SIRENS OF TITAN

Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut, Dell Publishing, 1959, 326 pp

Vonnegut's second novel started off great for me. The whole thing about the chronosynclastic infundibulum being "those places...where all the different kinds of truth fit together" struck me as pretty cool. I thought the hapless irresponsible Malachi Constant, richest man in America, was going to get straightened out and find the meaning of life.

Well, he did, but it did not make him happy. Rumfoord, who at first appeared to me as someone who had the good of mankind at heart, turned out to be quite the opposite. He didn't end up happy either. That terrible antisocial kid Chrono becomes the only guy who redeems himself in any way.

The story just seemed to sputter out exactly the way some people's lives do and I found that depressing. So Vonnegut fooled me, which is OK because I actually don't mind when authors jerk me around a bit. In fact, at this point in my life, I also believe that we live in an indifferent universe but we still ought to love "whoever is around to be loved" while we do our best to survive, keep the planet going and practice kindness when at all possible.


(Sirens of Titan is available in paperback and ebook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

READING LIST FOR 1959

A couple weeks ago I completed my reading list for 1959. These lists are part of what I call My Big Fat Reading Project. I have been working on the project since June 2002, when I started with a reading list from 1940. So finishing 1959 is a milestone because I have now completed the second decade of the project. I also turned 65 last month and am beginning to realize that I may never complete the darn thing. I mean, do the math. Also the lists keep getting longer. However I am getting the education in literature that I envisioned and that is what matters to me.

The 1959 list took me a year and a half to complete for all kinds of reasons. I was distracted by several life changes but most of all it felt like because it was the end of a decade and I was so eager to get into the 1960s, it just went dragging on and on.

You can find reviews for almost all of these books here on the blog. Just put the title into the search window in the top left corner. You can also find all the earlier lists by looking through the archives. I suppose I should gather the links for these in the sidebar. If even one person comments with such a request, I will do it!

BESTSELLERS:

Exodus, Leon Uris

Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak

Hawaii, James Michener

Advise and Consent, Allen Drury

Lady Chatterley's Lover, D H Lawrence

The Ugly American, William J Lederer and Eugene L Burdick

Dear and Glorious Physician, Taylor Caldwell

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

Mrs 'Arris Goes to Paris, Paul Gallico

Poor No More, Robert Ruark

AWARD WINNERS:

PULITZER: The Travels of Jamie McPheeters, Robert Lewis Taylor

NEWBERY: The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Elizabeth George Speare

CALDECOTT: Chanticleer and the Fox, Barbara Cooney

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD: The Magic Barrel, Bernard Malamud

HUGO: A Case of Conscience, James Blish

EDGAR: The Eighth Circle, Stanley Ellin

OTHERS:

Absolute Beginners, Colin Macinnes

The Borrowers Afloat, Mary Norton

The Cave, Robert Penn Warren

Children of the Alley, Naguib Mahfouz

Coal Camp Girl, Lois Lenski

Free Fall, William Golding

The Good Conscience, Carlos Fuentes

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow

Jean and Johnny, Beverly Cleary

The Mansion, William Faulkner

Miguel Street, V S Naipaul

Momento Mori, Muriel Spark

My Brother Michael, Mary Stewart

Passage of Arms, Eric Ambler

The Poorhouse Fair, John Updike

Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut

The Status Seekers, Vance Packard

Time Out of Joint, Philip K Dick

Zazie in the Metro, Raymond Queneau

 

 

MOTHER NIGHT

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Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Delacorte Press, 1961, 202 pp

This is the book I mentioned in my review of The Dinner, as an example of perfectly executed satire and moral ambiguity. I love opening a Vonnegut novel because I never know what I am going to find. Even when he stumbles, as I feel he did in The Sirens of Titan, he is so uniquely himself and I am never bored.

Howard W Campbell Jr: ersatz Nazi spewing out propaganda for the Party in WWII, undercover CIA spy, loving husband. He is writing his memoirs while languishing in an Israeli prison awaiting trial for war crimes. Vonnegut sets the stage in his introduction:

"This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvelous moral; I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

Good advice for all the Facebook addicted people of the world, though in 2014 apt to fall on deaf ears.

So Howard explains how an American lives in Germany, marries a German woman, gets caught up in the prewar Nazi madness, finds himself promulgating Nazi propaganda on worldwide radio, embedding intelligence after his recruitment to the CIA, escapes back to the United States without his wife and without any CIA backup, lives in hiding in a New York City walk up, meets with Fascist types and trickery and eventual betrayal to the Israelis.

It is a mad tale and a cynical as well as bleak assessment of politics, anti-Semitism, and the dangers of pretending. All the while making the reader laugh, smirk, and cringe at the same time.

Truly amazing!

(Mother Night is available in paperback and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)