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Player Piano
Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul’s rebellion is vintage Vonnegut—wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
Alternate cover edition here
Alternate cover edition here
341 pages, Paperback
First published August 18, 1952
About the author
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
540 books33.7k followersKurt Vonnegut, Junior was an American novelist, satirist, and most recently, graphic artist. He was recognized as New York State Author for 2001-2003.
He was born in Indianapolis, later the setting for many of his novels. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1943, where he wrote a column for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun. Vonnegut trained as a chemist and worked as a journalist before joining the U.S. Army and serving in World War II.
After the war, he attended University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology and also worked as a police reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago. He left Chicago to work in Schenectady, New York in public relations for General Electric. He attributed his unadorned writing style to his reporting work.
His experiences as an advance scout in the Battle of the Bulge, and in particular his witnessing of the bombing of Dresden, Germany whilst a prisoner of war, would inform much of his work. This event would also form the core of his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five, the book which would make him a millionaire. This acerbic 200-page book is what most people mean when they describe a work as "Vonnegutian" in scope.
Vonnegut was a self-proclaimed humanist and socialist (influenced by the style of Indiana's own Eugene V. Debs) and a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The novelist is known for works blending satire, black comedy and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat's Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973)
He was born in Indianapolis, later the setting for many of his novels. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1943, where he wrote a column for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun. Vonnegut trained as a chemist and worked as a journalist before joining the U.S. Army and serving in World War II.
After the war, he attended University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology and also worked as a police reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago. He left Chicago to work in Schenectady, New York in public relations for General Electric. He attributed his unadorned writing style to his reporting work.
His experiences as an advance scout in the Battle of the Bulge, and in particular his witnessing of the bombing of Dresden, Germany whilst a prisoner of war, would inform much of his work. This event would also form the core of his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five, the book which would make him a millionaire. This acerbic 200-page book is what most people mean when they describe a work as "Vonnegutian" in scope.
Vonnegut was a self-proclaimed humanist and socialist (influenced by the style of Indiana's own Eugene V. Debs) and a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The novelist is known for works blending satire, black comedy and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat's Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973)
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December 23, 2020
Man created machines in his own image...
And man and machine alike were told to worship one deity: the CORPORATE PERSONALITY!
The 10 Commandments according to the Church Of Corporate Thinking:
1. Thou shalt believe in one corporation
2. Thou shalt have no other corporations beside the one you serve
3. Thou shalt honour all traditions and communal behaviours of your corporation
4. Thou shalt accept whatever the corporation tells you as truth
5. Thou shalt have no other truths except for corporate truth
6. Thou shalt lie, steal and kill to protect your corporation against enemies
7. Thou shalt not think outside the profitability and efficiency box
8. Thou shalt not covet any social change but the one that is good for the corporation
9. Thou shalt believe in the infallibility of the machines
10. Thou shalt not demand meaning in life, but entertainment and convenience
This is Vonnegut’s first novel, and the fifth I am reading. I have seen many reviews reflecting that his dark sarcasm is not fully developed yet, and that this is one of his weaker works linguistically as well. That may be. But it broke my heart. I am stunned, speechless, overwhelmed.
It felt similar to reading Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out after finishing her later novels. It is all there in the making, even though the narrative style still remains more “conventional” than in later experimental stages. Just like her first novel was full of the anxiety of a world on a disastrous voyage towards the Great War, Vonnegut’s first novel shows the horrible making of the post-modern human being - more robotic than the computers that are about to be invented. It is an act of rationalization that does not end until human life itself has become redundant in the world of technological perfection. Vonnegut, however, does not criticize technology or the development of science per se. His aim is to show the robotic majority of humankind's need to form exclusive groups with certain patterns, protected against the outside world through specific procedures of selection. To keep unity within the group, external enemies and propaganda are utilized effectively.
Vonnegut’s narrative mirrors Camus’ reflections on societies and rebellions in L'homme révolté, a pendulum movement between different corporations, eternally building new oppressive systems to support ideas that are taken for absolute truth, and weighed against other ideas, considered evil and thus to be destroyed with moral impunity.
As a hilarious contrast foil, and tribute to Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes, where a Persian explains the function of the pope from the perspective of an outsider (“C'est une vielle idole qu'on encense par habitude”), the story is accompanied by sequences describing the travelling Sha of Bratpuhr, who carefully studies different aspects of society and insists on calling the robot-like Americans “Takaru”, meaning “slaves”. The annoyed interpreter deliberately mis-translates the Shah’s recurring exclamation “Takaru, Takaru” into “citizens”, thus showing the true colours of citizenship in a state of prescribed behaviour and commitment.
The overarching topic of the uselessness of modern human beings, as explored on a deeper level in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, receives no definite solution, as the pendulum between power and rebellion keeps moving.
I felt a shiver down my spine reading about corporate team-building: a camp for brainwashing highly intelligent people. It reminded me of some education conferences, where pedagogues are given formulas for teaching “critical thinking skills”, along with lesson plans, standardized assessments and documentation for the all-important accreditation processes of popular curriculum brands.
Bilious competitiveness within the organisation is lauded, as long as it follows prescribed rules, while search for personal freedom and creativity is punished, severely. Surveillance of every single step in a human’s life is taken for granted, and technology is embraced as the perfect spy on your private life and thoughts. Living in one of the most automatized countries in the world, I smiled at the primitive control functions in Vonnegut’s dystopian visions for the future. But it was a frozen smile, and it hurt.
Helpless, powerless, quixotic, main character Proteus goes from one collective organisation to the next: socialized to be one in a group, he has few weapons, and the message seems to be that as an individual, you are prey, alone, hiding in a world of brutal predators who justify their evil with the commandments of their corporation. Part of the organisation, they have no personal responsibility, and hence feel no guilt.
Nomen est omen.
Proteus’ name is indicating versatility, adaptability and flexibility, and he struggles to live up to the rigidity and immutability that is required in order to survive in a competitive group with a shared visionary dogma. His opponent, Shepherd, embraces the dogma and is thus perfectly suited to care for sheep.
When Eve ate the apple, she was the first one to break the rules of the corporation of the Garden Eden. She was expelled for it, and that is how the story goes, ever since: think for yourself, make your own decisions, speak up against illogical or inhumane rules and actions, and you are OUT!
And human! Not a takaru or citizen!
Congratulations!
Let’s fight the windmills of the corporate personality, for some magic to stay in the world.
