Up next, it’s God Bless You Mr. Rosewater.
Let’s meet up Monday October 3 at the end of Chapter 6, where “Frustration made Norman Mushari sneeze.”
The Rabo Karabekian Memorial Deathmarch: Week 4
by bill | Sep 26, 2016 | The Rabo Karabekian Memorial Deathmarch | 7 comments
Since my only experience until now with Vonnegut’s writing was Cat’s Cradle, I’m not sure whether he is a polemicist or simply writes about something he finds interesting. Rosewater revolves around the significant problem of what happens with great wealth after the person who originally gathered it departs this world, such as Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller in past days, or those similarly situated folk in our day trying to anticipate future absence like Bill Gates. So far I can’t say whether Kurt is aiming to advocate an opinion on this, or just entertain.
So I’ll just focus on trivia, things he references that I personally remember from before Rosewater was written in 1965: People like Arthur Godfrey and Dwight Eisenhower; places like Swarthmore, PA & New Egypt, NJ; and things like the Henry J auto & Howard Johnson’s orange roof restaurants (as of about a month ago, only one remains in Lake George, NY).
After the almost haiku-like precision of “Cat’s Cradle,” “Rosewater” to me seems relatively crude. I found myself wondering if KV might have been going through a difficult patch during its writing, maybe even dusted off an old MS for lack of new material.
Wikipedia says: (Vonnegut scholar William) “Allen deemed God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater more ‘a cry from the heart than a novel under its author’s full intellectual control’ that reflected family and emotional stresses Vonnegut was going through at the time.”
No one, at least so far, comes off very well in this book, and it lacks the creative buoyancy that made “CC” entertaining despite the darkness. There are flashes, of course, of the great Vonnegut humor. But the overall tone here is a particularly grim version of the jaundiced Vonnegut worldview.
Maybe that will change. We’ll see.
I’m learning to expect that KV’s characters will be complex…flawed, but usually with at least a few redeeming or loveable qualities of some sort. Thus I’ve been surprised to find Norman Mushari portrayed as pure, unadulterated, unconscionable greed. Even as the more idealistic characters Eliot and Sylvia struggle to maintain and express their uncritical love of humanity, Norman is depicted as have a “luminous” fat ass, is assigned to work for a senile law partner because the “sweet old poop” is deemed to need additional “viciousness,” and is viewed even by his associates as a “weasel.” Vonnegut even seems to stoop to ethnic stereotyping to belittle Mushari; the Lebanese son of a rug merchant. “His eyes were moist and soft and brown, compelling him to see…..the world as though through a quart of olive oil.” Even today, “The Donald” couldn’t have expressed ethnic disdain for Mushari more clearly. Norman Mushari’s greed seems destined to wreak devastation on the Rosewater family. There will be no redemption.
Eliot’s father, Senator Lister Ames Rosewater, strikes me as a familiar character, another stereotype of a different kind. When he speaks to Eliot, I hear the Coen Brothers’ Big Lebowski, suited up, seated in his wheelchair behind his desk, hectoring the Dude, “Are you employed, Sir? Do you have a JOB?”
So far, my favorite vignette is Dr. Brown’s inventive diagnosis and treatment of Sylvia for samaritrophia, which includes his definition of “Enlightened Self-interest,” described as “The hell with you Jack, I’ve got mine.” This outlook, he says, is “as common among healthy Americans as noses……” Take that, all you Ayn Rand reading Objectivists.
Speaking of Rand, it seems fitting, in this context, to quote her. From the website of the Ayn Rand Institute, “When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are.” Could have been the words of Senator Rosewater.
Dr. Brown characterizes Sylvia, following the success of his initial treatment, as “heartless as Ilsa Koch.” Not recognizing the name, I looked her up. Turns out that she was the infamous “Bitch of Buchenwald,” accused of making decorative lampshades from tattooed human skin. This Koch reference struck me as somewhat obscure, until I read that Woodie Gutherie wrote a song about her, recorded by the Klezmatics. Who knew?
fallen behind while travelling, but I’ll call catch up. I did give up a cheer in my heart when Kilgore was first mentioned. Kilgore!
Unlike CC, Mr R doesn’t come off as dated to me. Could just as well be talking about today. Easy peasy read, too. Having fun!
I fell behind too, but will ketchup for next week! Sorry!
Still marching, but took a little nap at the side of the road. Guess I’m missing those short chapters, too. I do think he’s talking about us when Eliot says, “Just think of the wild ways money is passed around on Earth! I was born naked, just like you, but my God, friends and neighbors, I have thousands of dollars a day to spend!” Unlike many in that condition, he knows it’s luck and not necessarily his just reward.