His middle name is Cuthbert. He won a Nobel Prize and two Pulitzers. He's one of the greatest American authors of the Twentieth Century (behind Hemingway but ahead of F. Scott Fitzgerald IMHO) and this is his signature work. The Sound. The Fury. William Faulkner.
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Imagine a million years ago, before humans had fur, or flippers, or spent most of their time underwater hunting fish, back in 1986, when they still had these big brains that seemed to cause nothing but big-brain problems like world war, global hunger, economic collapse and nuclear devastation, and the only thing that kept them from absolute and total extinction was absolute and total happenstance as the last few random passengers of the "Nature Cruise of the Century" became the last carriers of the human genome, stranded on Darwin's famous islands of evolutionary opportunity with nothing else left to do on Earth but finally evolve. What would you do to feed your family? This is the question facing Harry Morgan, down in Key West during the Depression. He's got a boat and his brawn but not much else. You got all the Hemingway mainstays like fishing, drinking and fighting. You got fellas down on their luck, trying to pretend the hard choices they make are about providing for their families and not their man-pride. There's crime, human trafficking, booze-running, bank robberies and Cuban Revolutions, all competing with the Great Depression to make life hard for a man with no money in his wallet. Mix it together and pour over ice, and you got yourself a great vacation read... Now It Can Be Told: "Dear Sir, poor sir, brave sir: You are an experiment by the Creator of the Universe. You are the only creature in the entire Universe who has free will. You are the only one who has to figure out what to do next--and why. Everybody else is a robot, a machine. Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines. You are pooped and demoralized. Why wouldn't you be? Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be reasonable." "And so on..." These are the opening lines of a fictional novel which drives a fictional man of unwell mental health over the edge at the same time as Kurt Vonnegut himself steps into the schizophrenic imaginings of his own fictional world to speak to the fictional author of that fictional novel quoted above and offer him the one thing he's never known in his fictional existence, independence and freedom of will. Kurt Vonnegut is brilliant in a totally insane way, and Breakfast of Champion is totally insane. In a brilliant sort of way. "The expression "Breakfast of Champions" is a registered trademark of General Mills, Inc., for use on a breakfast cereal product. The use of the identical expression as the title for this book is not intended to indicate an association with or sponsorship by General Mills, nor is it intended to disparage their fine products." Am I the only one who sorta never heard of this one? After falling in love with the American epic and life achievement that is East of Eden, I was determined to sneak in some more Steinbeck before the end of the year. My schedule not permitting (I'm neck deep in a backlog of indie-steampunk to review right now), I was however able to absorb the audio book during a long drive to the Roller Coaster Capital of the world, Cedar Point in Ohio. Turns out, it's only three discs. But the reader was phenomenal so by all means, check it out.
That book kicks ass. That’s what my friend said when he heard I’d finally finished it. And in many respects, it does. The novel is dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne. William Faulkner said he wished he’d written himself. It’s so infused with Shakespearian poeticism that you can’t tell when he’s quoting directly, indirectly, paraphrasing or inventing wholly new material. And of course as final evidence of it’s ass-kickingness, all the best parts of all the best Star Trek movies are lines from Moby Dick. Lines like this one (click the link to see for yourself…)
“Towards thee I roll, though all-destroying but unconquerable whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee!” Or This One from First Contact. Hemingway is not for everyone, and most of the time, he's not even for me. But the guy won a Nobel Prize for literature, and single-handedly changed 20th century fiction writing, so he's doing something right. Islands in the Stream is exactly that something.
When two of your best friends recommend the same book in casual conversation within a week of each other, you gotta read it. If only to keep up with the conversation. Today I'm reviewing for my book-of-the-month of April: East of Eden by John Steinbeck, and to summarize my feelings, I think it should be re-titled: East of F!#@&ing Awesome.
After another World War, industrialization through automation brings peace and prosperity to the world. Just about everyone loses their jobs to go on surviving on the benevolence of an essential welfare state while the elite managers of the machines hold out the last meaningful careers as paternalistic overseers. One promising Doctor Proteus, on the verge of a career breakthrough, begins to second guess the system that leaves so many millions floating uselessly through a perfectly benign yet blah existence. This is Kurt Vonnegut's first novel. |
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