For as long as we are here, our stories will go on, as Vonnegut brilliantly states in his closing lines:
“This isn’t the end, you know”, he said. “Nothing ever is, nothing ever will be - not even Judgment Day.”
And man and machine alike were told to worship one deity: the CORPORATE PERSONALITY!
The 10 Commandments according to the Church Of Corporate Thinking:
1. Thou shalt believe in one corporation
2. Thou shalt have no other corporations beside the one you serve
3. Thou shalt honour all traditions and communal behaviours of your corporation
4. Thou shalt accept whatever the corporation tells you as truth
5. Thou shalt have no other truths except for corporate truth
6. Thou shalt lie, steal and kill to protect your corporation against enemies
7. Thou shalt not think outside the profitability and efficiency box
8. Thou shalt not covet any social change but the one that is good for the corporation
9. Thou shalt believe in the infallibility of the machines
10. Thou shalt not demand meaning in life, but entertainment and convenience
This is Vonnegut’s first novel, and the fifth I am reading. I have seen many reviews reflecting that his dark sarcasm is not fully developed yet, and that this is one of his weaker works linguistically as well. That may be. But it broke my heart. I am stunned, speechless, overwhelmed.
It felt similar to reading Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out after finishing her later novels. It is all there in the making, even though the narrative style still remains more “conventional” than in later experimental stages. Just like her first novel was full of the anxiety of a world on a disastrous voyage towards the Great War, Vonnegut’s first novel shows the horrible making of the post-modern human being - more robotic than the computers that are about to be invented. It is an act of rationalization that does not end until human life itself has become redundant in the world of technological perfection. Vonnegut, however, does not criticize technology or the development of science per se. His aim is to show the robotic majority of humankind's need to form exclusive groups with certain patterns, protected against the outside world through specific procedures of selection. To keep unity within the group, external enemies and propaganda are utilized effectively.
Vonnegut’s narrative mirrors Camus’ reflections on societies and rebellions in L'homme révolté, a pendulum movement between different corporations, eternally building new oppressive systems to support ideas that are taken for absolute truth, and weighed against other ideas, considered evil and thus to be destroyed with moral impunity.
As a hilarious contrast foil, and tribute to Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes, where a Persian explains the function of the pope from the perspective of an outsider (“C'est une vielle idole qu'on encense par habitude”), the story is accompanied by sequences describing the travelling Sha of Bratpuhr, who carefully studies different aspects of society and insists on calling the robot-like Americans “Takaru”, meaning “slaves”. The annoyed interpreter deliberately mis-translates the Shah’s recurring exclamation “Takaru, Takaru” into “citizens”, thus showing the true colours of citizenship in a state of prescribed behaviour and commitment.
The overarching topic of the uselessness of modern human beings, as explored on a deeper level in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, receives no definite solution, as the pendulum between power and rebellion keeps moving.
I felt a shiver down my spine reading about corporate team-building: a camp for brainwashing highly intelligent people. It reminded me of some education conferences, where pedagogues are given formulas for teaching “critical thinking skills”, along with lesson plans, standardized assessments and documentation for the all-important accreditation processes of popular curriculum brands.
Bilious competitiveness within the organisation is lauded, as long as it follows prescribed rules, while search for personal freedom and creativity is punished, severely. Surveillance of every single step in a human’s life is taken for granted, and technology is embraced as the perfect spy on your private life and thoughts. Living in one of the most automatized countries in the world, I smiled at the primitive control functions in Vonnegut’s dystopian visions for the future. But it was a frozen smile, and it hurt.
Helpless, powerless, quixotic, main character Proteus goes from one collective organisation to the next: socialized to be one in a group, he has few weapons, and the message seems to be that as an individual, you are prey, alone, hiding in a world of brutal predators who justify their evil with the commandments of their corporation. Part of the organisation, they have no personal responsibility, and hence feel no guilt.
Nomen est omen.
Proteus’ name is indicating versatility, adaptability and flexibility, and he struggles to live up to the rigidity and immutability that is required in order to survive in a competitive group with a shared visionary dogma. His opponent, Shepherd, embraces the dogma and is thus perfectly suited to care for sheep.
When Eve ate the apple, she was the first one to break the rules of the corporation of the Garden Eden. She was expelled for it, and that is how the story goes, ever since: think for yourself, make your own decisions, speak up against illogical or inhumane rules and actions, and you are OUT!
And human! Not a takaru or citizen!
Congratulations!
Let’s fight the windmills of the corporate personality, for some magic to stay in the world.
For as long as we are here, our stories will go on, as Vonnegut brilliantly states in his closing lines:
“This isn’t the end, you know”, he said. “Nothing ever is, nothing ever will be - not even Judgment Day.”
February 24, 2017
I just remembered that I did not review Player Piano. I did not have the time to do it when I finished the novel one month ago and then I forgot.
I am not going to write a full review because I lost the momentum, but I have a few comments.
First of all, If you never read Kurt Vonnegut I would not start with this one. It is very good but I believe it would be better savored by readers that already enjoyed other works by the author. This is his first novel and his fragmented writing style and satire is not fully developed. The humor is more subtle and some of the plot is a bit dated. I started with Slaughterhouse 5 and continued with Th Cat's Cradle. That order was fine for me.
Player Piano imagines a world where most jobs became obsolete due to the extensive use of machines to replace the use of less productive humans. There are many important issues discussed here but the ones that seemed most in tone with the current world were about the corporate personality and about the pitfalls of standardizing the evaluation of people in schools/jobs or as human beings.
Kurt Vonnegut is gradually becoming one of my favorite writers. He was a genius.
I am not going to write a full review because I lost the momentum, but I have a few comments.
First of all, If you never read Kurt Vonnegut I would not start with this one. It is very good but I believe it would be better savored by readers that already enjoyed other works by the author. This is his first novel and his fragmented writing style and satire is not fully developed. The humor is more subtle and some of the plot is a bit dated. I started with Slaughterhouse 5 and continued with Th Cat's Cradle. That order was fine for me.
Player Piano imagines a world where most jobs became obsolete due to the extensive use of machines to replace the use of less productive humans. There are many important issues discussed here but the ones that seemed most in tone with the current world were about the corporate personality and about the pitfalls of standardizing the evaluation of people in schools/jobs or as human beings.
Kurt Vonnegut is gradually becoming one of my favorite writers. He was a genius.
