Timequake
This is a humble reflection on "Timequake" by Kurt Vonnegut, again mostly saturated with original quotes that I find more appealing rather than some sort of analysis.
Let’s start with my subjective opinion though.
First of all - this is totally not what I expected. From the abstract of the book which tells about how people return 10 years back and relive every second without a free will I expected to read another utopia-type novel similar to Zamyatin's "We". That it is not. That is much closer to an autobiography of Vonnegut and his family than to a science-fiction story.
Through the first quarter of the book I had mixed feelings of "Ok, but when does the story start finally?", well, it already had been, cause that's how it rolls till the very end. Quite untypical manner indeed, but at certain point I started enjoying it. What I didn't enjoy though is my own ignorance. The thing is, Vonnegut intertwines made-up stuff with facts so well that you cannot tell apart, where the history ends and proceeds with the imaginary story, if you are not certain about something and often even if you are. I cannot remember when was the last time a fiction story made me google for historical and biographical facts as much as this one, just because it seemed so convincing that I wasn’t sure where to draw a line between the truth and imagination.
This does not get limited to Vonnegut's autobiography. He plays around with the World War II particularly much, he, or rather his character Kilgore Trout several times calls it “Western Civilization’s second unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide”, which though implies death being a savior rather than something negative, since as he writes “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, please try again.” His characters seem to be unhappy with life & it’s hardly possible to put even more effort in emphasizing of how “none of these people had asked to be born in the first place”.
He comes up with a story about the pilot of the plane with a third atomic bomb that had to be dropped together with the ones in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He gives “the last words” to Hitler and Eva Braun prior to killing themselves in the bunker, and so on and so forth. He tries to predict his own future too. He misses on that one, though, predicting to live at least till the age of 87, but unfortunately he passed away at the age of 84 and, ironically, exactly from what made his sister Allie so entertained, i.e. falling from the stairs. Oh, those stupid coincidences.
It’s an interesting read, though I think it's quite very death-oriented and might be hardly bearable for somebody very religious, which I am not. But it wouldn't make it to the top in the list of my favorite books I’m afraid. At least, not at this point in my life...
Well, enough of the overall comments, it’s time to stick to the promised quotes which I truly loved!
(#) When he himself had finished and had taken all the scraps I didn’t want for kindling to the dump, he had me stand next to him outside and look at my new ell from thirty feet away. And then he asked it: “How the hell did I do that?”
That question remains for me in the summer of 1996 one of my three favorite quotations. Two of the three are questions rather than good advice of any kind. The second is Jesus Christ’s “Who is it they say I am?”
The third is from my son Mark, pediatrician and watercolorist and sax player. I’ve already quoted him in another book: “We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”
(#) I say in lectures in 1996 that fifty percent or more of American marriages go bust because most of us no longer have extended families. When you marry somebody now, all you get is one person.
I say that when people fight, it isn’t about money or sex or power. What they’re really saying is, “You’re not enough people!”
Sigmund Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to.
(#) I thank Trout for the concept of man-woman hour as a unit of measurement of marital intimacy. This is an hour during which a husband and a wife are close enough to be aware of each other, and for one to say something to each other without yelling, if he or she feels like it.
[…] He calculates that an average couple with separate places of work logs four man-woman hours each weekday, and sixteen of them on weekends. Being sound asleep with each other doesn’t count. […]
This gives him, when rounded off, a standard man-woman year of eighteen hundred man-woman hours. He advertises that any couple that has accumulated this many man-woman hours is entitled to celebrate an anniversary, and to receive flowers and appropriate presents, even if it took them only twenty weeks to do it!
// S.: I’m afraid nowadays many would have to have one anniversary per two years in such a case. But I like this approach indeed, it seems to me very true based on own past relationships.//
(#) You might want to read the picaresque novel The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. The epiphany at the end, as I recall, is that we shouldn’t be seeking harrowing challenges, but rather tasks we find natural and interesting, tasks we were apparently born to perform.
As for the charms of physics: Two of the most entertaining subjects taught in high school or college are mechanics and optics. Beyond these playful disciplines, however, lie mind games as dependent on native talent as playing the French horn or chess.
Of native talent itself I say in speeches: “If you go to a big city, and a university is a big city, you are bound to run into Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Stay home, stay home.”
(#) Trout again confronted him, saying, “Wake up! Wake up! You’ve got free will again, and there’s work to do!” And so on.
Nothing.
Trout had an inspiration! Instead of trying to sell the concept of free will, which he himself didn’t believe in, he said this: “You’ve been very sick! Now you’re well again. You’ve been very sick! Now you’re well again.”
That mantra worked!
Trout could have been a great advertising man. The same has been said of Jesus Christ. The basis of every advertisement is a credible promise. Jesus promised better times in an afterlife. Trout was promising the same thing in the here and now.
(#) Why throw money at problems? That is what money is for.
Should the nation’s wealth be redistributed? It has been and continues to be redistributed to a few people in a manner strikingly unhelpful.
(#) Borden and I mused about novelists such as Masoch and the Marquis de Sade, who had intentionally or accidentally inspired new words. Sadism, of course, is a joy while inflicting pain on others. Sadomasochism means getting one’s rocks off while hurting others, while being hurt by others, or while hurting oneself.
Borden said doing without those words nowadays was like trying to talk about life without words for beer and water.
(#) You think the ancient Romans were smart? Look at how dumb their numbers were. One theory of why they declined and fell is that their plumbing was lead. The root of our word for plumbing is plumbum, the Latin word for “lead”. Lead poisoning makes people stupid and lazy.
