, the socialist influence within our democracy is only moderate and most people are working who want to, give or take. Certainly if you live in Detroit where there is high unemployment (for more reasons than just automation), Player Piano may feel depressingly prophetic. On the other hand, if you live in Seattle, I wonder if you'd relate to the elitist superiority of the managers in their plush jobs or just wave it all off as fiction. Either way, these are the kinds of things for which you'd have to read the novel for yourself and decide just how hauntingly it opens your eyes to the world around you. Or not. Like all Dystopian fiction of the post-war era, I found it compellingly astute despite its unavoidable exaggerations. As for story, it's a good read, and you can see the beginnings of Vonnegut's cynical wit and dark sentimentality. I suspect the only reason it flew under my radar is simply that it got overshadowed by his later works, such as Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, and Breakfast of Champions (my personal favorite). The opening chapter opens with blanket exposition and puts off introducing us to any main characters for several paragraphs, a choice I initially found rather dubious except for the metaphorical way it depicts the dehumanized detachment of the story's setting. An editor would never let me get away with such a dry first page, but then again, I'm no Vonnegut, and like I said: metaphor! After that we find Proteus caught in a classic predicament torn between two philosophies: his studious wife, who believes in the system, and his chaotic friend Finnerty who begins to incrementally oppose it. Each finds too strong a foothold in Proteus, who wavers too susceptibly between them for much of the first half until it becomes apparent how little he understands his own disillusionment. An empty, drunken, declaration of war against the system, one night while slumming it across the river, sets in motion a secret revolution that ultimately drags him along for the ride rather than follows him. He decides he will turn his back on the system which father famously helped build... but only when it's convenient. When he feels like it. Before he can actually quit though, the managers send him undercover to join the would-be saboteurs, adding an unexpected layer of ambiguity when he does in fact join them. Will he continue to waffle back and forth and betray them or will he finally stand up to the system on which he has been propped up in comfort his whole life? He chooses the saboteurs and the revolution. Or at least he thinks he does. There is an atmosphere of detachment and purposelessness that not only follows him after his dramatic choice but undermines the simplicity of the anti-automation arguments he's pretending to proclaim. Is it so black and white afterall? They carry out their revolution only to discover it was never meant to succeed, and inevitably doesn't. Proteus, having been used as a figurehead, is thrust into the legal spotlight to account for their crimes. This was one of the most ingenious ideas I've ever seen, as they interrogate him with a lie detector live before the whole nation. As he answers their questions about why he did it, even he watches the little needle, wondering which answers will turn out to be True or False, and being surprised at every turn. Brilliant. It goes to show just how deep his denial and self-unawareness has gotten and it's a riveting finale, thematically, to try and deduce the implications. It's hard to summarize and review real literature in this forum I've so often dedicated to pop-culture and pulp adventures. These are the kind of books you should be reading in a college course and debating with Professors of literature. They defy summation and reviews are irrelevant. Nonetheless, I really liked this obscure Dystopian novel by Vonnegut and I plan to check out a few more of his before the year is up. Like some of the best works of literature, it is just as accessible to regular, every day readers as it is to professors, and has just as much meat to chew on as you have teeth to chew. It's as deep as you feel like diving and I don't think you'll be disappointed. Be Sure to Like and Retweet!
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2 Comments
A most excellent review of what sounds a brilliant book. Obviously from the comment, it has flown under my radar as well, but once I get back to reading again... This deserves wider dissemination, both for the book itself, and your reviewing skills, so I'm going to spread some links around, and hopefully bring a few more eyes to it.
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