January 31, 2022
Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut
Player Piano is the first novel of American writer Kurt Vonnegut, published in 1952. Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul’s rebellion is vintage Vonnegut—wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
It depicts a dystopia of automation, describing the negative impact it can have on quality of life. The story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the need for human laborers. The widespread mechanization creates conflict between the wealthy upper class, the engineers and managers, who keep society running, and the lower class, whose skills and purpose in society have been replaced by machines.
The book uses irony and sentimentality, which were to become hallmarks developed further in Vonnegut's later works. Player Piano is set in the near future, after a third world war. While most Americans were fighting overseas, the nation's managers and engineers faced a depleted workforce and responded by developing ingenious automated systems that allowed the factories to operate with only a few workers.
The novel begins ten years after the war, when most factory workers have been replaced by machines. The bifurcation of the population is represented by the division of Ilium, New York into "The Homestead," where every person not a manager or an engineer lives, and the other side of the river, where all the engineers and the managers live. ...
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز دوازدهم ماه می سال2014میلادی
عنوان: پیانوی خودنواز؛ کورت ونه گات؛ مترجم زهرا طراوتی؛ زیرنظر: علی شیعه علی؛ تهران: سبزان، سال1391؛ در431ص؛ شابک9786001170539؛ چاپ دوم سال1395؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م
داستان «پیانوی خودنواز»، در ژانر کتابهای علمی-تخیلی (ساینس فیکشن) میگنجد، و نیز ساختاری «پست مدرن» دارد؛ این کتاب نوشتاری از «کورت ونه گات» است، که برای نخستین بار در سال هزار و نهصد و پنجاد و دو میلادی منتشر شد؛ داستان در جامعه ای در آینده ی نزدیک رخ میدهد، که بیشتر کارها را ماشینها انجام میدهد، و نیاز به انسانهای کارگر از بین رفته است؛ سلطه ی گسترده ی ماشی��ها باعث شده، تا کشمکشهایی بین قشر ثروتمند اجتماع، مهندسان، و مدیرانی که چرخ جامعه را به حرکت درمیآورند، و قشر پایینتر جامعه به وجود آید؛ قشری که مهارتها و تواناییهایشان به برهان وجود ماشینها بدون سود شده؛ داستان مهندسی به نام «پل پروتئوس» که باید راهی برای زندگی در دنیایی بیابد، که زیر توانِش ابَررایانه است، و ماشینها آن را میچرخانند؛ داستان شورش «پل»، داستانی سرگرم کننده، خیال انگیز، و به شکلی ترسناک است؛ شخصیت اصلی این اثر «پل پروتئوس»، رئیس کارخانه ماشین سازی «ایلیوم» است؛ «آنیتا» همسر «پل» است، و آنها فرزندی ندارند؛ در این داستان، روزهای زندگی «پل پروتئوس»، برای مدیریت شرکت خودروسازی، و زندگی شخصی او، و خانوادگیش، برای خوانشگر بازگو میشود؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 10/02/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 10/11/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Player Piano is the first novel of American writer Kurt Vonnegut, published in 1952. Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul’s rebellion is vintage Vonnegut—wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
It depicts a dystopia of automation, describing the negative impact it can have on quality of life. The story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the need for human laborers. The widespread mechanization creates conflict between the wealthy upper class, the engineers and managers, who keep society running, and the lower class, whose skills and purpose in society have been replaced by machines.
The book uses irony and sentimentality, which were to become hallmarks developed further in Vonnegut's later works. Player Piano is set in the near future, after a third world war. While most Americans were fighting overseas, the nation's managers and engineers faced a depleted workforce and responded by developing ingenious automated systems that allowed the factories to operate with only a few workers.
The novel begins ten years after the war, when most factory workers have been replaced by machines. The bifurcation of the population is represented by the division of Ilium, New York into "The Homestead," where every person not a manager or an engineer lives, and the other side of the river, where all the engineers and the managers live. ...
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز دوازدهم ماه می سال2014میلادی
عنوان: پیانوی خودنواز؛ کورت ونه گات؛ مترجم زهرا طراوتی؛ زیرنظر: علی شیعه علی؛ تهران: سبزان، سال1391؛ در431ص؛ شابک9786001170539؛ چاپ دوم سال1395؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م
داستان «پیانوی خودنواز»، در ژانر کتابهای علمی-تخیلی (ساینس فیکشن) میگنجد، و نیز ساختاری «پست مدرن» دارد؛ این کتاب نوشتاری از «کورت ونه گات» است، که برای نخستین بار در سال هزار و نهصد و پنجاد و دو میلادی منتشر شد؛ داستان در جامعه ای در آینده ی نزدیک رخ میدهد، که بیشتر کارها را ماشینها انجام میدهد، و نیاز به انسانهای کارگر از بین رفته است؛ سلطه ی گسترده ی ماشی��ها باعث شده، تا کشمکشهایی بین قشر ثروتمند اجتماع، مهندسان، و مدیرانی که چرخ جامعه را به حرکت درمیآورند، و قشر پایینتر جامعه به وجود آید؛ قشری که مهارتها و تواناییهایشان به برهان وجود ماشینها بدون سود شده؛ داستان مهندسی به نام «پل پروتئوس» که باید راهی برای زندگی در دنیایی بیابد، که زیر توانِش ابَررایانه است، و ماشینها آن را میچرخانند؛ داستان شورش «پل»، داستانی سرگرم کننده، خیال انگیز، و به شکلی ترسناک است؛ شخصیت اصلی این اثر «پل پروتئوس»، رئیس کارخانه ماشین سازی «ایلیوم» است؛ «آنیتا» همسر «پل» است، و آنها فرزندی ندارند؛ در این داستان، روزهای زندگی «پل پروتئوس»، برای مدیریت شرکت خودروسازی، و زندگی شخصی او، و خانوادگیش، برای خوانشگر بازگو میشود؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 10/02/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 10/11/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
May 3, 2022
“The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings," said Paul, "not to serve as appendages to machines, institutions, and systems.”
When Kurt Vonnegut does dystopia (as he does in his first novel, Player Piano), you know it's not an empty idea for him to rail against, but a way for him (and us) to work out the implications of a new reality, in this case, our desire to improve the world with technology. In this early dystopian vision (set in the near future after WWIII), the world is nearly completely automated (like the player piano). Society's needs are apparently met. Far from bringing about happiness, automation only serves to alienate the upper class from the rest of society who no longer have any purpose. The plot follows engineer Paul Proteus from dissatisfaction with the kind of life automation produces to outright rebellion.
