God bless you, Mr. Rosewater

or, Pearls before swine

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Kurt Vonnegut: God bless you, Mr. Rosewater (1991, Dell)

190 pages

English language

Published Nov. 19, 1991 by Dell.

ISBN:
978-0-440-12929-5
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5 stars (1 review)

Second only to Slaughterhouse-Five of Vonnegut's canon in its prominence and influence, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) presents Eliot Rosewater, an itinerant, semi-crazed millionaire wandering the country in search of heritage and philanthropic outcome, introducing the science fiction writer Kilgore Trout to the world and Vonnegut to the collegiate audience which would soon make him a cult writer.

Trout, modeled according to Vonnegut on the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon (with whom Vonnegut had an occasional relationship) is a desperate, impoverished but visionary hack writer who functions for Eliot Rosewater as both conscience and horrid example. Rosewater, seeking to put his inheritance to some meaningful use (his father was an entrepreneur), tries to do good within the context of almost illimitable cynicism and corruption.

It is in this novel that Rosewater wanders into a science fiction conference – an actual annual event in Milford, Pennsylvania – and at the …

12 editions

Vonnegut's America of 1964 looks a lot like 2023

5 stars

It took me a while to get around to reading this. Perhaps it's the title, indicating that this is one of his non-SF books, inasmuch as any of his books can be described as SF. Vonnegut gently mocks himself, his characters, the entire universe, and that includes readers like me. I should have learned from him by now that it's actually absurd to approach Vonnegut from the direction of science fiction. He is clearly not a genre writer, unless you perceive him as being his own genre.

In my defence, I suggest that "Cat's Cradle", which preceded "God Bless You Mr Rosewater", is the best of Vonnegut's novels when read from the perspective of science fiction. But I digress...

There are several Rosewaters in the book - the main one is Eliot, heir to a fortune who turns his back on his privileged life and lives in a backwater county, …