“A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees.”
This is another reread for me, and one that grew in my estimation quite a bit I think. I might be unable to read all mass market paperbacks anymore as my age, my eyesight, and patience (and attention span) wanes, so my first read through was cursed I think. It makes me realize I need to give the Sirens of Titan a go through again soon enough. I already have planned a reread of Player Piano soon, but that book I first read in 1999.
Here, we have a book that functions like a lot of the Vonnegut of 1960s, where the novels play off each other a lot. I know that happens throughout his career, but the appearance of Diana Moon Glampers, “2 B R 0 2 B”, Venus on the Half-Shell, “poo-tee-weet”, “Tralfamador” and other pieces ties things together here.
The novel involves a lawyer, who as we find in the opening narration, deems it his job to get in between sums of money changing hands and finding a way to take a cut, looking into Eliot Rosewater, a senator’s son from a very rich family, and his purported sanity or insanity. Eliot Rosewater returned from WWII, having committed an accidental atrocity that clearly traumatized him, and decided not to be involved in the growing finances of his family, but instead to use the money, the privilege, and the position to help others. This obviously horrifies his father, lawyers, and anyone else who does not want the rich to give up the illusion that wealth is earned. So the novel follows this attempt, while also telling about Eliot Rosewater’s life of works and the people around him benefiting from them, or attempts to stop them.