Player Piano is a chilling and sometimes darkly funny satire of a world in which technology has the upper hand. If humanity had purpose, it was usurped by the machines. Vonnegut's humanism is evident along with an idiosyncratic style which will continue to characterize his work. I'm looking forward to reading more Vonnegut! 4.25 stars.
When Kurt Vonnegut does dystopia (as he does in his first novel, Player Piano), you know it's not an empty idea for him to rail against, but a way for him (and us) to work out the implications of a new reality, in this case, our desire to improve the world with technology. In this early dystopian vision (set in the near future after WWIII), the world is nearly completely automated (like the player piano). Society's needs are apparently met. Far from bringing about happiness, automation only serves to alienate the upper class from the rest of society who no longer have any purpose. The plot follows engineer Paul Proteus from dissatisfaction with the kind of life automation produces to outright rebellion.
Player Piano is a chilling and sometimes darkly funny satire of a world in which technology has the upper hand. If humanity had purpose, it was usurped by the machines. Vonnegut's humanism is evident along with an idiosyncratic style which will continue to characterize his work. I'm looking forward to reading more Vonnegut! 4.25 stars.
August 18, 2020
The Cybernetic Script
One of the most important but least discussed consequences of WWII is an ideology. It is way of thinking that unites the political left and right, and even transcends the ideologies of Capitalism and Marxism with their apparent conflicts about the nature of human beings and their politics. It is an ideology that became and remains the dominant intellectual force in the world in my lifetime. This ideology goes by a name that is only occasionally used today and is probably recognised only by specialist professionals old enough to remember it: Cybernetics.
Cybernetics is the unnamed central character in Player Piano, where it goes incognito as 'know how' developed during the war. As a scientific discipline, cybernetics is about control. Its vocabulary has largely been assimilated into general usage - systems, feedback loops, requisite variety, algorithms. sustainability. In the year that Vonnegut was writing Player Piano (1951), cybernetics was the fashionable inter-disciplinary buzzword in fields as diverse as hormonal medicine, national government, industrial economics and computer design (not to mention player pianos). And of course, in Vonnegut's obvious subject: Robotics. The big names in the social sciences of the day - von Neumann, Ashby, Weiner, Bateson, Deming, Beer, to name just a few - all had cybernetic connections through the war-effort.
Vonnegut's prescience about the effects of cybernetic thinking for things like automated factories, computer-assisted design, self-driven cars, voice-recognition and expert systems are at least as good as anyone involved in the discipline at the time. But Vonnegut's real talent isn't predictive, it's prophetic. And his insights aren't about science, they are about ideology. He saw beneath the breathless press and stunning technological advances produced through cybernetics to how cybernetics was being used shape the manner in which human beings were to live with each other, whether they were conscious of this or not.
Cybernetics was always more than a discipline or method, or even a manner of thinking. Through general, tacit, but very real agreement on the issues of importance to be addressed, the only issues, cybernetics became an ideology, a framework, a rationale, most crucially a rationalisation of the exercise of power by the people who had power. These are the people Vonnegut identifies as the 'elite', technical managers and their distant superiors who tend the complex cybernetic control mechanisms.
But Vonnegut is far too perceptive to categorise the world simply into managers and those they manage. There is a reason why the very senior managers in Player Piano are kept vaguely in the background. They are the only people not subject to cybernetic demands. The only thing that cybernetics cannot be used for is the decision about what constitutes a successful result of the processes involved, about how to measure value. Player Piano was born in a world of the McCarthy hearings (alluded to in the phrase 'fellow travellers'), the most blatant attempt to institutionalise the definition of success until recent times.
Success is defined elsewhere than by the factory managers in Player Piano, in the higher reaches of corporate management, beyond the pay grade of a Proteus and his colleagues in Ilium (incidentally the Latin for guts, including the highly vulnerable testicles; as well as another name for Troy, of the treacherous horse). And however value is defined, it is not a process or a result to be tampered with in Vonnegut's world at the level of mere management professionals.
A successful result of a cybernetic process might be defined in terms of efficiency, or speed, or innovation, or profit, consumer satisfaction, or literally anything the human mind might conjure. Whatever it is, it is hard wired into the little tape loops that run each machine in Ilium's massive factories. But nothing within the discipline of cybernetics gave a clue as to which of these measures of success was appropriate, or best, or acceptable.
This is the lynchpin of Vonnegut's narrative. It is not mere Luddite sabotage of the machines that is the threat to Ilium's stability but rather changes to the criteria embedded in the tapes and the authority that creates them. It is the control boxes that must be kept locked and secure. These are the tabernacles in which the secret decisions about what constitutes value are hidden and from which these decisions invisibly control both the machines and the factory managers. It is these tiny sanctuaries not the gigantic integrated chains of machines that are the driving force of Vonnegut's fiction.
Except that this situation wasn't, and isn't, only a fiction. The separation of the management of cybernetically controlled systems and the choice of their criteria of success, that is to say, their value, is the core of cybernetics as an ideology. In both Player Piano and in the world as it has evolved, this separation has largely come to pass. Politically, this has gone largely unnoticed by those most affected by the ideology. Until of course very recently as demonstrated in the dramatic political events in Europe, North America, India, and, I think, even China
A key part of Vonnegut's narrative is the separation of what would come to be called the 99% from the corporate managerial class. The most interesting part of the script is the malaise that affects the 99%-ers. This malaise is spiritual rather than material. Although unemployed, the plebs are not homeless or starving.
But since the removal of the corporate ladder, which had given apparent purpose to life and by which they might have advanced (a central element of the post-war American Dream), they are dissatisfied and unruly. The most hopeful aspect of Player Piano is that they don't seem to want the corporate ladder back!
As a prophet not a forecaster, Vonnegut got some things wrong. What he mainly got wrong was the precise mode in which the cybernetic ideology was to play out. He reckoned, along with many philosophers and social scientists of the time, that the managerial elite would dominate through their control of manufacturing and transport. This is how the Robber Barons in the late 19th century and the Russian soviets had already done it.
What no one, literally no one, at the time anticipated was that even the manufacturing elite wouldn't be high enough up the cybernetic food chain to set the criteria for success. This would be left to the even more remote Captains of Finance not the contemporary Lords of Industry. Given that neither Karl Marx nor Frederik Hayek saw that one coming, we might want to overlook Vonnegut's slip.
Vonnegut couldn't see the impending shift because Finance in America, as everywhere else, was still Capitalist Finance in 1951. Not for a decade did cybernetics under a new heading of Corporate Finance, as a real discipline and an ideology, become identifiable as a visible intellectual force. And not for yet another decade was this force great enough to shift corporate power decisively from the capitalists who make things to the capitalists who finance things.
