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erotic_gimli_fanfic 's review for:
Timequake
by Kurt Vonnegut
3.5/5
Like a Vonnegutian White Album. It’s all a bit of a mess really, but it contains more than enough nuggets of unadulterated KV brilliance to give it immense value.
It’s also a profoundly sad read, despite its flickering glimmers of joy. Vonnegut’s writing has always, first and foremost, evoked for me a passage from Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend: a young Elena has just read her friend Lila’s book for the first time, and she is struck by something which she is only able to articulate with the passage of time: “even before I was overwhelmed by the contents, what struck me was that the writing contained Lila’s voice…she left no trace of effort, you weren’t aware of the artifice of the written word.”
This ability remained intact right through to the end, but here the effect is different. Vonnegut’s weariness and sense of resignation at this stage of his life is palpable throughout. His was never the most upbeat of worldviews, but by this point the spring seems to have left his step (save for when he’s running errands). The voice in this book is melancholy in a much more vulnerable way than his earlier work.
He’s still having a laugh at the absurdities of the world and those who inhabit it, but it’s a bitter, rueful laugh. It’s a testament to the writer and the man that it is still laugh out loud funny.
Like a Vonnegutian White Album. It’s all a bit of a mess really, but it contains more than enough nuggets of unadulterated KV brilliance to give it immense value.
It’s also a profoundly sad read, despite its flickering glimmers of joy. Vonnegut’s writing has always, first and foremost, evoked for me a passage from Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend: a young Elena has just read her friend Lila’s book for the first time, and she is struck by something which she is only able to articulate with the passage of time: “even before I was overwhelmed by the contents, what struck me was that the writing contained Lila’s voice…she left no trace of effort, you weren’t aware of the artifice of the written word.”
This ability remained intact right through to the end, but here the effect is different. Vonnegut’s weariness and sense of resignation at this stage of his life is palpable throughout. His was never the most upbeat of worldviews, but by this point the spring seems to have left his step (save for when he’s running errands). The voice in this book is melancholy in a much more vulnerable way than his earlier work.
He’s still having a laugh at the absurdities of the world and those who inhabit it, but it’s a bitter, rueful laugh. It’s a testament to the writer and the man that it is still laugh out loud funny.