What’s your excuse?
Let’s start with my subjective opinion though.
First of all - this is totally not what I expected. From the abstract of the book which tells about how people return 10 years back and relive every second without a free will I expected to read another utopia-type novel similar to Zamyatin's "We". That it is not. That is much closer to an autobiography of Vonnegut and his family than to a science-fiction story.
Through the first quarter of the book I had mixed feelings of "Ok, but when does the story start finally?", well, it already had been, cause that's how it rolls till the very end. Quite untypical manner indeed, but at certain point I started enjoying it. What I didn't enjoy though is my own ignorance. The thing is, Vonnegut intertwines made-up stuff with facts so well that you cannot tell apart, where the history ends and proceeds with the imaginary story, if you are not certain about something and often even if you are. I cannot remember when was the last time a fiction story made me google for historical and biographical facts as much as this one, just because it seemed so convincing that I wasn’t sure where to draw a line between the truth and imagination.
This does not get limited to Vonnegut's autobiography. He plays around with the World War II particularly much, he, or rather his character Kilgore Trout several times calls it “Western Civilization’s second unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide”, which though implies death being a savior rather than something negative, since as he writes “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, please try again.” His characters seem to be unhappy with life & it’s hardly possible to put even more effort in emphasizing of how “none of these people had asked to be born in the first place”.
He comes up with a story about the pilot of the plane with a third atomic bomb that had to be dropped together with the ones in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He gives “the last words” to Hitler and Eva Braun prior to killing themselves in the bunker, and so on and so forth. He tries to predict his own future too. He misses on that one, though, predicting to live at least till the age of 87, but unfortunately he passed away at the age of 84 and, ironically, exactly from what made his sister Allie so entertained, i.e. falling from the stairs. Oh, those stupid coincidences.
It’s an interesting read, though I think it's quite very death-oriented and might be hardly bearable for somebody very religious, which I am not. But it wouldn't make it to the top in the list of my favorite books I’m afraid. At least, not at this point in my life...
Well, enough of the overall comments, it’s time to stick to the promised quotes which I truly loved!
(#) When he himself had finished and had taken all the scraps I didn’t want for kindling to the dump, he had me stand next to him outside and look at my new ell from thirty feet away. And then he asked it: “How the hell did I do that?”
That question remains for me in the summer of 1996 one of my three favorite quotations. Two of the three are questions rather than good advice of any kind. The second is Jesus Christ’s “Who is it they say I am?”
The third is from my son Mark, pediatrician and watercolorist and sax player. I’ve already quoted him in another book: “We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”
(#) I say in lectures in 1996 that fifty percent or more of American marriages go bust because most of us no longer have extended families. When you marry somebody now, all you get is one person.
I say that when people fight, it isn’t about money or sex or power. What they’re really saying is, “You’re not enough people!”
Sigmund Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to.
(#) I thank Trout for the concept of man-woman hour as a unit of measurement of marital intimacy. This is an hour during which a husband and a wife are close enough to be aware of each other, and for one to say something to each other without yelling, if he or she feels like it.
[…] He calculates that an average couple with separate places of work logs four man-woman hours each weekday, and sixteen of them on weekends. Being sound asleep with each other doesn’t count. […]
This gives him, when rounded off, a standard man-woman year of eighteen hundred man-woman hours. He advertises that any couple that has accumulated this many man-woman hours is entitled to celebrate an anniversary, and to receive flowers and appropriate presents, even if it took them only twenty weeks to do it!
// S.: I’m afraid nowadays many would have to have one anniversary per two years in such a case. But I like this approach indeed, it seems to me very true based on own past relationships.//
(#) You might want to read the picaresque novel The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. The epiphany at the end, as I recall, is that we shouldn’t be seeking harrowing challenges, but rather tasks we find natural and interesting, tasks we were apparently born to perform.
As for the charms of physics: Two of the most entertaining subjects taught in high school or college are mechanics and optics. Beyond these playful disciplines, however, lie mind games as dependent on native talent as playing the French horn or chess.
Of native talent itself I say in speeches: “If you go to a big city, and a university is a big city, you are bound to run into Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Stay home, stay home.”
(#) Trout again confronted him, saying, “Wake up! Wake up! You’ve got free will again, and there’s work to do!” And so on.
Nothing.
Trout had an inspiration! Instead of trying to sell the concept of free will, which he himself didn’t believe in, he said this: “You’ve been very sick! Now you’re well again. You’ve been very sick! Now you’re well again.”
That mantra worked!
Trout could have been a great advertising man. The same has been said of Jesus Christ. The basis of every advertisement is a credible promise. Jesus promised better times in an afterlife. Trout was promising the same thing in the here and now.
(#) Why throw money at problems? That is what money is for.
Should the nation’s wealth be redistributed? It has been and continues to be redistributed to a few people in a manner strikingly unhelpful.
(#) Borden and I mused about novelists such as Masoch and the Marquis de Sade, who had intentionally or accidentally inspired new words. Sadism, of course, is a joy while inflicting pain on others. Sadomasochism means getting one’s rocks off while hurting others, while being hurt by others, or while hurting oneself.
Borden said doing without those words nowadays was like trying to talk about life without words for beer and water.
(#) You think the ancient Romans were smart? Look at how dumb their numbers were. One theory of why they declined and fell is that their plumbing was lead. The root of our word for plumbing is plumbum, the Latin word for “lead”. Lead poisoning makes people stupid and lazy.
What’s your excuse?