Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut

I have been a fan of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. since I read Slaughterhouse Five when I was 12 years old. Most people said that a 12-year-old is too young to read and understand this book. Maybe it’s true and I have been badly warped by exposure at too young an age to the world of Vonnegut, but I must say I have enjoyed it immensely along the way.

Timequake is Vonnegut’s “last” novel, written in 1996 while his brother Bernard was dying of cancer. Vonnegut, now 83, has kept his promise and not published any more novels. Timequake could be the great writer’s swan-song and it serves the purpose well.

This book only very loosely fits into the category of alternate history, but Vonnegut’s writing has always defied genre. He is usually lumped in with science fiction writers, but what he writes about is the human heart and human memory.

Vonnegut says Timequake should really be called Timequake Two and he says that it is based on a long novel he had been writing for several years. This novel, if it ever existed, refused to be written and turned into a jumble of meaningless words and punctuation marks. In the new version of the book Vonnegut says he has filleted the story and given us the choicest pieces.

What we get is a rambling and sentimental elegy to Vonnegut’s family and the last part of the life of the great unpublished science fiction writer Kilgore Trout. Trout, who you may remember from Breakfast of Champions among others, is Vonnegut’s alter ego -- the writer as failure. In the 60s Trout had some stories and several novels published as parts of pornographic magazines. He also had a series of novels published with pornographic illustrations.

By the 1990s Trout is a derelict living in a homeless shelter “way the hell and gone” on the Eastside. He continues to write science fiction stories daily and he deposits them directly into a trash can on the corner near his shelter.

On February 13, 2001 a Timequake occurred that zapped the planet back in time to February 17, 1991. Now for a decade everyone is forced to relive their lives day by day. They can’t change anything, but they are very aware that they are reliving events. If horrible things happened to you in the 90s, then they would happen again just as before. All mistakes, all accidents, all crimes and triumphs happen again just as they did.

When the date reaches February 13, 2001 again, then suddenly free will comes back. Everyone is free to do or say whatever they want. The problem is that everyone is so used to sleepwalking through their lives that first it takes them a while to even realize that things are no longer the same. Second most people have no idea what to do with their free will and many people just don’t care.

If you are a Vonnegut fan you will enjoy this book. If you haven’t read his work yet, I suggest that you don’t start with this book. You could start with one of two novels that he wrote as a mature writer at the height of his power: Hocus Pocus or Bluebeard. Or you could go back to the classics of his youth: Slaughterhouse Five; Cat’s Cradle; Sirens of Titan; Mother Night. Definitely read Vonnegut.

In the end Vonnegut’s work could be boiled down to one sentence. It is the disclaimer for his last novel: All persons living and dead are purely coincidental.