Timequake
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
0 pages, Hardcover
ISBN: 039914546X
ISBN13:
Language: English
Publish: None
AmericanClassicsFantasyFictionHumorLiterary FictionLiteratureNovelsScience FictionTime Travel
Think of Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut’s 19th & last novel (or so he says), as a victory lap. It’s a confident final trot around the track by one of the greats of postwar American literature. After 40 years of practice, he’s got his schtick down cold, & it’s a pleasure–if a slightly tame one–to watch him go through his paces one more time. Timequake’s a mongrel; it’s half novel, half memoir, the project of a decade’s worth of writer’s block, a book “that didn’t want to be written.” The premise is standard-issue Vonnegut: “…a timequake, a sudden glitch in the space-time continuum, made everybody & everything do exactly what they’d done during past decades, for good or ill, a 2nd time.” Simultaneously, the author’s favorite tricks are on display–frequent visits with the shopworn science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a Hitchcockian appearance by the author at the book’s end, & frequent authorial opining on love, war & society.