It is unarguable that today it is the likes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley rather than General Motors or General Electric that dominate the world economy and a large portion of its social ambitions as well. The transition is complete. Same cybernetic ideology, just a different cast of corporate characters. And Vonnegut wrote the script. Unfortunately Trump not Proteus is leading the revolution.
----------------------------------
And just when you thought it's safe to drink the Kool-Aid:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-jobs...
One of the most important but least discussed consequences of WWII is an ideology. It is way of thinking that unites the political left and right, and even transcends the ideologies of Capitalism and Marxism with their apparent conflicts about the nature of human beings and their politics. It is an ideology that became and remains the dominant intellectual force in the world in my lifetime. This ideology goes by a name that is only occasionally used today and is probably recognised only by specialist professionals old enough to remember it: Cybernetics.
Cybernetics is the unnamed central character in Player Piano, where it goes incognito as 'know how' developed during the war. As a scientific discipline, cybernetics is about control. Its vocabulary has largely been assimilated into general usage - systems, feedback loops, requisite variety, algorithms. sustainability. In the year that Vonnegut was writing Player Piano (1951), cybernetics was the fashionable inter-disciplinary buzzword in fields as diverse as hormonal medicine, national government, industrial economics and computer design (not to mention player pianos). And of course, in Vonnegut's obvious subject: Robotics. The big names in the social sciences of the day - von Neumann, Ashby, Weiner, Bateson, Deming, Beer, to name just a few - all had cybernetic connections through the war-effort.
Vonnegut's prescience about the effects of cybernetic thinking for things like automated factories, computer-assisted design, self-driven cars, voice-recognition and expert systems are at least as good as anyone involved in the discipline at the time. But Vonnegut's real talent isn't predictive, it's prophetic. And his insights aren't about science, they are about ideology. He saw beneath the breathless press and stunning technological advances produced through cybernetics to how cybernetics was being used shape the manner in which human beings were to live with each other, whether they were conscious of this or not.
Cybernetics was always more than a discipline or method, or even a manner of thinking. Through general, tacit, but very real agreement on the issues of importance to be addressed, the only issues, cybernetics became an ideology, a framework, a rationale, most crucially a rationalisation of the exercise of power by the people who had power. These are the people Vonnegut identifies as the 'elite', technical managers and their distant superiors who tend the complex cybernetic control mechanisms.
But Vonnegut is far too perceptive to categorise the world simply into managers and those they manage. There is a reason why the very senior managers in Player Piano are kept vaguely in the background. They are the only people not subject to cybernetic demands. The only thing that cybernetics cannot be used for is the decision about what constitutes a successful result of the processes involved, about how to measure value. Player Piano was born in a world of the McCarthy hearings (alluded to in the phrase 'fellow travellers'), the most blatant attempt to institutionalise the definition of success until recent times.
Success is defined elsewhere than by the factory managers in Player Piano, in the higher reaches of corporate management, beyond the pay grade of a Proteus and his colleagues in Ilium (incidentally the Latin for guts, including the highly vulnerable testicles; as well as another name for Troy, of the treacherous horse). And however value is defined, it is not a process or a result to be tampered with in Vonnegut's world at the level of mere management professionals.
A successful result of a cybernetic process might be defined in terms of efficiency, or speed, or innovation, or profit, consumer satisfaction, or literally anything the human mind might conjure. Whatever it is, it is hard wired into the little tape loops that run each machine in Ilium's massive factories. But nothing within the discipline of cybernetics gave a clue as to which of these measures of success was appropriate, or best, or acceptable.
This is the lynchpin of Vonnegut's narrative. It is not mere Luddite sabotage of the machines that is the threat to Ilium's stability but rather changes to the criteria embedded in the tapes and the authority that creates them. It is the control boxes that must be kept locked and secure. These are the tabernacles in which the secret decisions about what constitutes value are hidden and from which these decisions invisibly control both the machines and the factory managers. It is these tiny sanctuaries not the gigantic integrated chains of machines that are the driving force of Vonnegut's fiction.
Except that this situation wasn't, and isn't, only a fiction. The separation of the management of cybernetically controlled systems and the choice of their criteria of success, that is to say, their value, is the core of cybernetics as an ideology. In both Player Piano and in the world as it has evolved, this separation has largely come to pass. Politically, this has gone largely unnoticed by those most affected by the ideology. Until of course very recently as demonstrated in the dramatic political events in Europe, North America, India, and, I think, even China
A key part of Vonnegut's narrative is the separation of what would come to be called the 99% from the corporate managerial class. The most interesting part of the script is the malaise that affects the 99%-ers. This malaise is spiritual rather than material. Although unemployed, the plebs are not homeless or starving.
But since the removal of the corporate ladder, which had given apparent purpose to life and by which they might have advanced (a central element of the post-war American Dream), they are dissatisfied and unruly. The most hopeful aspect of Player Piano is that they don't seem to want the corporate ladder back!
As a prophet not a forecaster, Vonnegut got some things wrong. What he mainly got wrong was the precise mode in which the cybernetic ideology was to play out. He reckoned, along with many philosophers and social scientists of the time, that the managerial elite would dominate through their control of manufacturing and transport. This is how the Robber Barons in the late 19th century and the Russian soviets had already done it.
What no one, literally no one, at the time anticipated was that even the manufacturing elite wouldn't be high enough up the cybernetic food chain to set the criteria for success. This would be left to the even more remote Captains of Finance not the contemporary Lords of Industry. Given that neither Karl Marx nor Frederik Hayek saw that one coming, we might want to overlook Vonnegut's slip.
Vonnegut couldn't see the impending shift because Finance in America, as everywhere else, was still Capitalist Finance in 1951. Not for a decade did cybernetics under a new heading of Corporate Finance, as a real discipline and an ideology, become identifiable as a visible intellectual force. And not for yet another decade was this force great enough to shift corporate power decisively from the capitalists who make things to the capitalists who finance things.
It is unarguable that today it is the likes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley rather than General Motors or General Electric that dominate the world economy and a large portion of its social ambitions as well. The transition is complete. Same cybernetic ideology, just a different cast of corporate characters. And Vonnegut wrote the script. Unfortunately Trump not Proteus is leading the revolution.
----------------------------------
And just when you thought it's safe to drink the Kool-Aid:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-jobs...
