Books Acquired:
Other People, Martin Amis
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs
Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
The Science of the Dogon, Laird Scranton
Earth Abides, George R. Stewart

Books Offloaded:
His Last Bow, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Black Count, Tom Reiss

Progress Made:
The Divine Madness of Philip K. Dick, Kyle Arnold
Radio Free Albemuth, Philip K. Dick
And So It Goes, Charles J. Shields
Messages from a Lost World, Stefan Zweig

Books Finished:
Success, Martin Amis
Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut

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 queasy 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, foods, 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.

—Kilgore Trout

I always try to get this thing written by the 5th of the month, not that anyone’s waiting with bated breath, but you need deadlines in life. This time, though, I accidentally left the backpack with my computer in it at home over the 4th of July weekend. I had been gearing up for a stemwinder Independence Day rant about the fucked-up state of this country today, which would have accomplished nothing but raising my blood pressure. So maybe it’s just as well. You don’t need me to tell you how bad it is: Internment camps and indentured servitude are back, and genocide and slavery may not be far behind.

Anyway.

I feel a little sheepish claiming Cat’s Cradle, as this was my sixth (?) time through it, and it is pure pleasure anyway. Mr. Rosewater, on the other hand, was a bit of a slog. I’ve read it several times too, and somehow keep thinking I’ll like it better next time. It’s funny, these are two consecutive books by the same author, both are deeply cynical satires, but one is a joy and the other a drag. I mean, Rosewater has its moments — it’s Vonnegut after all — but something has curdled in it; the bleak portrait of humanity feels genuine, the calls for compassion and happy ending seem forced.

This may be because Cat’s Cradle, though a work of genius, failed to make its author rich and famous. Desperate for money, he took a teaching job at Indiana University, where he was separated from his family and drank too much while cranking out Rosewater. (Critic William Allen says that it is more “a cry from the heart than a novel under its author’s full intellectual control.”) I learned this from Charles J. Shields’ biography, which I’m creeping up on halfway through. Next up is Slaughterhouse-Five, which will change the narrative.

I also started Kyle Arnold’s book about Philip K. Dick, which I may or may not finish. It might be More Information Than I Require about PKD, a troubled man who was particularly ill-behaved in his relationships with women. But I will continue with Radio Free Albemuth, which is sort of an alternate version of VALIS. In RFA the main character — who is also the writer — is again split in two; the mystical experiences are attributed to the alter ego, “Nicholas Brady,” while “Philip K. Dick” plays the straight man. Unlike in VALIS, where “Horselover Fat” appears and disappears, so far Brady has maintained his own identity as a character.

The Amis book was delightful, in its dark British sort of way, and I look forward to continuing my journey through the Amis family oeuvre — maybe with Other People, maybe with one of Kingsley’s books. I have found both to be reliable sources of relatively highbrow entertainment. Is there a third generation of Amises out there somewhere? I see that Martin had two sons and two daughters, but none of them are writers that I know of. Hard to believe that one of them didn’t pick up the mantle, but that is a research project for another time. Over and out for now.