Timequake - Softcover

Vonnegut, Kurt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425164349 ISBN 13: 9780425164341

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 1998

Synopsis

On February 13th, 2001, according to Vonnegut, the universe will tire momentarily of expanding forever. What's the point? Maybe it would be more fun to shrink for a change, and have a reunion of all the stuff back where it began. Then it could make a great big BANG again. It will shrink back to February 17th, 1991, but will then decide that expansion is the way to go, after all. As time marches on once more to 2001, though, Vonnegut and Trout and everybody else and everything else will have to do exactly what they did the first time through the decade, for good or ill: marry the wrong person, bet on the wrong horse. Whatever! Ten years of deja vu all over again! At least deja vu doesn't cause physical injury and property damage.

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

Praise for Timequake

"[A] quirky mix of fiction and biography...This is the indispensable Vonnegut."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Wry and trenchant...highly entertaining."--The New York Times Book Review

"His funniest book since Breakfast of Champions...There are nuggets of Vonnegutian wisdom throughout."--Newsweek

"Timequake is a novel by, and starring, Kurt Vonnegut...What Vonnegut does, which no one can do better, is give a big postmodern shrug...You've got to love him."--The Washington Post Book World

"Humorous, sardonic...Timequake makes for irresistible reading that's loaded with more important truths than it lets on...Moralizing has never been funnier."--Chicago Sun-Times

"Part autobiography, part meditation, part satire...Vonnegut is at his best."--Atlanta Journal & Constitution

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0425164349
• ISBN 13: 9780425164341
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272