March 23, 2024
Someday I'd like to reread this youthful work by that depressed epochal American writer Kurt Vonnegut, once again.
His hero is so much like I was - he is a minor bit player in the dirty game of life, trying to make sense of his semi-cybernetic world back in the sixties - armed only with a warmly human recalcitrance.
He works in a little office in smalltown upstate New York.
So it was for Vonnegut himself back then - wasn't his employer General Electric in Utica? - and so it was for me, a decade later, working in the school of hard knocks, towering in a steel, glass and cement monolith at the stagnant end of the Rideau Canal.
At an establishment brains trust: Delegate 'N Disappear. Like my colleague Charles did...
If anyone among his hoi polloi turned ugly, Charles cracked down on 'em. He could turn ugly too.
But I, like Vonnegut, fought the Big System and befriended my staff. If work was War, we were all in the Trenches together. Never mind if I fought an unreal Aspie War, like MARK Vonnegut, his son!
And, like it was to Vonnegut, so it was to young me too, beavering away as a file clerk under the shadow of the semi-automated macho aegis of faceless gods who cracked their whips and hollered "giddup" to a reluctant young Nemo under neuroleptics.
It was just an awful nightmare.
But Vonnegut saw even more bad news in it...
He saw the new stranglehold vice grip upon us wayward humans - it masquerades as informational freedom - that faceless corporate computers have now. And you know what’s worse?
They are now in Absolute Control of our Life.
Checkmate!
Don't believe me? Read the new book which just appeared this summer: Parker G. Brandt's The Secret Future.
It's quite inexpensive...
But it will scare you. And it will set you straight!
I laughed off this type of book back then in 1975, moronic tool of the System that I was, but was glad in those dire days of Vonegut's black humour, in an imaginary scenario that would never - I thought - assume the cold hard face of reality.
Yikes, was I wrong!
Now we're up to our armpits in AI alligators, and me?
I'm always naively backpedalling into a richer, near-extinct aboriginal humanity than that hard shrink-wrap world in which my more with-it contemporary, Charles, has his fun 'n games.
The pure garden soil of unabashed humanity is in my books, and with it I can freely germinate an old-fashioned feeling of Being Human - warm, caring and responsible…
But now the curse is upon us. A caring humanity is the only antidote.
Our books can show us the way back to openly human health.
Kurt, old buddy, you saw it ALL coming, didn't you?
For you, so used to being totally free with your human-too-human humour -
Saw the ghastly pall of a totally cybernetic inhumanity falling upon us all -
At the dire stroke of a New and Awful kinda Midnight.
His hero is so much like I was - he is a minor bit player in the dirty game of life, trying to make sense of his semi-cybernetic world back in the sixties - armed only with a warmly human recalcitrance.
He works in a little office in smalltown upstate New York.
So it was for Vonnegut himself back then - wasn't his employer General Electric in Utica? - and so it was for me, a decade later, working in the school of hard knocks, towering in a steel, glass and cement monolith at the stagnant end of the Rideau Canal.
At an establishment brains trust: Delegate 'N Disappear. Like my colleague Charles did...
If anyone among his hoi polloi turned ugly, Charles cracked down on 'em. He could turn ugly too.
But I, like Vonnegut, fought the Big System and befriended my staff. If work was War, we were all in the Trenches together. Never mind if I fought an unreal Aspie War, like MARK Vonnegut, his son!
And, like it was to Vonnegut, so it was to young me too, beavering away as a file clerk under the shadow of the semi-automated macho aegis of faceless gods who cracked their whips and hollered "giddup" to a reluctant young Nemo under neuroleptics.
It was just an awful nightmare.
But Vonnegut saw even more bad news in it...
He saw the new stranglehold vice grip upon us wayward humans - it masquerades as informational freedom - that faceless corporate computers have now. And you know what’s worse?
They are now in Absolute Control of our Life.
Checkmate!
Don't believe me? Read the new book which just appeared this summer: Parker G. Brandt's The Secret Future.
It's quite inexpensive...
But it will scare you. And it will set you straight!
I laughed off this type of book back then in 1975, moronic tool of the System that I was, but was glad in those dire days of Vonegut's black humour, in an imaginary scenario that would never - I thought - assume the cold hard face of reality.
Yikes, was I wrong!
Now we're up to our armpits in AI alligators, and me?
I'm always naively backpedalling into a richer, near-extinct aboriginal humanity than that hard shrink-wrap world in which my more with-it contemporary, Charles, has his fun 'n games.
The pure garden soil of unabashed humanity is in my books, and with it I can freely germinate an old-fashioned feeling of Being Human - warm, caring and responsible…
But now the curse is upon us. A caring humanity is the only antidote.
Our books can show us the way back to openly human health.
Kurt, old buddy, you saw it ALL coming, didn't you?
For you, so used to being totally free with your human-too-human humour -
Saw the ghastly pall of a totally cybernetic inhumanity falling upon us all -
At the dire stroke of a New and Awful kinda Midnight.
February 18, 2017
In his first novel, published in 1952, Vonnegut envisages a dystopian future where nearly all jobs have been rationalised away by increasing automation. But, just when things seem most hopeless, a saviour appears in the form of a brash, uncouth but lovable billionaire, who, despite having no previous political experience, rides a populist wave to become President. He immediately expels all illegal immigrants and starts a war against an alliance of Middle Eastern and Asian countries. Within months, America's downtrodden poor are again leading full, meaningful lives as fruit pickers, hotel staff, prostitutes and cannon fodder, and the country enters a new golden age.
July 13, 2017
Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut was his first novel, first published in 1952. Early fiction from Vonnegut is told in a more straightforward fashion than Vonnegut readers will be accustomed to from his later works, but his imagination and wit are still unmistakable.
This is a dystopian work describing a United States after a third war where machines have taken the place of 90% of industrial workers. Government work available to displaced workers comes from either the Army, emasculated and bureaucratic, or the reconstitution and reclamation corps, the Reeks and the Wrecks, a civil organization where workers have military-esque occupational titles such as asphalt layer first class and senior street sweeper.
Funny and thought provoking this ushered in a long and prolific career for Vonnegut.
This is a dystopian work describing a United States after a third war where machines have taken the place of 90% of industrial workers. Government work available to displaced workers comes from either the Army, emasculated and bureaucratic, or the reconstitution and reclamation corps, the Reeks and the Wrecks, a civil organization where workers have military-esque occupational titles such as asphalt layer first class and senior street sweeper.
