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Player Piano
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
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If I aimed at nothing..nothing is what I would hit
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Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
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Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James
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Eugene Debs Hartke describes an odyssey from college professor to prison inmate to prison warden back again to prisoner in another of Vonnegut's bitter satirical explorations of how and where (and why) the American dream begins to die. Employing his characteristic narrative device - a retrospective diary in which the protagonist retraces his life at its end, a desperate and disconnected series of events here in Hocus Pocus show Vonnegut with his mask off and his rhetorical devices unshielded.
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Vonnegut Imitating Vonnegut
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According to Kurt Vonnegut's alter ego, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a global timequake will occur on February 13, 2001, at 2:27 p.m. It will be the moment when the universe suffers a crisis of conscience: Should it go on expanding indefinitely or collapse and make another great big BANG? For its own cosmic reasons, it decides to back up a decade to 1991, giving the world a 10-year case of deja vu, making everybody and everything do exactly what they'd done during the past decade.
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Arias only make hopeless situations worse
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a fool and his self respect are soon parted
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Perhaps the most autobiographical (and deliberately least disciplined) of Vonnegut's novels, Slapstick (1976) is in the form of a broken family odyssey and is surely a demonstration of its eponymous title. The story centers on brother and sister twins, children of Wilbur Swain, who are in sympathetic and (possibly) telepathic communication and who represent Vonnegut's relationship with his own sister who died young of cancer almost two decades before the book's publication.
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In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth.
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Kurt Vonnegut presents in Fates Worse than Death a veritable cornucopia of his thoughts on what could perhaps best be summed up as "anti-theology", a manifesto for atheism that details Vonnegut's drift from conventional religion, even a tract evidencing belief in the divine held within each individual self--the deity within each individual person present in a universe that otherwise lacks any real order.
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When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity. Cloning, feel-good drugs, anti-aging programs, and total social control through politics, programming, and media: has Aldous Huxley accurately predicted our future? With a storyteller's genius, he weaves these ethical controversies in a compelling narrative that dawns in the year 632 A.F. (After Ford, the deity). When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity.
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Michael York should stick to the stage and leave narration to the pros.
- By SD on 08-21-19
By: Aldous Huxley
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I, Robot
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- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
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They mustn't harm a human being, they must obey human orders, and they must protect their own existence...but only so long as that doesn't violate rules one and two. With these Three Laws of Robotics, humanity embarked on a bold new era of evolution that would open up enormous possibilities, and unforeseen risks.
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Thank you
- By Fredrik on 06-11-04
By: Isaac Asimov
Publisher's summary
Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
As an added bonus, when you purchase our Audible Modern Vanguard production of Kurt Vonnegut's book, you'll also receive an exclusive Jim Atlas interview. This interview – where James Atlas interviews Gay Talese about the life and work of Kurt Vonnegut – begins as soon as the audiobook ends.
Critic reviews
Featured Article: 70+ Unforgettable Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
Kurt Vonnegut had an extremely productive career, penning everything from plays to short stories to full-length nonfiction. Drawing on his experiences of war, life, and love, Vonnegut’s powerful messages were delivered so creatively—and often quite satirically—ensuring that they stood the test of time. This assortment of Kurt Vonnegut quotes is just a glimpse of the gems found throughout the works of this great author.
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- Length: 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Anders is an angry, cynical man. A book critic known for his scathing reviews, he finds any excuse to dismiss, belittle, or insult. This afternoon is no more agitating than the next. Angers finds himself in a long line at the bank, waiting to reach a teller. Even after two men - wearing masks and carrying guns - take control of the building, Anders is unfazed. It's this behavior that lands him with a pistol against his stomach and a man screamingin his face. And when the bank robber, indignant over Anders' behavior, shoots the book critic in the head, his mind floats through the memories of his life, settling on one particular event....
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The Perfect Example
- By Sarah on 08-01-17
By: Tobias Wolff
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Time Out of Joint
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Ragle Gumm has a unique job: Every day he wins a newspaper contest. And when he isn’t consulting his charts and tables, he enjoys his life in a small town, in 1959. At least, that’s what he thinks. But then strange things start happening. He finds a phone book where all the numbers have been disconnected, and a magazine article about a famous starlet named Marilyn Monroe, whom he’s never heard of. Plus, everyday objects are beginning to disappear and are replaced by strips of paper with words written on them, like "bowl of flowers" and "soft-drink stand".
