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The Washington Post ran a pretty interesting article yesterday about my all-time favorite author and the world's worst humanist, Kurt Vonnegut. I've read 12 of his books. From my least- to most-favorite, they are:
12. Hocus Pocus (1990): I don't really remember much about this book, which is as powerful a statement as I can make. I just know that the plot -- about escaped criminals taking over a university campus -- was all over the place, and the characters lacked any sort of depth.
11. Player Piano/Utopia 14 (1952): His first novel and by far his most dark. There is barely a whisper of the casual wit he demonstrates in his maturity. This dystopic vision of a mechanized society is cold, sterile and bleak.
10. God Bless You Mr. Rosewater or Pearls Before Swine (1965) A bizarre tale of greed and redemption, I found it to be sanctimonious and under-developed.
9. Slaughter-House Five; or, A Duty-Dance With Death (1969): Vonnegut's most revered work, it is a brilliant half-satire/half-eulogy on the horrors of War. It represents his most earnest, impassioned writing, and perhaps his most imaginative, which is really saying something. But it bounced a little too jarringly between reality and fantasy for my personal taste.
8. Welcome to the Monkey House (1968): Actually a collection of short stories, there are some brilliant pieces of work here, especially "The Euphio Question" and "Epicac," but the shorter format fails to convey the complex themes that make his larger work more interesting.
7. The Sirens of Titan (1959) His treatment of organized religion was brilliant and the characters were vivid. But plot is labored and the characters just weren't very likeable, which made the novel hard to read.
6. Timequake (1997): People refer to this as his final novel, but that's really kind of a misnomer, because Vonnegut barely bothers with a narrative structure. He frequently digresses from his interesting but embryonic plot to discuss philosophy, science, geography, personal anecdotes, etc. His folksy-but-brilliant observations show that he can still string words together, but at this point he's obviously just too lazy to work very hard at it.
5. Galápagos (1985): Seldom do people talk about this novel, perhaps because it is sandwiched between Vonnegut's prolific peak and his deliberate decline, or perhaps because it is possibly his most optimistic work. The premise is clever enough: a natural disaster strands a tour boat on the Galapagos Islands, and the castaways form their own society as they adapt to the new surroundings. It probably doesn't hold up as Literature, but it remains an enjoyable read, especially for beginners.
4. Slapstick; or, Lonesome No More! (1976): An amalgam of two stories: A man's struggle with his separation from his beloved sister in childhood, and that same man's efforts to unite the nation as the President of post-apocalyptic Manhattan. His theme here is the importance of families, extended families and communities, and he executes it with comic precision.
3. Mother Night (1962): In my opinion, his most underrated novel. It is probably not as outlandishly ironic as his other works, but it is as emotionally powerful as anything Vonnegut has written. A tale of a U.S. World War II hero who poses as a Nazi officer and is subsequently tried for war crimes, this novel is also the only work for which Vonnegut states the theme up-front: "Since we are what we pretend to be, we should be very careful about what we pretend to be."
2. Breakfast of Champions; or, Goodbye, Blue Monday (1973): Okay, maybe the plot is a little flimsy, but that's sort of the point. Vonnegut weaves dozens of different stories and characters together to demonstrate how each person's little breakdowns, mistakes and moves affect everyone else. It's like a preamble to Pulp Fiction, without all the bloodletting.
1. Cat's Cradle (1969): Accepted as one of the great counter-culture novels of all time, Cat's Cradle covers it all -- art, politics, science, war, journalism, family, religion -- all in the context of a the world's acceleration toward military disaster. It is a thriller and a philosophy, masterfully composed. Just thinking about it makes me want to read it again for the fourth time.
Incidentally, this is how Vonnegut grades his own books, from his essay "The Sexual Revolution":
Player Piano: B
The Sirens of Titan: A
Mother Night: A
Cat's Cradle: A-plus
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A
Slaughterhouse-Five: A-plus
Welcome to the Monkey House: B-minus
Happy Birthday, Wanda June: D
Breakfast of Champions: C
Slapstick: D
Jailbird: A
Palm Sunday: C
12. Hocus Pocus (1990): I don't really remember much about this book, which is as powerful a statement as I can make. I just know that the plot -- about escaped criminals taking over a university campus -- was all over the place, and the characters lacked any sort of depth.
