Timequake By: Kurt Vonnegut Jr Type: Novel 1997
 
70% : flowing, readable, cynical look at life
Review : Typical Vonnegut , but this time stretching even further. 
meaning  : The job of artists is to make people appreciate being alive. Beatles
Being dead is easier than being alive.
people can't wait to die...Planet Paradox
when TV had only a few channels we were all part of the same congregation..not now
comments : He writes like a rambliung old man. Speaks with far more asides than actual story, but it works ! He says he started off with a fat novel ,but it didn't work out so he filletted it down. Heavily features his alter ego Trout, as well as himself !
Plot: There is a timequake time slips back 10 years. Everyone has to relive the last 10 years without being able to do anything different.
Analysis : Reproduction will die out : For a lot of people life is crap, but they console themselves with the optomistic viewpoint, that if they have offspring they will have a better life.
 When people realise that this is not the case and everyone has a crap life anyway will the species die out ?
computers make our skills redundant
If your brains were dynamite , there wouldn't be enough to blow your hat off !
The [aradox of religion, as a humanist he believes that religion is a good stabiliser for the masses
extended Families - people need more than one person they need a whole backup team as well.
Discovery doesn't make us any happier :  Indians didn't have the wheel ,when the Spanish came 95 % of them died out.
Writers : swoopers - write all correct later
bashers  - perfect sentences one by one
They thought after WWII . The Russians would beconme more open just like the Americans, and that the Americans would share out the wealth just like the Russians.
E. Debs : "While there is a lower class I am in it, while there is a criminal element I am of it, while there is a soul in prison Iam not free"
-there is always someone better than you
-He closely examines his own family history. Is he trying to say "people don't change" ?- They go on making the same mistakes ?(why don't people like their families ..maybe the media has made people more diverse)
-his favourite movies : My life as a Dog - All About Eve - Casablanca
- he hates lottery ticket buyers
- avoids technology so he can meet people ...walks rather than send a fax
- only 1 in 6 embryos make it past 8 weeks
- TV is a great eraser , because ther is so much garbage we forget the good stuff.
- people like to see movies with a lot of shootings in , because that is a quick and painless way of getting away from life
- awareness is soul ?
-work is overvalued - "If you win the ratrace you are still a rat "
 
 

HOME ** mail me ** BOOK INDEX ** Novel Reviews