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Mediocre Mother to Gravity's Rainbow and the Truman Show?
- By Darwin8u on 06-13-15
By: Philip K. Dick
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Crimes by Moonlight
- Mysteries from the Dark Side
- By: Charlaine Harris - author/editor
- Narrated by: Natalie Ross
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In number-one New York Times best-selling author Charlaine Harris’s "Dahlia Underground,” venerable vampire Dahlia Lynley-Chivers survives an attack by an anti-vampire terrorist group, only to show them they tried to blow up the wrong bloodsucker. Bailey Ruth Raeburn, a ghost assigned to assist humans in trouble, steps into the middle of a marital dispute with surprising twists in Carolyn Hart’s “Riding High”....
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Pleasantly surprised
- By Bonnie on 08-06-11
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Disturbing the Peace
- By: Richard Yates
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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To all appearances, John Wilder has all the trappings of success, circa 1960: a promising career in advertising, a loving family, a beautiful apartment, even a country home. John's evenings are spent with associates at quiet Manhattan lounges and his weekends with friends at glittering cocktail parties. But something deep within this seemingly perfect life has long since gone wrong.
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7 hours and 27 minutes pure blisd
- By Mia on 01-05-13
By: Richard Yates
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The Eighth Commandment
- By: Lawrence Sanders
- Narrated by: Rebecca Gibel
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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When the Damaretion, the prized Greek coin from Archibald Havistock's collection, disappears and appraiser Mary Lou "Dunk" Bateson comes under suspicion, Bateson, a cop, and an insurance investigator set out to solve the crime.
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It was a nice listen
- By John on 10-01-12
By: Lawrence Sanders
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Carrying Albert Home
- The Somewhat True Story of a Woman, a Husband, and Her Alligator
- By: Homer Hickam
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Elsie Lavender and Homer Hickam (the father of the author) were high school classmates in the West Virginia coalfields, graduating just as the Great Depression began. When Homer asked for her hand, Elsie instead headed to Orlando, where she sparked with a dancing actor named Buddy Ebsen (yes, that Buddy Ebsen). But when Buddy headed for New York, Elsie's dreams of a life with him were crushed, and eventually she found herself back in the coalfields, married to Homer.
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Absolutely Delightful!!
- By Sharon on 03-01-16
By: Homer Hickam
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Red Plenty
- By: Francis Spufford
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. It was built on the 20th-century magic called "the planned economy," which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working. Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away. Red Plenty is history, it's fiction, it's as ambitious as Sputnik, and as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant.
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Simple review
- By Jay J Peters on 06-24-18
By: Francis Spufford
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Go Set a Watchman
- A Novel
- By: Harper Lee
- Narrated by: Reese Witherspoon
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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An historic literary event: the publication of a newly discovered novel, the earliest known work from Harper Lee, the beloved, best-selling author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic To Kill a Mockingbird. Originally written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before To Kill a Mockingbird. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014.
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To Kill A Mockingbird vs Go Set A Watchman
- By Sara on 07-15-15
By: Harper Lee
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a fool and his self respect are soon parted
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In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth.
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Perhaps the most autobiographical (and deliberately least disciplined) of Vonnegut's novels, Slapstick (1976) is in the form of a broken family odyssey and is surely a demonstration of its eponymous title. The story centers on brother and sister twins, children of Wilbur Swain, who are in sympathetic and (possibly) telepathic communication and who represent Vonnegut's relationship with his own sister who died young of cancer almost two decades before the book's publication.
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Lonely No More!
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Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
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With cutting wit, fierce conviction, and surprising empathy, Vonnegut explores a diverse range of topics including society, politics, sex, literature, and mortality. Fans who believe they've read all of Vonnegut's work will be delighted to find the author speaking frankly about timely and relevant new topics - with an amusing yet insightful style that's instantly recognizable.
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Vonnegut At His Best
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By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.
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Timequake
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According to Kurt Vonnegut's alter ego, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a global timequake will occur on February 13, 2001, at 2:27 p.m. It will be the moment when the universe suffers a crisis of conscience: Should it go on expanding indefinitely or collapse and make another great big BANG? For its own cosmic reasons, it decides to back up a decade to 1991, giving the world a 10-year case of deja vu, making everybody and everything do exactly what they'd done during the past decade.
