Player Piano - Kurt Vonnegut

1952, 320 pages. Genre : Dystopian Lit. Overall Rating : B.

   .This was Kurt Vonnegut's first pubished novel, and is set in Ilium, New York, where it follows the misadventures of Dr. Paul Proteus in a 1984-esque world. The back-cover blurb on my book calls it as "a cross between Animal Farm and Alice In Wonderland," and that's a fair description.
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What's To Like...
   This is "applied dystopia". Whereas Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and 1984 all have essentially the same mood, books like Player Piano (satire added) and Animal Farm (um... animals added) at least give the Big Brother story a new ambiance. Also, Vonnegut sticks to a straight chronological timeline here, which is not true in quite a few of his novels. I know chrono-hopping can be confusing to you non-time-travelers out there.
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Best of all are the characters themselves. The good guys have their faults; the bad guys have their endearing traits. Proteus has few, if any, outstanding qualities. Gray is a nice change from the black-or-white characters in most stories.

.What's Not To Like...
    This is not Vonnegut's best effort. He self-rates it a "B", and I'm inclined to agree. It's a good first stab, but it lacks the polish of his later work. The most glaring weakness is the tired, well-trodden dystopian plot. I keep waiting for a book in this genre to come up with something different for a storyline. Anything different.
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When I look into my crystal ball, I see...
As with any book in this genre, it's fun to see which parts of the future the author got right, and which parts he didn't. For brevity's sake, we'll limit ourselves here to some of his hits.
.1.) The Back To Nature Movement. At one point, Proteus decides to "cleanse" himself, and purchases an old farm that doesn't even have electricity. Jaded flower children followed suit 20 years later. With an equal lack of success. Eva Gabor, where are you today?

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2.) Let's sing the company song! Thank God, I never had to do this. But it's big over in Japan, and I have a friend who used to work for Wal-Mart, and claims they started every day off by singing the Wal-Mart song. Whatever that is. Oh, and Wal-Mart used to pick a different person each morning to lead the singing. So the trick was to scrunch down behind other patsies to avoid being called upon.

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3.) The ultimate anathema. In Player Piano, the label-of-death was being called a saboteur. It didn't matter whether you actually were one or not. Today, of course, we call anyone who doesn't go along with us a terrorist.

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4.) Everyone's a doctor. Vonnegut just barely missed on this one. Everyone in the privileged category in Player Piano gets a PhD. Whether it has any use/meaning or not. Nowadays, we don't have garbage collectors; we have sanitation engineers. Secretaries aren't secretaries; they're administrative facilitators. Same sort of thing.

.Bottom line - this is a good book to read if you're already hooked on Vonnegut ( I am), but Slaughterhouse-5, The Sirens of Titan, or Breakfast of Champions are all better introductions to him.

The Thin Place - Kathryn Davis

2006, 275 pages. Genre : Fiction, American Literature. Overall Rating : A-..Kathyrn Davis' 6th novel examines a cross-section of humanity in a bevy of people (and a number of animals) in a town steeped in Americana.

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What's To Like...
    This book is hard to characterize. It's about three girls/friends coming of age; but it's not Chick-Lit. It's about one of those girls being able to bring people and animals back to life; but that's really just incidental to the story.

.It gives the hyperactive, mischievous thoughts of dogs; it has a resolute beaver that never loses hope even when caught in a trap; and there's a feline who tests the saying, "Curiosity kills the cat". But this isn't Dr. Doolittle. It has a 92-year-old lady still full of life, but this isn't On Golden Pond.
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What's Not To Like...
There's not much of a plot. It's more of a snapshot of a small New Englandesque town (although the exact location of it is never really given). With about 50 pages to go, things start to build towards a climax, but even that is ...um... anticlimactic. If you're seeking for swashbuckling action, look elsewhere.

.There are a lot people who, for some reason, expected The Thin Place to have a spiritualistic overtone - good-vs.evil; demons & angels; etc. True, there's a bit of that here, but this is more mystical than metaphysical.

.Finally, this is not an easy read. The story demands your full attention, as it swirls from one being to another in almost random fashion. Clive Cussler fans should avoid this one at all costs.
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Overall Rating : A-.  There's no middle ground. You'll either love The Thin Place, or give it up after 50 pages. It reminds me of Waiting For Godot, but instead of witty dialogue to substitute for a plot, Ms. Davis treats you to some beautiful writing. This is an excellent book for a quiet evening with New Age music playing in the background. But don't try to read it while watching TV.

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

Overall Rating : B.

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Oh, the absurdity of war! John Yossarian is a bombadier, stationed in the Mediterranean during the last half of World War 2. He spends his time bombing the northern half of Italy, falling in love with various whores in Rome, agonizing that his next mission will end in his death, and trying to figure out how to convince the military to ship him back to the states.

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There is a way out, of course. If you're found to be insane, that's an instant ticket home. Alas, by attempting to show that you're insane, you demonstrate your sanity. That's Catch-22, and that means it is impossible for Yossarian to ever get himself discharged.

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What's To Like...

Yossarian is a classic anti-hero : full of faults, scared of dying, and anti-establishment. The group he's stuck with (the "Fighting 256th") has country bumpkins, back-stabbers, buxom nurses, milquetoast chaplains, incompetent Generals (anyone remember the Peter Principle?), ambitious Colonels, capitalistic Majors, and a host of other engaging characters to become acquainted with.

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If you like paradoxes, there are a couple billion of them in this book. Then there are the Catch-22's themselves, which are similar to, yet different, from paradoxes. BTW, a "Catch-22" is entirely fictional. FWIW, Heller tried quite a few numbers as the title prior to the book being released - Catch-11; Catch-14; etc.

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I suspect if you've ever been in the service, you'll find this book hilariously close to how things really were. I'm not a vet (both the Army and me are stronger because of this), so there's a limited amount of relevancy here for me.

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What's Not To Like...

It's a slow read. As with the other Heller book I've read ("God Knows"), its way too repetitious. You could slice 150 pages out of C-22, and it would be much better. You'll find yourself skipping "text" paragraphs to get to the dialogue parts.

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There's no plot for the first 75% of the book. There's humor and wit, but no progression in the tale at all. To be fair, Heller wakes up around page 330, and things finally begin to unfold. The book gets markedly darker after that, which IMNSHO is a plus.

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Finally, the ending just plain sucks. I know this is a farce, but it was a believable farce until... well, no spoilers here.

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It's The History, Stupid...

If you judge Catch-22 solely on its literary merits. it doesn't stand the test of time very well. Joseph Heller was destined never to repeat his initial smash hit. I'd go as far to say that the success of C-22 was due more to good timing than good writing. Of course, I say that about Seinfeld too.

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But Catch-22 is a breakthrough opus. Along with authors like Kurt Vonnegut, there was finally something distinctive about American literature. Yeah, the Brits figured this out before we did, but hey, they've had more practice at this sort of thing.

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You can see the influence of Catch-22 in M*A*S*H, and maybe-just-maybe, even in Dilbert. So we'll remember its time-period, and give it a shaky B. With Heller, Vonnegut, and Hunter S. Thompson all now departed, maybe it's time for a new generation of talented American authors to emerge.