Funny and thought provoking this ushered in a long and prolific career for Vonnegut.
November 27, 2020
Vonnegut wrote Player Piano in his late twenties, and it is the first novel in his long and successful literary career. At this stage, the author is still relatively “well behaved”: the structure of the story is reasonably straightforward, events occur in chronological succession, the protagonist is, for the most part, in full possession of his mental faculties. In short, there is still some way to go before the Slaughterhouse-Five meta-fictional, po-mo craziness. However, the distinctive features of Vonnegut’s style are already there: snappy, fat-free sentences, crisp, quick-witted dialogues, and a generally sardonic outlook on life and the human condition — the Shah of Bratpuhr subplot (slightly reminiscent of Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes) is priceless. Also, the use of the ritornello “And I love you, Anita” foreshadows the “And so it goes” in his upcoming masterpiece.
The subject of this novel is worth noticing as well. Player Piano falls into the speculative-fiction genre: in an unspecified near future, American corporations and industries are getting increasingly automated, computerised; managers and engineers are the cream of society, and the rest have, by and large, lost their jobs to machines — soon enough, one might reckon, engineers and managers will lose their grip as well... Interestingly, Vonnegut compares this profound socio-economic shift to the destruction of Native-American cultures at the hand of white settlers, as if modern society was, in its turn, about to be subjugated:
Vonnegut had seen mechanised warfare in action, during his time in Europe; he also probably saw it coming in the workplace, while employed at GE as a PR manager. But devising, as early as 1952, a world were computerised technology and algorithms would practically control (for better or for worse) every aspect of our lives was nothing short of visionary. His description of corporate power dynamics — especially the competitive “organisational development” off-site episode —, the pervasive automation of Western capitalism, and the gradual disenfranchisement and loss of livelihood of the unemployed working class (the “Reeks and Wrecks”, the “Takaru”) as opposed to the bling-bling 400, is probably more to the point and familiar today than it was in the 1950s. Vonnegut’s perspective on revolutions is utterly disillusioned, however. But underneath it all, this is the book of a compassionate humanist.
In many ways, Player Piano borrowed its dystopian views and storyline from Huxley’s Brave New World and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Over the years, though, Asimov’s Robot Series has almost completely overshadowed the influence of Player Piano in contemporary popular culture. This influence still nevertheless comes through in such recent films and series as Ex Machina, the Swedish sci-fi drama Real Humans, or the excellent Westworld HBO TV show.
The subject of this novel is worth noticing as well. Player Piano falls into the speculative-fiction genre: in an unspecified near future, American corporations and industries are getting increasingly automated, computerised; managers and engineers are the cream of society, and the rest have, by and large, lost their jobs to machines — soon enough, one might reckon, engineers and managers will lose their grip as well... Interestingly, Vonnegut compares this profound socio-economic shift to the destruction of Native-American cultures at the hand of white settlers, as if modern society was, in its turn, about to be subjugated:
The world had changed radically for the Indians . . . It had become a white man’s world, and Indian ways in a white man’s world were irrelevant. It was impossible to hold the old Indian values in the changed world. The only thing they could do in the changed world was to become second-rate white men or wards of the white men. (LoA, pp. 259-260)
Vonnegut had seen mechanised warfare in action, during his time in Europe; he also probably saw it coming in the workplace, while employed at GE as a PR manager. But devising, as early as 1952, a world were computerised technology and algorithms would practically control (for better or for worse) every aspect of our lives was nothing short of visionary. His description of corporate power dynamics — especially the competitive “organisational development” off-site episode —, the pervasive automation of Western capitalism, and the gradual disenfranchisement and loss of livelihood of the unemployed working class (the “Reeks and Wrecks”, the “Takaru”) as opposed to the bling-bling 400, is probably more to the point and familiar today than it was in the 1950s. Vonnegut’s perspective on revolutions is utterly disillusioned, however. But underneath it all, this is the book of a compassionate humanist.
In many ways, Player Piano borrowed its dystopian views and storyline from Huxley’s Brave New World and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Over the years, though, Asimov’s Robot Series has almost completely overshadowed the influence of Player Piano in contemporary popular culture. This influence still nevertheless comes through in such recent films and series as Ex Machina, the Swedish sci-fi drama Real Humans, or the excellent Westworld HBO TV show.
June 14, 2018
In a world where actuaries in Japan are getting fired by the hundreds because an algorithm now does their job, where Amazon's utterly creepy house robot Echo can organize your life and transfer info on your every move to God knows who, and where Google has created AIs that live on the Internet and talk to each other in an encrypted language so sophisticated that humans can't figure out what they are saying, "Player Piano" is eerily prescient.
In fact, as someone who works for a major insurance company and who knows just how ridiculously dependent we are on your technology working well and how much we want our employees to be devoted body and soul to the company, this book felt disturbingly familiar from the very first page.
In a not so distant future, everything has been automatized and machines do all the work, nobody starves and the only jobs still available are the ones that can't be replaced by machines... and the army. But of course, a chasm exists between those who do simple manual work and the engineers and managers who overlook the exactitude of all those machines, effectively creating a polarized society.
Paul Proteus, an important engineer and manager of Ilium Works, can feel that something is not quite right with his life and with the world, but does not know how to deal with his malaise. His old friend and colleague Ed Finnerty has acknowledged that this way of life is hollow and unfulfilling a long time ago and resists the systematic automation of everything by not fitting into the mold of the brilliant engineer that he is.
One day, Paul is asked to betray his integrity for a better job and a secure social position and he finds himself incapable of doing it. He decides to rebel against this life that now feels so meaningless, but it's not as easy to escape the corporate beast as he seems to think. Especially when computers have a record of your entire lives...
In a parallel story line, we accompany the Shah of Bratpuhr's visit to America, his incapacity to perceive people who are not in charge as anything other than slaves (despite his translator's best efforts), and his amusement at the exotic and illogical American way of life.
The idea of the corporation as a Church, its employees as its worshipers and its executives as clergy is obviously not a new one, but it gave me a uncomfortable shiver. The corporate retreat, which is essentially a brain-washing vacation meant to cultivate your bond to the company and with your colleagues, the long ridiculous titles meant to glorify the simplest of jobs, more executives than executants... I see these things going on every day at work, and it's creepy. Add to that a President who is an actor, because charisma is more important than political skill for that job... *shudder*
I see human labor, skill and intelligence devalued a little bit more all the time, whether because we have become too reliant on our GPS to know how to read a map, or because products are now manufactured to break in a year or two so that we must buy a brand new one that turns out to be cheaper than repairing the old one... It makes me uncomfortable on so many levels...
