Vonnegut In Retrospect: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)

After a string of three great books (The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night and Cat's Cradle), Vonnegut faltered a bit with God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. It has fantastic moments, but does not come together as a particularly effective whole. The story meanders through settings and characters which are rarely developed to satisfaction. The main character, Eliot Rosewater, is an exception, and the book is at its best when it stays with him. Rosewater is the inheritor of a vast fortune, and becomes an eccentric benefactor to the poor and decrepit of a county in Indiana. Vonnegut's alter-ego, science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout, makes his first appearance. Vonnegut attempts to address socialism vs. free enterprise and unconditional love, but the story doesn't hold together enough for the message to be especially powerful.

Like I say though, there are moments of brilliance mixed into the hodge podge story, such as this quintessentially Vonnegut passage:

Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—:

"God damn it, you've got to be kind."

6.9/10