Timequake - Softcover

Vonnegut, Kurt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0224036408 ISBN 13: 9780224036405

Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1997

Synopsis

Kurt Vonnegut has often pointed out the ridiculous ways our society has conducted itself. Now, as both a character in and a chronicler of a bizarre event at the millennium, Vonnegut manages to make some sense of life as he's lived it - and observed it - for more than seventy years. According to Vonnegut's alter ego, science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a global timequake will occur in New York City on February 13, 2001. It is the moment when the universe suffers a crisis of conscience. Should it expand or make a great big bang? It decides to back up a decade to 1991, making everyone in the world endure ten years of deja-vu and a total loss of free will - not to mention reliving every nanosecond of one of the tawdriest and most hollow decades. In 1996, dead centre of the 'rerun', Vonnegut is wrestling again with Timequake I, a book he couldn't write the first time and won't be able to now. As he struggles, he addrresses, with his trademark wicked wit, the relationship between memory and deja-vu, humanism, suicide, the Great Depression and World War Two as the last generational character builders, the loss of American eloquence, the obsolescent thrill of reading books, and what 'extended family' really means.

About this title

Review:

Kurt Vonnegut wasn't too crazy about the first version of his latest (and, he says, last) book Timequake, which is part memoir, part rescued novel. As he writes in the introduction, "My great big fish, which stunk so, was entitled Timequake." The book was originally going to be about a cosmic rerun, where the whole world does one decade over again exactly as it did before. However, after a decade in a writer's block continuum, Vonnegut decided to jump ship and salvage what he could from the wreckage of "a novel that never wanted to be written." He "filleted" the big stinky sucker, took its best parts out and made a "stew", seasoning it with memories and personal anecdotes. Vonnegut's alter ego, Kilgore Trout, the science fiction writer from previous novels (Slaughterhouse Five, Galapagos, Breakfast of Champions), looks back on his life as well when he meets up with Vonnegut at a clambake after history has repeated itself. Both authors discuss the idea of paralyzed "free will", the loss of loved ones and why "being alive is a crock of shit". Although it's filled with Vonnegut's unmistakable sarcasm and quirky insights, Timequakeisn't a streamlined novel with a tightly bound plot and strictly directed characters. It's a loose, free-flowing farewell from one of America's most beloved voices in popular fiction.

Review:

"Utterly original...capable of moving from irony to lament within a sentence" (Guardian)

"Reading Timequake... I feel privileged to have spent several hours in the company of a most genial, affable and upbeat soul indeed...a wise, winning and utterly charming concoction of fiction, commentary and autobiography" (Literary Review)

"Timequake is sweet, wild and cock-eyed... Vonnegut has always had a true comic ear... A beautifully fastidious writer, utterly original" (Guardian)

"Fascinating digressions, epigrams and memories, vitalised by Vonnegut;s irrepressible intelligence and comic imagination, creating a movingly intimate work" (Harpers & Queen)

"Highly entertaining... The portraits of Vonnegut's first wife, brother and sister are beautiful, sharp, critical, loving" (New York Times Book Review)

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0224036408
• ISBN 13: 9780224036405
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288