The Sirens of Titan

So, I finished Player Piano about an hour or two into my flight home from Ireland earlier today. It had taken me several sittings to get through, partially due to apathy, and as I've just said in my post about that initial Vonnegut effort, I simply wasn't impressed. But then I read his second book from cover to cover - all 320 pages, mind you - without so much as getting up to go to the bathroom or stretch my legs. And I really, really enjoyed it. It seems to me like Vonnegut is at his best when he takes a "big picture" approach to his writing, abandoning the confines of chronological storytelling, and tells the reader well in advance that certain things will end up happening. Perhaps he's much better at tying loose ends together than he is at creating tension. Whatever; all writers have their strengths and weaknesses. There were heavy shades of Slaughterhouse-Five in this tale of fate, free will, interplanetary travel, and the purpose and meaning of human life. The back cover blurb summarizes the book, more or less, as follows: "The world's wealthiest man is offered a once in a lifetime opportunity to travel the planets with a beautiful woman." That only barely describes part of what goes down, and yet it's about as fitting and generic a description as I could have come up with myself. This was one of Vonnegut's earliest works (his second novel) and it was interesting for me to note some things going on in this piece of fiction that he would end up incorporating into later stories, such as nationwide handicapping ("Harrison Bergeron") and the planet of Tralfamadore (Slaughterhouse-Five). The sum total was a masterfully crafted and always enticing tale about the human condition. Imaginative characters, lightheartedly depressing themes - quintessential Vonnegut, through and through. Even though it wasn't an entirely perfect novel, I enjoyed it immensely. Consider it highly recommended.