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Vonnegut's Timequake

© Robert Powers

By Robert Powers

Despite advancing years, there's little evidence that Kurt Vonnegut is ready for the retirement home. On Nov. 11, he turns 75 years old. His first novel, "Cat's Cradle," was published 45 years ago. Since then his production includes many more novels, several plays, collections of short stories, and non-fiction.

His new novel, "Timequake" (Putnam, $23.95) is typical Vonnegut: an uneasy melding of fact and fiction, spiced with hilarious asides, occasionally obscene jokes, bouts of extreme pessimism and an overall oddball outlook. The formula includes generous amounts of charm and Vonnegut's patented manner of composing prose as if he was churning out a long, newsy letter to an old friend.

"Timequake" seems even more scattered than one has come to expect of this delightful but exasperating author (he's probably delighted to keep his fans perplexed). Sentence structure seems on occasion equal to a precocious eighth-grader's term paper, while at other times appears eerily intellectual. Reading Vonnegut places one in the role of an elementary school's English teacher, armed with a red ink pen and often scribbling question marks on Vonnegut's more tortured exposition.

The plot this time — as has often been true, there's not much of a story — deals with a "timequake," which Vonnegut defines in the prologue as a "sudden glitch in the space-time continuum, (making) everybody and everything do exactly what they'd done during a past decade, for good or ill, a second time. It was deja vu that wouldn't quit for ten long years. You couldn't complain about life's being nothing but old stuff, or ask if you were going nuts, or if everybody was going nuts."

But in this vintage Vonnegut performance, plot often takes a pause while Vonnegut reminisces about friends from his real past, makes observations on life, comments on the problems of being a writer and recalls episodes about his old fictitious pal, Kilgore Trout. There's just enough of Vonnegut's actual autobiography injected to make the novel a continuous question mark of what's real and what's made up.

Despite the author's irritating habits, one can't help but smile as the crafty writer takes his readers on a rollercoaster ride with numerous breathtaking moments.

There's only one Kurt Vonnegut. Perhaps that's enough. In any event, "Timequake" is another wry combination of funny and serious meanderings. Old fans of this Indianapolis native will want to read it. Those unfamiliar with Vonnegut's oeuvre probably will rush to the book store of their favorite library to search out his earlier classics, including "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Mother Night," and "Slapstick."

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