Player Piano

Player Piano is not Kurt Vonnegut's best novel, but it's his first, so it has to be at least a little important. I actually went in expecting it to be terrible, and while it is probably my least favorite of his books I still didn't 'hate' Player Piano as I expected to. For those who don't know, Vonnegut is known for a writing style that is fun and humorous, qualities which are not present at all in Player Piano, which Vonnegut admits is really just a rip-off of Brave New World. It reads like a pretty generic dystopian novel and doesn't give any hints as to the type of writer Kurt Vonnegut would become. Basically at some point in the future more and more jobs have been automated to the point where people who would normally make their money doing menial labor have no options, and engineers are wildly successful. Actually, I think I know many engineers for whom this would be a dream come true. Still though, while some might short-sightedly think that a society that bases itself on intelligence unilaterally resulting in success (few things are more frustrating than seeing stupid people with tons of money), Vonnegut sees danger in that direction. I've said in previous posts that it's tough to separate Vonnegut the author from his protagonists, and this might be the closest the two come. Dr. Paul Proteus is head engineer at his namless global company's Ilium, New York branch; as I read in And So it Goes, this is really just a stand-in for Kurt's time working at General Electric. He seems to have some understanding that his company's constant innovations in technology are actually putting lots of people out of jobs, and slowly but surely he starts to turn against the industry that's made him such a success, and joins in an anti-technology revolution. The thing is, aside from some quick points about possible impending class warfare, the book doesn't do much to villainize the idea of technology- the books end with people smashing phones and machines and speakers and all different forms of technology, but it was tough for me to empathize- surely there's another solution to make everyone happy and create jobs without starting over back at square one? I admit the further I got the book grew on me slightly, maybe because I wasn't giving it much of a chance in the first place, but overall it's just not a particularly interesting read and should only be attempted under the circumstances I'm in right now- when you've forced yourself to read every book Kurt Vonnegut has written.