Reviews - Player Piano | The StoryGraph

929 reviews for:

Player Piano

Kurt Vonnegut

3.78 AVERAGE

mrbusiness734's review against another edition

2.0

dark reflective slow-paced

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I finished this because I’m reading all of Vonnegut’s novels this summer, but if I wasn’t a completist I wouldn’t have finished it. This is very much a first pancake for Vonnegut. You can see all the ideas that will transform and expand in his later work, but the prose is exhausting and the plot is stilted. I was really hopeful because the topic of automation and AI is more relevant than ever, and many elements of the plot still resonate deeply with the current moment, but it never quite stuck the landing. I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum if this book is for you, but it sure wasn’t for me.

seebrandyread's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous dark funny medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Player Piano tells the story of Paul Proteus, a top engineer in Post WWII America, a dystopian version in which the vast majority of the country’s jobs are now performed by machines and society is essentially divided into the elite and the average citizen. As Paul begins to question the world around him, he realizes just how man-made his world is and that complacency is the only force holding it up. Though Player Piano was published in ‘52, some of Vonnegut’s fears, if not predictions, for the future of America are disturbingly spot on like the pervasion of standardized testing, extreme socioeconomic division, and even AI. We see Paul's perspective as an American as well as the outside perspective of the Shah of Bratpuhr, the ruler of a made-up country on a tour of the US to decide if he wants the “progress” he sees there for his own nation. Though Vonnegut's depiction of this other America is sharp and prescient, he seems a bit blind when it comes to women's role in it and therefore the real America. The main subversive force of the novel is the Ghost Shirt Society which appropriates the real spiritual practice of Indigenous people in a way that is accurate in its irony but doesn't quite translate into the dark humor of the rest of the novel. Player Piano explores the age-old question of what is a person's value and dissects the power and failure of various social structures (religion, economics, education, vocation, etc.) to provide answers.

vytalsign's review against another edition

3.0

recommended by luke who thinks it’s an important read for anyone in cs. i was able to read exactly 20 pages of this every morning on my commute to work in the summer xD

what happens when our society becomes operated by machines? to the point of job placement, pay, healthcare, incarceration, etc. when there’s structure there will always be a group against the structure — here they’re called the Ghost Society (i thought the revolution part of the story was very punk). the book argues from both sides (of the river or of the argument, great metaphor) and it was cool that even though there was an obvious bias as to which was the right side of history, i could see how the current social structure came to place. one part that stuck out was how manual laborers are paid allowances to live while the majority of their wages go towards an all packaged healthcare deal, their houses come furnished and insured, etc. which felt similar to the extreme end of the universal healthcare debate.

overall not a mind blowing world shifting read, but another good one to have read :)