Timequake - Hardcover

Vonnegut, Kurt

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399137378 ISBN 13: 9780399137372

Publisher: Putnam Adult, 1997

Synopsis

After the universe decides to back up ten years and all humans must live through the 1990s again, author Kurt Vonnegut finds himself trying to write a book called Timequake, which he knows he will never finish since he already did not finish it. 200,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Kurt Vonnegut, one of the most acclaimed American writers of the past century, died in New York City on April 11, 2007. He was the New York Times bestselling author of fourteen novels, including such literary classics as Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Penguin Group (USA) was fortunate to publish several of Mr. Vonnegut’s books, including the novels Timequake and Hocus Pocus as well as a collection of short fiction, Bagombo Snuff Box.

Reviews

Vonnegut's first ``novel'' in seven years (and 14th overall) might by an extremely generous extension of the term be labeled an unassuming metafiction. Actually, it's unequal parts commonplace book, fragmentary autobiography, dystopian romance, and bemused meditation on our planet's presumable determination to destroy itself. The premise goes as follows: In the year 2001, ``a sudden glitch in the space- time continuum, made everybody and everything do exactly what they'd been doing during the past decade . . . a second time'': i.e., 2001 reverted to 1991, and ``free will kicked in again'' only after said decade had torturously re-run itself. One yearns to know what Thomas Berger might have made of this idea. Vonnegut, essentially, settles for employing it as an excuse to rummage through his own past and that of his alter-ego, the fictional science fiction writer Kilgore Trout. Accordingly, the novel about this ``timequake'' becomes a free-form farrago in which the author tenderly salutes and mourns his living and dead siblings, wives, and children; pays tribute to favorite books and writers; retells old jokes; reminisces about his experiences in WW II, and about his experiences also as a later respected public figure (visiting Nigeria after the Biafran War; giving a speech on the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima); and woolgathers--often cloyingly--about the fate of ``humanism'' in an age dominated by technology. The book severely tests a reader's patience when it's padded with random bits of semi-relevant information and needless explanations (the plot of The Scarlet Letter; the full text of the 23rd Psalm). And yet, Vonnegut's fitful summaries of the life and writings of the Hunter Thompsonlike Kilgore Trout are often very funny (the story ``The Sisters B-36,'' set on ``the matriarchal planet Booboo,'' really ought to have been written). So, as he himself might say, it goes. ``We are here on earth to fart around'' runs one of Vonnegut's more endearing pronouncements. Nobody does it better. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Delayed over a year, Vonnegut's latest finally arrives, with alter ego Kilgore Trout facing millennial catastrophe.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Someone, maybe Emerson, predicted that novels would become frankly autobiographical in the twentieth century, and, sure enough, Henry Miller wrote the classic autobiographical novel Tropic of Cancer, Philip Roth and Norman Mailer starred themselves in ostensible novels, and, vice versa, Kenneth Rexroth called his actual life story (another classic) An Autobiographical Novel. Now Vonnegut, who has barged into several previous novels, erases the line between fact and fancy to mostly gabble on like the funny old geezer he is. He tells great jokes, relays more family history than anything else, suggests several new amendments to the Constitution, tosses out a fistful of his trademark tag lines (the best one is "ting-a-ling," although it probably won't supplant Slaughterhouse Five's "so it goes" as Vonnegutians' favorite), and does his mournful, baggy-pants philosopher-clown routine one more time. Oh, there is some indisputable fiction here. Vonnegut has salvaged bits of a 1996 novel, which he aborted at the last minute, based on the premise that a bump in the space-time continuum--a "time-quake"--throws the universe 10 years backward, from 2001 to 1991, and also includes Vonnegut's most famous recurring character (outstanding in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater), perpetually unsuccessful science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout. This new book's premise is the proposition that most people hate living, with good reason; mixed with the '96 stuff, it spices an utterly Vonnegutian sweet-and-sour stew deliciously. Ray Olson

Edition details

• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0399137378
• ISBN 13: 9780399137372
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 219