11. Player Piano/Utopia 14 (1952): His first novel and by far his most dark. There is barely a whisper of the casual wit he demonstrates in his maturity. This dystopic vision of a mechanized society is cold, sterile and bleak.
10. God Bless You Mr. Rosewater or Pearls Before Swine (1965) A bizarre tale of greed and redemption, I found it to be sanctimonious and under-developed.
9. Slaughter-House Five; or, A Duty-Dance With Death (1969): Vonnegut's most revered work, it is a brilliant half-satire/half-eulogy on the horrors of War. It represents his most earnest, impassioned writing, and perhaps his most imaginative, which is really saying something. But it bounced a little too jarringly between reality and fantasy for my personal taste.
8. Welcome to the Monkey House (1968): Actually a collection of short stories, there are some brilliant pieces of work here, especially "The Euphio Question" and "Epicac," but the shorter format fails to convey the complex themes that make his larger work more interesting.
7. The Sirens of Titan (1959) His treatment of organized religion was brilliant and the characters were vivid. But plot is labored and the characters just weren't very likeable, which made the novel hard to read.
6. Timequake (1997): People refer to this as his final novel, but that's really kind of a misnomer, because Vonnegut barely bothers with a narrative structure. He frequently digresses from his interesting but embryonic plot to discuss philosophy, science, geography, personal anecdotes, etc. His folksy-but-brilliant observations show that he can still string words together, but at this point he's obviously just too lazy to work very hard at it.
5. Galápagos (1985): Seldom do people talk about this novel, perhaps because it is sandwiched between Vonnegut's prolific peak and his deliberate decline, or perhaps because it is possibly his most optimistic work. The premise is clever enough: a natural disaster strands a tour boat on the Galapagos Islands, and the castaways form their own society as they adapt to the new surroundings. It probably doesn't hold up as Literature, but it remains an enjoyable read, especially for beginners.
4. Slapstick; or, Lonesome No More! (1976): An amalgam of two stories: A man's struggle with his separation from his beloved sister in childhood, and that same man's efforts to unite the nation as the President of post-apocalyptic Manhattan. His theme here is the importance of families, extended families and communities, and he executes it with comic precision.
3. Mother Night (1962): In my opinion, his most underrated novel. It is probably not as outlandishly ironic as his other works, but it is as emotionally powerful as anything Vonnegut has written. A tale of a U.S. World War II hero who poses as a Nazi officer and is subsequently tried for war crimes, this novel is also the only work for which Vonnegut states the theme up-front: "Since we are what we pretend to be, we should be very careful about what we pretend to be."
2. Breakfast of Champions; or, Goodbye, Blue Monday (1973): Okay, maybe the plot is a little flimsy, but that's sort of the point. Vonnegut weaves dozens of different stories and characters together to demonstrate how each person's little breakdowns, mistakes and moves affect everyone else. It's like a preamble to Pulp Fiction, without all the bloodletting.
1. Cat's Cradle (1969): Accepted as one of the great counter-culture novels of all time, Cat's Cradle covers it all -- art, politics, science, war, journalism, family, religion -- all in the context of a the world's acceleration toward military disaster. It is a thriller and a philosophy, masterfully composed. Just thinking about it makes me want to read it again for the fourth time.
Incidentally, this is how Vonnegut grades his own books, from his essay "The Sexual Revolution":
Player Piano: B
The Sirens of Titan: A
Mother Night: A
Cat's Cradle: A-plus
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A
Slaughterhouse-Five: A-plus
Welcome to the Monkey House: B-minus
Happy Birthday, Wanda June: D
Breakfast of Champions: C
Slapstick: D
Jailbird: A
Palm Sunday: C
