Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
published 1952 - read 2005

Vonnegut's first novel is a very different thing to digest in light of his later work. He hasn't yet found his signature style here, although there are definitely Vonnegutian elements and a couple of wacky characters that would have fit just fine into Cat's Cradle or whatever. But the prose is strictly conventional, and the story belongs to the broad "modernist dystopia" swath of Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Freezing Down, etc. It's the near future (from the perspective of 1952), and mechanized labor has rendered most of the American population essentially irrelevant. Although they are well-looked-after in terms of material goods, many (especially those old enough to have enjoyed real work) are crippled by a sense of uselessness and so on. The main character is one of the "managers and engineers" who actually run things; he's also starting to feel a sense of alienation from his society. Unsurprisingly, over the course of the book this alienation grows and he becomes entranced by the inevitably doomed prospect of rebellion. Throw in the obnoxious, prattling nag of a wife from Fahrenheit 451 and you've pretty much got it down.

In other words, this plot does not leap and sparkle, and as my good buddy Kerry pointed out yesterday, it's balanced rather strangely in that the first two-thirds of the book are setup, waiting for the protagonist to do something. When he finally does, things happen so quickly it doesn't quite work. The characterization is also a little jumpy - we get an Oedipal motivation out of nowhere in the course of a courtroom confrontation, without its ever having been foreshadowed previously. Not that it matters much to the character or the plot anyway.

But I enjoyed the book. The general mix of Luddism and Marxism works, and, sluggish though it was, I did become interested in the story of Paul Proteus. The best parts, though, are the most Vonnegutian - the isolated interludes focusing on minor characters or completely parallel plotlines. This is the first book I've seen, for example, to focus on the role of a university football coach in the bleak, mechanized, anomie-stricken future. The visiting Shah from a remote land may serve a sort of predictable "cluckingly skeptical old wise man" role, but his quirks balance that out and his scenes are always funny. The material's all here; Vonnegut just doesn't quite have his tools sharpened at this point.

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