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Arias only make hopeless situations worse
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By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Hocus Pocus
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Eugene Debs Hartke describes an odyssey from college professor to prison inmate to prison warden back again to prisoner in another of Vonnegut's bitter satirical explorations of how and where (and why) the American dream begins to die. Employing his characteristic narrative device - a retrospective diary in which the protagonist retraces his life at its end, a desperate and disconnected series of events here in Hocus Pocus show Vonnegut with his mask off and his rhetorical devices unshielded.
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Vonnegut Imitating Vonnegut
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By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Fates Worse Than Death
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Kurt Vonnegut presents in Fates Worse than Death a veritable cornucopia of his thoughts on what could perhaps best be summed up as "anti-theology", a manifesto for atheism that details Vonnegut's drift from conventional religion, even a tract evidencing belief in the divine held within each individual self--the deity within each individual person present in a universe that otherwise lacks any real order.
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Vonnegut is profound
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Welcome to the Monkey House
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Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.
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Classic Vonnegut
- By Michael Carrato on 08-17-06
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Armageddon in Retrospect
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The New York Times best seller from the author of Slaughterhouse-Five—a “gripping” posthumous collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s previously unpublished work on the subject of war and peace. A fitting tribute to a literary legend and a profoundly humane humorist, Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of 12 previously unpublished writings. Imbued with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humor and outraged moral sense.
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Vonnegut should get the nobel peace prize
- By CHARLES on 05-07-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Slaughterhouse-Five
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
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- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
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Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
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Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James
- By Keith on 11-20-15
By: Kurt Vonnegut
What listeners say about Player Piano
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- R.A.
- 06-07-19
A Genuine 5-Stars
THE SHORT:
If you know (and enjoy) Vonnegut — there’s no reason to hesitate on this one. Without a doubt, it is amongst his best work.
If you don’t yet know Vonnegut, this is *not* a comprehensive introduction to his style and range, but it exemplifies the thoughtful social commentary that is always present in his work. A good place to start, but if ever you don’t like it, I wouldn’t dismiss him without also checking out Slaughterhouse 5, Breakfast of Champions and Sirens of Titan.
THE LONG:
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__THE STORY__
The humour in Player Piano is much drier and more attenuated than other, more fantastical, Vonnegut novels; perhaps because it mostly plays on very on-point social commentary. The story itself is very engaging: Vonnegut paints the picture of a society using ~3 parallel, non-intersecting, threads. Unlike many other novels where such narrative structure is used as a gimmick to create artificial suspense (ie a hook to keep you reading that would not work if you were to re-read the novel), in Player Piano, Vonnegut has used it so deftly that, even though the characters in the various parts have nothing to do with one another, there is no sense of a split story line: all of them carry the central theme forward, seamlessly.
The near-future world that Vonnegut imagined resembles ours so closely that his prescience alone makes the story gripping, and his ability to articulate the discomforts accompanying a technocratic world gives the whole thing a eerie prophetic feeling. I just wish he had been a bit more clear in his final statement: on a first listening, there is not a clear conclusion to the “discussion” he has with the reader, throughout the story.
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__The Narration__
In a word: perfect. I have never heard anything else read by Christian Rummel, and I think he is the first or second narrator out of ~450 audiobooks, for whom I’d considered buying other books simply on account of his talent.
I don’t recall seeing anything about Rummel having won an award for this novel, but I don’t know how that could possibly be the case. Not only does he distinguish characters effectively, without blowing the dynamic range, he absolutely nails several characters, bringing them to life.
I’m not one to be excessively enthusiastic: there’s nothing worse than a huge endorsement to get your expectations up so that the actual product can’t possibly live up to them, but if you’re able to give Rummel a fair listening, I think you’ll agree that his performance is spectacular: a few of the characters are so spot-on, that I wondered if he had met Vonnegut. He definitely transformed the book for me, as I would not have been able to imagine such perfectly matched voicing for those characters. Of course, not *every* character has something special that you wouldn’t get with another narrator, but there’s no doubt he was the perfect choice for this book.
He also carries off some Vonnegut-esque sound effects (onomatopoeic machine noises) to great effect: capturing the playful sarcasm and irony that colours so much of Vonnegut’s writing.
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__OVERALL__
Highly recommended. A book I will listen to again, without a doubt - which is ultimately the highest praise I can give any book :)
If you found this review helpful in deciding whether or not to give this book a chance, please let me know by clicking the button below, so that I can continue to provide helpful reviews (or improve them!). Happy listening!
