Jailbird

 

I have read yet another Kurt Vonnegut book. I was going to read a different book, but I changed my mind. My updated ranking of all the Vonnegut books that I’ve read.

• Slaughter-house 5
• Breakfast of Champions
• Cat’s Cradle
• The Sirens of Titan
• Jailbird
• God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

I liked Jailbird more than God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. I liked the first-person memoir style of writing. Though I enjoyed Jailbird, I like when Vonnegut’s books have more sci-fi than realism. That’s why I think Sirens of Titan is better. This one also unfortunately had few Kilgore Trout stories. Though I prefer sci-fi, the historically based parts of this novel were great. I enjoyed Starbuck’s one encounter with Nixon, and the fact that Walter was ‘Watergate’s least known conspirator.

 

 

Ficciones

Finally I had gotten my hands on a book by Borges hidden at the bottom of a stack in an antiquarian bookstore. Ficciones is a collection of stories by Jorge Luis Borges, a writer from Argentina.

His works seem to be very highly praised and almost required, like Shakespeare or Austen, only less well known. I must say that I understand the importance and greatness of his writing in these stories. He writes about some very interesting concepts, often philosophical. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the following quote:

“All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare”

I don’t think that’s true, but who am I to say I’m not or that you aren’t.

Another great thing about Borges writing is that he views almost everything from a literary perspective. Many of his stories have books being reviewed (like in the story An  Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain) or a library (such as in The Library of Babel). One story that I particularly enjoyed was Pierre Menard, Author of  Don Quixote. The story centralized around Pierre Menard trying to recreate the exact circumstances leading to the creation of Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes. I like the story on its own, but it is made better by the fact that a section of this story appears in House of Leaves, where the question of how two exact copies of Don Quixote differ in quality. Another question I will be pondering for a while. But my favorite story has to be The Circular Ruins, if only for the ending.

[H]e understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him.

The endings of the stories were undeniably my favorite, as I found many of the stories to be somewhat confusing at the beginning, though near or at the end Borges finally brings the story to a brilliant culmination that makes one marvel.

 

The Sirens of Titan

After reading The Sirens of Titan here is my ranking of all of his novels I’ve read so far, starting with the best:

• Slaughter-house 5 — There are too many reasons this one is my favorite, read it yourself to find out.
• Breakfast of Champions — The pictures are hilarious, Trouts novel summary’s are so spectacular, and Vonnegut as a character is just great.
• Cat’s Cradle — Bokonism is so inventive.
• The Sirens of Titan — See below.
• God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater — It really isn’t fair for this one to be last, but one had to be and this one wasn’t really focused on Mr. Rosewater for many parts. It’s hard for me to recall what happened in the novel, as it didn’t really stick to it’s plot. The ending is great though, and Eliot Rosewater is one of my favorite Vonnegut characters.

I put Sirens of Titan fourth for a couple reasons. The characters were all interesting, but Winston Niles Rumfoord, who started out nice enough in the beginning, went absolutely crazy. The book took a wild turn, traveling to Mars where Winston was staging a full-on invasion of Earth, designed to fail and unite Earth with one religion in the process. This went into a very dark portrayal of the military, with each soldier being controlled by an antenna in their heads. One part I of this I enjoyed a lot was Vonnegut’s imitation of a snare drum:

“Rented a tent, a tent, a tent; Rented a tent, a tent, a tent. Rented a tent! Rented a tent! Rented a, rented a tent.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Malachi Constant, the main character also called Unk and Space Wanderer, started out incredibly rich and lucky at the beginning. Much of this novel seems to be about luck. Vonnegut, similarly to Cat’s Cradle, creates a new religion: The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. This religion, created by Rumfoord, is absolutely opposed to Constant, precisely because of his luck. Though I disagree with that God is indifferent, Vonnegut’s point throughout the novel is compelling and should be addressed. Vonnegut talks a lot on the topic of luck, and how some seem to have lots of good luck, while others have almost none.

John Rawls based much of his philosophy on righting this philosophical idea of luck called the Birth Lottery.

Some people end up worse off than others partly because of their bad luck.

-Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen

Vonnegut suggests that people are just favored by God and naturally lucky. The last line even says “…somebody up there likes you.” This idea of natural luck and favor bestowed by God is satirized throughout the novel.

One of my favorite part’s of this book was Salo, the Tralfamadorian. The Tralfamadorians are by far on of the most interesting aliens Vonnegut has created. In this book, the Tralfamadorians have been changing the course of human existence in order to get Salo to send a message across the universe. Also, it is said that the Tralfamadorians are machines, which relates to Dwayne Hoover’s belief that everyone else are machines in Breakfast of Champions. There is a great part in Sirens of Titan where Salo betrays his machine instincts (which are to follow orders) to show Mr. Rumfoord the message he is supposed to be sending, and the message is great.

Another thing I did notice in The Sirens of Titan, was the mention of the planet Betelgeuse, which is also mentioned in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Coincidence? I think not.

Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper, “Justice and Bad Luck”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/justice-bad-luck/&gt;.

Inherent Vice

“What’s up, Doc?” —Bugs Bunny

I haven’t read much Thomas Pynchon, only The Crying of Lot 49, but I actually enjoyed that more than Inherent Vice. Though I am aware of the threads throughout, the story was very fragmented.  Facts were presented in an order so as to keep the audience in mystery or paranoia, and while this state of ignorance helps keep things mysterious of course, it makes for a very convoluted plot, especially when combined with Pynchon’s style. That being said, Inherent Vice was very good, and Pynchon’s writing, though difficult sometimes, has spectacular moments. The psychedelic bananas being one of them. The parallels throughout the novel are also magnificent, even if they aren’t all resolved, and they make one start wonder what the mysterious Golden Fang is. The characters in Pynchon’s seedy L.A underbelly all are interesting and realistic (for the ’60s).

The main character, Doc Sportello, is a classic Private Investigator figure combined with a your typical hippie figure. Though the book begins with Shasta (Doc’s ex) coming to Doc with a scheme to kidnap land developer, Mickey Wolfmann, the book doesn’t really focus to much on this point. Instead, Doc’s investigations lead all to numerous other leads that all seem linked in a way, adding to Doc’s perpetual paranoia. The books ending brilliantly concludes the end of the ’60s era, with Doc driving in a foggy haze,

“Then again, he might run out of gas before that happened, and have to leave the caravan, and pull over on the shoulder, and wait. For whatever would happen. … For the fog to burn away, and for something else this time, somehow, to be there instead” Thomas Pynchon (369).

Doc may just run out before the psychedelic sixties are over, and he’ll have to wait for the “groovy” ’60s burning away, to be replaced with something else.

On another note, I watched the film adaptation after reading the novel, which is just as good, if not better. I think I liked the movie better, only because I understood more of what was going on, which only happened because I read the book first.

That being said, the film followed the book almost exactly, quoting dialogue straight from the text many times, which I really liked. Paul Thomas Anderson did a wonderful job adapting Pynchon’s dialogue, which seemed to fit perfectly. The film isn’t a comedy, even though there are some pretty funny moments in the film. I’d definitely recommend watching the movie, but only after reading the book (of course). 

 A New York Times article on the Inherent Vice film.

About Literature Inc.

This blog, established in January of 2018, is for the discussion of books and literature in general. I will be writing about whatever book I am currently reading, or sometimes I may write about my favorite books that I’ve already read. The books I will read won’t be limited to a certain country, time period, or genre; but rather, they will simply be whatever I feel like reading next. I may not always be posting regularly, but I will certainly post about the book I’m reading at least once, if not more.

“I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.” David Foster Wallace