God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Review

Finally, I move to book two of Library of America’s Kurt Vonnegut: The Complete Novels set. I skipped Cat’s Cradle as I read that a few years ago. Rosewater is probably the Vonnegut I’ve seen referenced the most outside of Slaughterhouse Five, and hooks well into the rest of the Vonnegut world. In reading his other books, I can recall Eliot Rosewater being mentioned several times, though it’s hard to remember the exact details now. Kilgore Trout makes an appearance too, and how can one be mad at that?

Vonnegut is at his best when he’s slathered some acid over his typewriter hammers. Well done in Rosewater, where altruism and compassion are diagnosable conditions. Eliot Rosewater finds himself with a lot of disposable income, so he sets up shop and starts his own dole. He’ll answer the phone day or night. Maybe my favorite exchange is one he has on page 246 (Note: page numbers correspond to the Library of America box set version):

“I’d ask you to name the rock-bottom price you’d charge to go on living for just another week.”

There was a silence.

. . .

“What if I said I wouldn’t live through the next week for a million dollars?”

“I’d say, ‘Go ahead and die.’ Try a thousand.”

“A thousand.”

“Go ahead and die. Try a hundred.”

“A hundred.”

“Now you’re making sense. Come on over and talk.”

I think this and Player Piano would be good reads back to back. Vonnegut contemplates a world of machines where brainpower is devalued to the point of humans being useless, nothing but refuge. When he was writing Player Piano, these were but the most rudimentary factory machines, which would pale in comparison to the robots you’ll find in the Toyota or Ford factories now, let alone the talking things in our phones and computers that can write up whole programs in a few minutes.

If Player Piano was about the sort of world where brainpower is worth approximately zilch, Rosewater is more about the people themselves and what compassion might be worth. It’s a little heartbreaking that even at the time Vonnegut wrote the book, this could be believable: “Eliot’s Rosewater County operation had been cheaper than staying in a sanitarium.”

I enjoyed it a lot. I did feel like the ending wrapped itself up very quickly, so much so that it took me by surprise. I think I will probably re-read this in a few years and have more to say.

Notes

Note: Page numbers refer to my copy, which is in the Library of America ‘Kurt Vonnegut: The Complete Novels’ set; this is in book 2.

• p220 - They rebel at last. They pitch the tyrannous conscience down an oubliette, weld shut the manhole cover of that dark dungeon. They can hear the conscience no more. In the sweet silence, the mental processes look about for a new leader, and the leader most prompt to appear whenever the conscience is stilled, Enlightened Self-interest, does appear. Enlightened Self-interest gives the a flag, which they adore on sight. It is essentially the black and white Jolly Roger, with these words written beneath the skull and crossbones, “The hell with you, Jack, I’ve got mine!”
• p227 -

  Love seeketh only Self to please,
  To bind another to Its delight,
  Joys in another’s loss of ease,
  And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.
  

• p240 - “Yes. ‘If you would be unloved and forgotten, be reasonable.’”
• p246 - “I’d ask you to name the rock-bottom price you’d charge to go on living for just another week.” ¶ There was a silence. ¶ . . . ¶ “What if I said I wouldn’t live through the next week for a million dollars?” ¶ “I’d say, ‘Go ahead and die.’ Try a thousand.” ¶ “A thousand.” ¶ “Go ahead and die. Try a hundred.” ¶ “A hundred.” ¶ “Now you’re making sense. Come on over and talk.”
• p248 - A prescription that was far more common than money in the Domesday Book was “AW.” This represented Eliot’s recommendation to people who were down in the dumps for every reason and for no reason in particular: “Dear, I tell you what to do—take an aspirin tablet, and wash it down with a glass of wine.”
  • TB: Going to add this to my medication list next time I’m at the doctor’s.
• p257 - “It’s still possible for an American to make a fortune on his own.” ¶ “Sure—provided somebody tells him when he’s young enough that there is a Money River, that there’s nothing fair about it, that he had damn well better forget about hard work and the merit system and honesty and all that crap, and get to where the river is. ‘Go where the rich and the powerful are,’ I’d tell him, ‘and learn their ways. They can be flattered and they can be scared. Please them enormously or scare them enormously, and one moonless night they will put their fingers to their lips, warning you not to make a sound. And they will lead you through the dark to the widest, deepest river of wealth ever known to man. You’ll be shown your place on the riverbank, and handed a bucket all your own. Slurp as much as you want, but try to keep the racket of your slurping down. A poor man might hear.”
• p260 - “God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
• p281 - “. . .If I strike you as impudent and irreverent on the subject of would-be saints, it’s because I’ve been through this same silly argument with so many young people before. One of the principal activities of this firm is the prevention of saintliness on the part of our clients. You think you’re unusual. You’re not.”
• p282 - “Cling to your miracle, Mr. Buntline. Money is dehydrated Utopia. This is a dog’s life for almost everybody, as your professors have taken such pains to point out. But because of your miracle, life for you and yours can be paradise! Let me see you smile! Let me see that you already understand what they do not teach at Harvard until the junior year: That to be born rich and to stay rich is something less than a felony.”
• p297 - Fred thought of filling the bathtub with hot water, climbing in and slashing his wrists with a stainless steel razorblade. But then he saw that the little plastic garbage can in the corner was full, knew how hysterical Caroline became if she got up from a drunken sleep and found that no one had carried out the garbage. So he carried it to the garbage and dumped it, then washed out the can with the hose at the side of the house.”
• p300 - “These phony bastards you think are so wonderful, compared to us—compared to me—I’d like to see how many ancestors they could turn up that could compare with mine. I’ve always thought people were silly who bragged about their family trees—but, by God, if anybody wants to do any comparing, I’d be glad to show ‘em mine! Let’s quit apologizing!”
  • TB: This and page 301 give one of the biggest laughs in a Vonnegut book.
• p306-7 - The awful shout of the horn hurled the Senator against a wall, curled him up with his hands over his ears. . . . And wits throughout the county poised themselves to tell a tired and untruthful joke about Fire Chief Charley Warmergram, who had an insurance office next to the firehouse: “Must have scared Charley Warmergram half out of his secretary.”
• p327 - “Pretend to be good always, and even God will be fooled.”
• p332 - “Well—” and Trout rubbed his hands, watched the rubbing, “what you did in Rosewater County was far from insane. It was quite possibly the most important social experiment of our time, for it dealt on a very small scale with a problem whose queesy horrors will eventually be made world-wide by the sophistication of machines. The problem is this: How to love people who have no use? ¶ “In time, almost all men and women will become worthless as producers of goods, food, services, and more machines, as sources of practical ideas in the areas of economics, engineering, and probably medicine, too. So—if we can’t find reasons and methods for treasuring human beings because they are human beings, then we might as well, as has so often been suggested, rub them out.”
• p334 - “It seems to me,” said Trout, “that the main lesson Eliot learned is that people can use all the uncritical love they can get.”