 A Funny, Quirky, Quasi-Autobiographical Meditation 6 of 6 people found this review helpful.
Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Timequake" is part commonplace novel, part fragmented autobiography- Vonnegut makes numerous appearances throughout the narrative as a character, part disfunctional romance, adding up to an odd meditation on our planet's determination to destroy itself.
In the year 2001, "a sudden glitch in the space-time continuum, made everybody and everything do exactly what they'd been doing during the past decade...a second time" until "free will kicked in again" after the echo decade had torturously re-run itself. Essentially, Vonnegut uses the story arc as an excuse to rummage through his own past and that of his alter-ego, the science fiction writer Kilgore Trout. The novel, as quasi-autobiography, becomes a free-form platform upon which the author lovingly salutes and mourns his living and dead siblings, wives, and children. He pays tribute to his favorite books and writers; retells old jokes; reminisces about his experiences in WW II; and ruminates about the fate of "humanism" in an age dominated by technology.
The book tests the reader's patience with its random bits of semi-relevant information and needless explanations. And yet, Vonnegut's fitful summaries of the life and writings of Kilgore Trout are often very funny. "We are here on earth to fart around" runs one of Vonnegut's more endearing pronouncements. And, at least in this book, nobody does it better.
Review ID: 10000000010147213  Thank you for voting. If your vote meets our guidelines, it will be posted within 24 hours. You cannot vote on the helpfulness of a review you wrote. Your request cannot be processed at this time. Please try again later.   Vonnegut's Meta- Fictional Memoir Review created: 05/30/07(updated 09/08/07) 5 of 7 people found this review helpful.
Timequake, Vonnegut's last novel, published in 1997.
Vonnegut describes the novel which is semi- autobiographical, as a "stew", in which he alternates between a novel he had been struggling with for a number of years, and nostalgia about events in his own life.
* "All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental" -Kurt Vonnegut Jr., on himself being in the novel.
Timequake, in which the entire universe turns back ten years, from 2001 to 1991 and then begins to move forward again.
Vonnegut explores the philosophy of determinism to assert that people really have no free will. accounts of Vonnegut's life and his attempts to write the novel and anecdotes about Vonnegut's family, mingled with the story of the old science fiction author, Kilgore Trout, who has lived through the ten years and is now coming to terms with the "return of free will".
Kilgore Trout, the main character, has appeared in many of Vonnegut's books, in a variety of roles: he acts as a catalyst for the main characters in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Slaughterhouse-Five, while in Breakfast of Champions, Jailbird, and Timequake, Trout is an active character vital to the story. In Hocus Pocus, Trout is not mentioned by name, but the narrator is reading a Trout like science fiction story by an unnamed author in a pornographic magazine. (Trout is usually described as an unappreciated science fiction writer whose works are used only as filler material in pornographic magazines). The ghost of Trout's son Leon Trotsky Trout is the narrator of the novel Galapagos.
Trout was also portrayed by the actor Albert Finney in the 1999 film version of Breakfast Of Champions.
Vonnegut stated that Kilgore Trout committed suicide by drinking Drano, in an article for In These Times magazine. saying Trout died at midnight on October 15, 2004 in Cohoes, New York, following his consultation with a psychic, who informed him that George W. Bush would win the U. S. Presidential election by a vote of 5-to-4 in the Supreme Court. The epitaph on his tombstone reads, "Life is no way to treat an animal."
One real published work is attributed to Kilgore Trout, the novel Venus on the Half-Shell, written by Philip José Farmer.
Timequake is a wonderful work containing many personal moments with the author. Vonnegut's last novel, a Meta-fiction memoir !
willtrib - EasyCityBooks NOLA
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