Timequake: It's All About Farting Around

When I was in middle school and high school, I simply adored Kurt Vonnegut. I read at least half a dozen of his works, probably multiple times. This list included Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, Mother Night and others. I ate them up like apple sauce.

Now, at 26 years old, I think I was either a brilliant child or a deranged one.

Missing my old flame, I returned to Vonnegut's deliciously morose literary arms with his final novel length piece, Timequake. It's been so many years since I heard his voice, I really didn't know what to expect. Could we love now, as we loved then?

Now, at the end of the affair, I feel a deep sense of nostalgia, amongst other things. Timequake had to be the most nonsensical, bizarre, cynical, hilarious, beautiful and sad thing I have ever read. It's like ten thousand symphonies that, through an overabundance of dissonant insanity, achieve something more lovely than harmony. It is a million voices shouting and one person standing silent. It is impossible to describe.

Vonnegut himself is the voice of the tale, leading us through an amalgamated world of the real and the fictitious and and the sub-fictitious (who are the fictitious creations of fictitious characters) and the sorta both until we really don't know who's who or what's what or where we left our hat. Vonnegut, in his 70's at the time, tours his own life in moments, from paragraph to paragraph, some of them real, some not.

Which is which? Does it matter?

There is the little matter of a plotline where the universe decides to shrink and make everyone live the past 10 years over again (from 1991 to 2001) exactly as they did the first time, like programmed robots. The funny thing is, once free will kicks in, there's utter chaos. People have spent so long just going through their predetermined actions that they are clueless and frightened when confronted with freedom and choice.

Listen: Vonnegut's alter-ego/hero-figure Kilgore Trout (the long-out-of-print science fiction writer) says something to each person after the "timequake" ends, in order to break them out of their spell of fear.

This is it: "You were sick, but now you're well, and there's work to do."

This is a beautiful thing.

Vonnegut says something else later. He says to a pregnant woman who writes him a letter, asking if it's right to bring a child into such a terrible world as this. He says:

"What made being alive almost worthwhile for me was the saints I met, people behaving unselfishly and capably. They turned up in the most unexpected places. Perhaps you, dear reader, are or can become a saint for her sweet child to meet. I believe in original sin. I also believe in original virtue. Look around!"

Ting-a-ling, Mr. Vonnegut. I'll miss you terribly when you're gone.

ETA: You left us on April 11, 2007. How strange that it was so soon after I wrote this post, so soon after I rediscovered my love and respect for you. Now you're gone, and I was right, I miss you terribly. R.I.P, 1922-2007.

Tastiness: Bittersweet, like dark chocolate.
Special Sauce: Vonnegut is incomparable. Wit, satire, a high-level of raunch, the works.
Recommend? Like I recommend breathing.