The Thumbnail Book Reviews

by John Q McDonald --- 2 August 1999

Timequake

by Kurt Vonnegut

The epigraph that opens this book pretty much sums it up in its entirety. "All persons, living or dead, are coincidental." This could well sum up most of Vonnegut's work. In his brilliant career, Kurt Vonnegut presented the world with his curmudgeonly, profane and ultimately gentle view of the way the world is and the way the world should be. His message was that we are placed on this chaotic planet, through no fault of our own, and here we must learn to help each other through the uncertain place that is this universe. In Timequake, the author looked back on his life and many of the people who came his way. Largely autobiographical, the book is pasted together with fragments of a novel, in which the world is sent back ten years to live those years all over again, without any free will. Many of the musings herein hinge on a great clambake a few days after the "replay" of the ten years between 1991 and 2001. Vonnegut's alter-ego, Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut himself, and various fictional and real characters make up the landscape of the story. Overall, the author gave the book the tone of a farewell, to dead extended family members, and perhaps even to writing itself. Indeed, the problem of writing is a main theme; along with careful restatement of many points in earlier books, and occasional biting satire of such institutions as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This reader has read nearly all of Vonnegut's work. Though touching and warm, this isn't his best (we'd have to nominate Cat's Cradle, or God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Mother Night for that distinction). The tone of farewell is sad, as it is clear from this book that in its author lay a great deal that remained untold.

[Mail John][To List]

Also by Vonnegut: [We are what We Pretend to Be]