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Title: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: Or, Pearls Before Swine
ISBN: 0385283350
Author:
Kurt Vonnegut
Publicate Date: 1971-07
Publish: 1971-07
List Price: $8.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest Used Price: $32.50
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| Customer Review: |
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1: God Bless You Mr. Vonnegut
God Bless you Mr. Vonnegut because only you could still be this good in what remains one of your lessor books.
Ostensibly the story of 87 million dollar plus inheritance, this book tells the tale of a man and a family beset by the duties of wealth.
On the one side we have Elliot Rosewater, the young heir who disdains personal use of the money to devote in service of others. Instead of a hair shirt, Elliot drinks constantly, wears dirty clothes and sleeps in the makeshift office of his own Rosewater foundation from which he disperses periodic grants of money to the needy.
On the other side, we have Senator Rosewater, Elliot's father, who's fosuced more about on what the money can do for him. Senate, a place in society, a concern for producing priviledged and dominant decendents so he can better the value of the Rosewater name.
We feely oddly uncomfortable to the extent we empathize with the Senator and chagrin at the son.
And in the end we wonder at Elliot's actions. How do or don't they ultimately service his father's ends?
Regardless of these issues, Vonnegut is always good reading but for first time Vonnegut readers I would probably suggest Slaughterhouse Five and Cat's Cradle in that order. Read him when he was being really really deep instead of just deep.
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2: "Goddamnit you've got to be kind!"
Demonstrates a good knowledge of American history--impressive really.
Humor: excellent. very funny.
Eliot Rosewater: kind of a pathetic ideal. makes you suspicious of KV-whether this is what he actually thought of life, that it would be alright if only one had no less than 10L's of Kentucky Whiskey on hand, and a massive fortune to philanthrophize with.
Still one of my all time favorites.
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3: A nice read
Kurt Vonnegut's book, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is about money, power, and greed. The main character, Elliot Rosewater has abandoned his amazing lifestyle in New York to try an experiment of the human soul. He is a drunk, fat, dirty, and rich. He has a lot to give to the world and spends his time doing nice things for people, yet these people are so pitiable, they don't deserve it. Not everyone is happy with Eliot's work. Lawyers try to find him insane and unable to use the family fortune. The books switches between the lives of people Eliot helps, the depressing lives of some of them, the lawyers attempt to find Eliot insane and some Rosewater family history. Vonnegut makes you question Eliot's insanity or his overly niceness to the very end. It also questions the class system in America. The book has its funny moments. Overall it was an alright book and I recommend it if you want a quick, humorous read.
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4: It's hard to critique Vonnegut
Vonnegut is one of those genius writers that you can't help but love. "Slaughterhouse 5" was my first venture into the realm of Vonnegut, but I have to say that I think I enjoyed this tale much more. Perhaps because the topic is closer to my heart, or perhaps I was able to identify more closely with the characters, I found this novel to be both thought provoking and utterly hysterical.
The short synopsis - The heir to a ridiculously large family fortune would rather spend his days helping the poor and destitute than attending the large social gatherings which his family feels he should prefer. Naturally this means that he is insane right? His family and one rather unscrupulous attorney seem to think so. They begin their plans on having him declared mentally incompetent, but he may have a trick or two up his sleeve.
I often find that I have to be in the right mood to read through a Vonnegut book, for some reason this one gripped me and I was done with it in less than 2 hours. The characters were hysterical, slightly caricaturistic and over the top, but entirely identifiable and comparable to someone we all know. This entire tale is a treatise on capitalism, money, redistribution of wealth, and the question of selflessness vs insanity. If you like Vonnegut, then this is already on your list. If you haven't encountered Vonnegut, give this book a try for an amusing look at true satire.
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5: Another take on "How to be good"
There are similarities between the theme of this book and Nick Hornby's How to Be Good. It's hard to tell if they come to different or similar conclusions. Hornby suggests that one person or even one family is not able to fix what needs fixing in the world singlehandedly and shouldn't try; one should instead try to keep oneself functional and have much more modest ambitions as regards altruism. In this book, Vonnegut uses satire and exaggeration to point out the "craziness" and yet the necessity of loving others unconditionally, even when there seems to be little to love about them, or when there are some very good reasons for withholding love, e.g. alcohol addiction or a criminal record. Both deal with the basic question of what attitude we should have toward people in need whose acquaintance doesn't seem to promise us any personal advantage.
I originally chose this book because of a New York Times article - it was about deodorant use, and it cited this book as describing a country where odors, thought to be society's biggest problem, were finally eliminated by eliminating people's noses. I found it an interesting premise and kept reading and reading to find it, but it didn't turn up until almost the end of the book, as a half-page summary of one of the science fiction books the protagonist had read. Ah well, at least I found it, and I ended up reading a book I probably wouldn't have picked up or even known about otherwise.
I give this book four stars first because it felt quite disconnected, jumping from one incident and set of thoughts of a certain character to another. There are paragraphs with profound insights that I enjoyed and agreed with, e.g. about the value and drawbacks of imperfect human life vs. boring ethereal perfection (disguised as a novel the protagonist was writing), or the part about language teaching on planets that had previously used only mental telepathy (from a book by a science fiction writer the protagonist likes), but these bits seemed to be thrown in simply because the author found them worthwhile and had no other handy place to put them. Maybe they were seeds of ideas that Vonnegut didn't have the time, motivation or adequate material to develop into whole books.
Second, for a long time I was wondering where the story would go, and why what I was reading at any given moment was worth getting through. I suppose in the end it did all contribute to the final point Vonnegut wanted to make, but you have to wade through quite a bit of frivolousness to get there. The book is short, but the silliness prevented me from sticking with it too long in one sitting - I mostly had to take it one or two chapters at a time then put it down for a while.
I think _Rosewater_ was worthwhile, though, and if you're a Vonnegut fan, and/or enjoy philosophical farce, you might like it too.
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