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31 people found this helpful
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- Joe Kraus
- 11-04-19
A Glimpse at Vonnegut Making Himself into Vonnegut
I’ve thought about Vonnegut a lot over the last 3-5 years, and I’ve re-read most of what I’d once read multiple times in high school and home from college. His work was my intellectual comfort food and then, all at once, I’d decided I was beyond him.
The big insight that launched my re-interest came when I realized the extent to which we can trace his coming to terms with the trauma of his war-time experiences, culminating in Slaughterhouse-Five. I found real power in the early novels as we watch him inching ever closer to confronting what it meant to witness what the Allies did to the Germans at Dresden, a story more ironic and horrible than anything he could ever invent himself.
For me, Vonnegut gets really good with Mother Night, his third novel, though we can see some interesting things happening in Sirens of Titan, his second. This one is his first, and, coming back to it, I see some glimmers. But, by comparison with what was coming just a couple years later, this is close to a failure.
Among other things, this is badly plotted. Our hero, Paul Proteus, does have a fascinating experience. Unable, in Vonnegut fashion, to share faith with either of the sides in conflict – he’s born and trained to belong to the engineering elite, but he’s temperamentally unable to join them or the active resistance – he eventually gets fired in order to be sent as an undercover agent of the rebels. Everyone assumes he’s someone he is not. (It’s clumsy here, but Vonnegut does it elegantly in Mother Night.)
That section should be the heart of this novel. Instead, it comes something like two-thirds of the way through with the earlier parts all an extended comic sci-fi/dystopia. It’s apprentice work for the excellence that would follow, but at first it’s spread out too slowly and then it’s rushed. In retrospect, I think a good editor could have saved it, but first he or she would have had to know the voice and style Vonnegut would later develop.
This does interest me, though, for the glimpses we see of what I’ll call the proto-revelations of trauma. This is still loosely in the “Harrison Bergeron” phase where, in a kind of libertarianism, Vonnegut seemed to fear the power of unbridled government more than, as he eventually settled into, the unbridled power of late capitalism. In this moment, we see a poignant yearning for some of what the war made possible. Multiple characters, no more ironic than others, seem nostalgic for the shared purpose of battle.
We do get an early sense of the pointlessness of war. One character recounts winning a major medal because, moments after a Nazi attack, he got a generator working again and electrocuted a thousand Germans who’d managed to make their way to an electric fence that was temporarily disabled. That is, we get an acknowledgement that war is pointless and anti-human, but that doesn’t entirely overwhelm the sense that the narrative of war has a power to bring humans together.
There’s a send-up of corporate life that involves inventing a series of pointless Blue/Green/White teams with strong patriotic self-definitions – that is, there’s a sense of the phoniness of what Vonnegut will call Granfalloons in Cat’s Cradle – but he doesn’t seem all the way able to dismiss the “foma” of patriotism.
In other words, I see a residue of his claiming that what he endured had some purpose to it. That residue is eroding – I think it may be mostly gone by Sirens of Titan – but this marks a fascinating glimpse at the man Vonnegut was before he made himself into the Vonnegut we know.
Don’t bother with this one unless you’ve done the other early ones first, but it’s valuable because of what it shows of an artist slowly forcing himself to become himself.
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- Mary
- 08-04-18
the very BEST AUTHOR OF the 1900's
if you haven't read Vonnegut, you have missed out on valuable wit and human pespective.
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- James
- 12-12-08
Not Vonnegut's best effort.
I read this a long time ago and bought the A-B. There are some interesting insights in this book that have some application in todays "outsourced" economy. Funy in parts tiresome in others, the ending seems J-V was trying to meet a deadline.
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- Alan
- 09-18-17
Poor narration
I am a huge Kurt Vonnegut fan, and was hoping to really enjoy listening to this book. I love the story, but the monotone (digitally sourced?) narration makes this impossible to listen too. Do not buy Kurt Vonnegut books from this series!
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- thomas
- 02-20-14
Spectacular
What did you love best about Player Piano?
It is hard for me to write a review of a Kurt Vonnegut book, I am clearly not a literary critic, but for me he is the most under appreciated writer in the American literary tradition. This book, his first, is just fantastic.
What other book might you compare Player Piano to and why?
Within the Vonnegut library I would say Sirens of Titan, another early book with big ideas.
