If you read this, you'll understand a lot about me personally...

books:


	• The Sirens of Titan Kurt Vonnegut The Dial Press, 1998 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 155 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

If you read this, you'll understand a lot about me personally...

Vonnegut, speaking from long before I ever discovered him, has predicted my outlook on many things better than I ever could have myself. Militarism, space travel, religion, the soul, love, marriage, beauty, disillusionment, chance: it's all here, in an erudite story that reads like a children's book.

If you are a smart, good-looking young woman and you like this book, we should talk. We'll have a son and a daughter who travel to planets far beyond our reach, Universally Willing to Become the perfect being we've all dreamed of...You can find me riding my bike around and spending way too much time at the Brooklyn Public Library.

"i've found a place where i can do good without doing any harm." Anyone who wouldn't want that should have their head checked.

Great book, short read, well worth it.

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His Insanity Vs. Ours

Two years after the Soviets launched Sputnik, nearly twenty years before Elton John recorded "Rocket Man," and three decades before President Reagan unveiled SDI (his version of "Star Wars,") Kurt Vonnegut's 'Sirens of Titan' was published. Not simply a satire of the "Space Race," Vonnegut's first novel brings it all back home to earth all the vanity of vanities that spring from mankind in every civilization.

The book focuses on the lives of two people: Malachi Constant, a frivolous millionaire who puts much of his time and energy into space travel, and Winston Niles Rumfoord, an intellectual developer who entices Constant to go on a far-away journey at his own expense. Rumfoord is the founder of a sect called The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent and the author of several staple near-future books, including 'The Pocket History of Mars'. He is plotting a scheme to program all Martians (earthly human transplants) to make a futile attack on our home planet. His intention is to make war so disastrous that man will abandon it on earth (not unlike Alfred Noble's inventing dynamite with the idea of making war so horrific, it would become obsolete). Once Malachi is programmed as his alter ego, Unk, he awakens and tries to reunite his family and escape to earth...

To go on with the development would be a spoiler, for the reader should curl up and read this piece of lit candy and revel in the story's unfolding. The atmosphere is nearly perfect: The novel is undoubtedly the most cartoonish of all of his books, yet the detailed development is realistic enough to transport us through space and time. He makes the ridiculous plausible and the plausible ridiculous. He has some of his most concise renderings of the folly of the human being and our history--as well as a good, solid-ground antidote to all of our foolishness. Eventually, Malachi Constant does find out what's important in this life,...and, then, so do we. How much is life determined by effort or by luck? How much do God and man have a hand in human events? Vonnegut may not give us all of the answers, but his observations are satisfying enough.

(It's interesting to note, that having read 'Slaughterhouse Five,' arguably his best work, "Trafalmadore," a distant planet in a distant galaxy is introduced here before his later classic.)

(Reading Vonnegut brings to mind comparisons. I think of Vonnegut as being influenced by the same pessimism as William Golding or Sartre. Vonnegut seems as terse as Sartre, except fiercely funny. Reading 'Sirens' also brings Ray Bradbury to mind. Bradbury is grander, but Vonnegut makes tragedy into a farce.)

(*"Vanity of vanities...All life is vanity..." Ecclesiastes.)

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the template for hitchhikers guide

only after reading sirens of titan did i think to investigate the cited influences of douglas adams, and i was pleased to find he openly admits to being an obvious admirer of vonnegut. the hitchhiker volumes, though brilliant, borrow heavily from sirens in style and substance. and while both deserve a spot in your library, the nod must go to vonnegut for originality.

although being similar in premise and delivery, the authors differ somewhat in manner of execution, exemplified in their degree of sarcasm. adams, for the most part, pokes good-natured fun at just about every culture and institution in such a comical way that you WILL laugh out loud and feel compelled to call a friend, mid-hysteria, just to prove how goofy you can be. vonnegut, on the other hand, is considerably more cynical in commenting on the lack of control (and lack of the will to take control) over many aspects of our individual and collective lives, while exposing in satirical fashion the declining morals and deteriorating values that are behind our failing governments and corporations. rather than laugh, youll smirk appreciatively if you, too, take pride in thinking for yourself and despise the corruption and greed so easily succumbed to today.. conversely, you might wince when reminded of times you may have compromised your standards, or indeed revealed an absence of any.

