My favorite work of Vonnegut’s is his last novel, Timequake, a book I was lucky enough to come across in the Sci-fi section of the ninth and Geary library [San Francisco, CA]. I had never even heard of the novel before.
Vonnegut spent nearly ten years writing Timequake & its only fitting that it has taken me months to write its review. It is unique, even among his other work, because it isn’t entirely a novel. Through Vonnegut’s stream-of-consciousness, the story follows key characters, including his alter ego Kilgore Trout, as they cope with a Universe that has forced them to repeat the last ten years of their lives.
The Universe, saddened by the decline of, well, everything, decides to go back through time to its much happier beginning. A short distance into its travels the Universe realizes that starting over will not change the outcome; that things are as they always will be, something Vonnegut has told us before. Picking back up in the year, 1991, the story’s inhabitants are forced to relive their lives exactly as they had the first time. The sad joke is that they know what they will do but cannot change it. If you chose the wrong spouse, drove drunk & killed someone, fell asleep with the candle lit and burnt your house down — all of it happening just as it had before, but this time with humanity on autopilot.
In the ten year re-run Kilgore Trout must re-write all the unsuccessful books he has already written. In this way we are introduced to a full collection of works started by Vonnegut himself but never finished. The book is sort of Vonnegut’s last hurrah—Kilgore is even the hero in the end. The book comes to collision as the year 2001 & the exact moment the Universe began moving backwards arrives. Free will returns but people have forgotten how it works. Planes fall from the sky, cars crash into buildings, people forget how to walk & fall to the ground. All but Kilgore Trout, who resuscitates them all with the simple phrase, “You were sick, but now you’re better & there’s work to do.”
It’s hard to review a book by Vonnegut without giving so much of the story itself, because so much of what Vonnegut writes is a direct expression of his own psyche. In the book he tells that this is not his first attempt at the novel, that Timequake One was a failure & what we are reading is Timequake Two. Though not much better, he criticizes, but more of what he was trying to accomplish. In the ten years it took Vonnegut to write & rewrite the novel it evolved into his own critique of all the things the world has lost or given up in the struggle for progress; all things he has been saddened to lose.
In my opinion, Slaughterhouse Five’s status as the “go to” Vonnegut is undeserved. I don’t argue that it isn’t a well written & well developed work of literature, it is spectacularly Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse Five joined the list of books taught to high school students because it was thought to be the most relatable for the average American; & perhaps, at the time it was. But so the war becomes what is focused on & the fantastical elements justified as analogies for pain & suffering, & ignored otherwise. But for me, the unnatural movement through space & time is what Vonnegut does so well. His ability to cover topics both rooted and other-worldly is what makes him an amazing writer, & one not chained to any specific genre. It is what makes each of his books contribution to the literary world
Antona Stanley