What about Christian Rummel’s performance did you like?
It is interesting that all the Vonnegut books on Audible have been done by different narrator's and all of them have done a great, great job. Rummel handled the material so well I cannot imagine any else doing it better. Just great.
Who was the most memorable character of Player Piano and why?
Paul Proteus probably but Kroger and Finnerty really cracked me up....sometimes it is hard to tell (when really Vonnegut) if you are imagining his characters or the subsequent one's that recent writers ripped off from him. These are archetypal characters at times and it is difficult not to love all of them.
Any additional comments?
Thanks Audible, well done.
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- Dubi
- 09-30-18
The Future Is Here
There is a book or a documentary (there may be more than one) that compares visions of the future as presented in the mid-20th century, particularly at the 1939 New York World's Fair ("The World of Tomorrow"), and shows just how wrong they were -- often comically. Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano, by contrast, holds up well 66 years into the future, its vision having by and large come true in many ways, sometimes chillingly.
Based on his own experiences working for General Electric in the late 1940s, Player Piano imagines a future in which people are replaced by machines controlled by computers and the world is run by feckless managers and engineers. In the 1950s they called it automation -- we now call it robotics. People losing their jobs to robots is a reality that is part of our current political and economic discourse; unchecked corporate power is another hot button issue; and our 1% class structure is a near corollary to Player Piano's world where management lives north of the river in Ilium and the unemployed masses live to its south, the twain rarely meeting.
The populist anti-establishment screeds sprinkled throughout Player Piano cut across today's ideologies. The issues of corporate influence and the economic elite certainly echo liberal thought, but job loss to robotics and a Luddite nostalgia for a simpler past are hallmarks of conservatism. The nature of the working class left behind by automation also cuts across ideological lines -- demographically, they resemble red state conservatives, but their plight (especially how they're treated by the elite) resembles blue state liberal views.
Vonnegut's Luddite attitude toward technology is one example where he got it completely wrong. Those losing jobs to robotics may lament their unemployment, but no one is unplugging their WiFi or central air conditioners. And there are many new careers in technology than KV imagined. He mocks the corporate justification for automation -- improving people's lives -- but in today's world, few want society to go off-grid, they just want to keep their jobs or get new ones. On the other hand, he totally nails the manipulation of the populace via weapons of mass distraction, as did Huxley in Brave New World (which Vonnegut admits to happily ripping off).
This being his first novel, Vonnegut adhered closely to traditional literary structures. There are only hints of the meta-fictional style that is emblematic of his later work. The characters are straightforward, the plot line linear, the dialogue realistic. The most interesting departure from standard narrative structure is that some scenes seem designed to set characters up to deliver extended riffs and rants that communicate the author's belief system rather than furthering plot or characterization.
Vonnegut wrote Player Piano as a social satire of his own times, but by setting it in a dystopian near-future, the book was cast as science fiction. At the time, Vonnegut said it was news to him that he was a science fiction author -- he did not want to be seen as part of what he then thought of as a second rate pulp fiction genre. Of course, he went on to embrace the label and become one of its foremost practitioners, even taking a traditional WWII story and transposing it into science fiction (Slaughterhouse-Five).
For me, this completes my re-reading in audio of all of Vonnegut's novels I devoured in print as a youth -- seven of them leading up to the first that I read upon its initial publication (Breakfast of Champions). I remain amazed at how most of them (especially the lesser known titles) hold up to the passage of time, at least thematically (some details, like vacuum tube technology that drives Player Piano's world, have to now be rethought as integrated circuits). I also remain amazed at how well Vonnegut graded himself in Palm Sunday -- he gave Player Piano a B, and I have to concur. It's very good, especially for a first novel, but doesn't rise to greatness of the A books that followed.
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- Wesley
- 05-03-20
mostly good
narrator is very talented, but takes a little getting used to. story dates itself in some unpleasant ways, and doesn't keep the same place as some of Vonnegut's other works. overall worth the listen (until the interview at the end, which is completely cringe-worthy).
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- pierrev
- 08-21-19
Not his best but not the worst
the middle was a little slow for me and I had a hard time getting through it but loved the way it finished
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- Pla77
- 02-08-16
Relevant today
This is particularly relevant given the rise of AI and references to vacuum tubes can easily be replaced with transistors without batting an eye. Like most Vonnegut he creates the engine, gets it running, takes a short drive and abruptly abandons it.
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