despite the detached, deceptively indifferent way in which vonnegut presents these unpleasant, even disturbing issues, there is a surprisingly touching human element involved. (an interest in social psychology is apparent throughout the novel, such as a reference to neurotic behavior which suggests he may have been familiar with karen horneys theories.) his insights into human strengths, weaknesses, needs and inclinations are penetrating and will serve to connect you, in a strange way, to his very intentionally imperfect and clueless main character, who nonetheless discovers the meaning of life. some sections, including the ending, are so moving that they are guaranteed to invoke a deep-seated emotional response, some parts sadness, a few parts hope, the rest not easily definable, from somewhere near the essence of your core. in fact, this might be the most deeply affecting novel ive ever read. it will leave you wanting more, in a superficial way, yes, for the characters, but by extension, what youll want is a more meaningful life of your own.. and a better existence for the entire human race.

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One of Vonnegut's most entertaining and funniest novels

Today when Kurt Vonnegut is regarded as one of the great American novelists of the second half of the 20th century, it is hard to remember that once upon a time he was regarded as a Sci-fi writer. This was the novel that most solidified that reputation, though it had begun earlier with PLAYER PIANO and cemented by both CAT'S CRADLE and SLAUGHTER-HOUSE FIVE. Only gradually in the early 1970s did it become obvious to all that he was not really a practitioner of Sci-fi as it had become to be defined in the United States.

Even in THE SIRENS OF TITAN it should have been obvious that he was more an experimental writer exploiting the Sci-fi genre than doing the same sort of thing that Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and their ilk were attempting. For one thing, Vonnegut didn't care much for predicting the future, the scientific plausibility of anything he was saying, or any of the other traditional aspects of Sci-fi. Rather, exploiting the genre on a superficial level gave him a freedom that was lacking in most other mainstream fiction at the time. It gave him license to think and imagine and write about almost anything.

This novel ostensibly tells the story of Malachi Constant, hardly the captain of his own fate, but an unwilling tool of fate. More precisely, as we learn, the novel is the story of an alien stranded on Titan, a moon of Saturn, who needs a spare part for his broken space ship. All of human history turns out to have been generated by a distant civilization for the sole purpose of getting Salo, as our alien is known, his missing part. Vonnegut uses farce in telling Malachi's story in order to undercut traditional understandings of God, religion, and the notion that humanity is at the center of the divine narrative. I must confess that I am baffled why so many religious people find this disturbing. I'm a devout Christian myself and secure in my faith, and find Vonnegut's account of the meaninglessness of life and his depiction of the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent to be comical rather than threatening. Some Christians seem to feel that unless you can hermetically seal all believers off from all views that differ from their own. But for those whose faith is a little less fragile, this will stand as a highly entertaining book with whose basic themes one will disagree. As a farce, it has much in common with other farces, such as Voltaire's CANDIDE, the book which in many ways it most resembles.

Those this is a book with many virtues, perhaps the aspect I most enjoy is Vonnegut's absolutely delightful style. Many others would later attempt to mimic his way with a sentence, but few would do so as successfully. He helped introduce a new level of anarchy into the modern novel and in many ways paved the way for such writers as Thomas Pynchon, who perhaps exceeded him in ambition but certainly didn't match him in eloquence and grace. What is most amazing about this book is how much he grew as a writer during the period between the publication of PLAYER PIANO and THE SIRENS OF TITAN. Though entertaining and often compelling, PLAYER PIANO is obviously the work of an apprentice writer; THE SIRENS OF TITAN is a fully mature work. It definitely belongs on the list of his very finest novels, immediately behind such novels as SLAUGHTER HOUSE-FIVE and BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS.

I strongly recommend this to anyone who either wants to read Vonnegut for the first time or who wishes to explore his art further after having read other novels first. It shows as well as any Vonnegut's gift for language, his outrageous sense of humor, and his bleak view of existence. It definitely belongs on any list of first-rate American novels with which one should be familiar.

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a wonderfully well-to-do book

This is the third novel I've read from Vonnegut, following Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions, which, by the way, are also fabulous reads. This book is not nearly as funny as some of Vonnegut's other works, in fact for me, it was quite sad. Overall though the book does a fabulous job of leaving the reader guessing as to why Constant has been "chosen" by the only man who can appear at multiple places in the universe for a very special task. And even then, after that is explained, things are still not as they seem. Th final pages, and the revelations that Salo exeriences just a few minutes too late, makes for an excellent ending.

I highly recommend this novel.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

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