Some people seem to think that Vonnegut has not yet sharpened his trademark wit and dark humor to their full potential when he wrote "Player Piano", but I found him to be just as brutally funny, vitriolic in his commentary and thought-provoking as in his later works. He had his finger on the simple reality that without a sense of purpose and usefulness, humans will loose their sense of identity and their spirits, and he wrote a great book about it.
Of course, he missed the mark on a few things: the Rust Belt's downfall, for instance. And the very old-fashioned gender-roles made me roll my eyes a few times. But dismissing this work just because a few things are not perfectly predicted would be a mistake. I recommend it to everyone.
In fact, as someone who works for a major insurance company and who knows just how ridiculously dependent we are on your technology working well and how much we want our employees to be devoted body and soul to the company, this book felt disturbingly familiar from the very first page.
In a not so distant future, everything has been automatized and machines do all the work, nobody starves and the only jobs still available are the ones that can't be replaced by machines... and the army. But of course, a chasm exists between those who do simple manual work and the engineers and managers who overlook the exactitude of all those machines, effectively creating a polarized society.
Paul Proteus, an important engineer and manager of Ilium Works, can feel that something is not quite right with his life and with the world, but does not know how to deal with his malaise. His old friend and colleague Ed Finnerty has acknowledged that this way of life is hollow and unfulfilling a long time ago and resists the systematic automation of everything by not fitting into the mold of the brilliant engineer that he is.
One day, Paul is asked to betray his integrity for a better job and a secure social position and he finds himself incapable of doing it. He decides to rebel against this life that now feels so meaningless, but it's not as easy to escape the corporate beast as he seems to think. Especially when computers have a record of your entire lives...
In a parallel story line, we accompany the Shah of Bratpuhr's visit to America, his incapacity to perceive people who are not in charge as anything other than slaves (despite his translator's best efforts), and his amusement at the exotic and illogical American way of life.
The idea of the corporation as a Church, its employees as its worshipers and its executives as clergy is obviously not a new one, but it gave me a uncomfortable shiver. The corporate retreat, which is essentially a brain-washing vacation meant to cultivate your bond to the company and with your colleagues, the long ridiculous titles meant to glorify the simplest of jobs, more executives than executants... I see these things going on every day at work, and it's creepy. Add to that a President who is an actor, because charisma is more important than political skill for that job... *shudder*
I see human labor, skill and intelligence devalued a little bit more all the time, whether because we have become too reliant on our GPS to know how to read a map, or because products are now manufactured to break in a year or two so that we must buy a brand new one that turns out to be cheaper than repairing the old one... It makes me uncomfortable on so many levels...
Some people seem to think that Vonnegut has not yet sharpened his trademark wit and dark humor to their full potential when he wrote "Player Piano", but I found him to be just as brutally funny, vitriolic in his commentary and thought-provoking as in his later works. He had his finger on the simple reality that without a sense of purpose and usefulness, humans will loose their sense of identity and their spirits, and he wrote a great book about it.
Of course, he missed the mark on a few things: the Rust Belt's downfall, for instance. And the very old-fashioned gender-roles made me roll my eyes a few times. But dismissing this work just because a few things are not perfectly predicted would be a mistake. I recommend it to everyone.
June 2, 2014
It’s been almost thirty years since I read Player Piano, and all I had retained from that first read was the name of the main character, a faint recollection of the novel’s focus on a future world heavily reliant on automation, and a vague sense of not liking the book all that much despite Vonnegut being one of my favorite authors. I had hoped to like the book better as a seasoned adult, but instead I found re-reading Player Piano to be a tedious chore which surprised me, as this year I have returned to Slaughterhouse-Five, Jailbird and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and enjoyed all of them.
I began the year with Vonnegut’s recently published Letters and liked it so much that I wanted to go back and revisit some of these novels I read way back in high school. Alas, Player Piano did not have much to offer me this second time around. The story is set in a not-so-distant dystopian future, a society run by managers and engineers where machines and computers have been perfected and attend to much of life’s needs. Regular folks like you and me (unless you happen to be a manager or an engineer) lead mundane lives outside the enclaves of these giants of industry (in a way Margaret Atwood has created a similar society in her Maddaddam trilogy with her Compounds populated by elite genengineers while the rest of the population lives in the chaotic pleeblands), but their dreary lives have been robbed of satisfaction because machines have taken away most of what they have done in the past to find meaning in their lives.
For a dystopian society, the world of Player Piano is a fairly mundane place, with no Thought Police or Hunger Games, but the effect on the everyday citizen is still soul crushing. It’s a little like The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit meets the world of Fahrenheit 451, minus a fire department whose job it is to burn books. Interestingly, however, Vonnegut has written his book before either of those two novels. Paul Proteus leads the perfect life. He is head of the Ilium Works, married to a beautiful wife and being groomed to take over Pittsburgh (humorously, in 1952 an author might have seen Pittsburgh as the future locus of industry and technology!). But despite having it all, Proteus feels like something is missing, and it is…his dissatisfaction leads him regularly to visit Homestead, the gritty town on the other side of the river to see how the other half lives, and his pretty little wife just doesn’t understand these longings he has for breaking out of the mold and doing his own thing. Proteus will remind you a bit of Guy Montague, and you’ll probably feel a sense of familiarity with the world of Player Piano. Vonnegut isn’t the first one to explore these themes, and he certainly wasn’t the last, but after having read so many similar books and watched numerous episodes of The Twilight Zone about similar characters searching for a way out of the grey flannel rat race, it all feels rather dreary and dull, even if Vonnegut is doing it so much earlier than many of these other authors.
And therein lies perhaps the best reason to continue reading this book, even if it isn’t one of Vonnegut’s best. If anything, it can be delved into as a sort of artifact and a pretty interesting one at that. It is, after all, Vonnegut’s first novel, published just seven years after he is released from a German POW camp. He’s been to graduate school at the University of Chicago and not done so well there, and then he’s been to work for GE and experienced firsthand its monotonous bureaucracy, and he works all of these threads into the story which introduces many of his themes that he returns to again and again in his later works: the worth of the individual in a society that values conformity, the role of free will versus determinism, an ironic understanding of the absurdity at the core of human life, a concern with progress that fails to take into account the needs of the people it is supposed to be serving, and a tremendous love of humanity tempered by the sure understanding that we human beings are hella stoopid.
But what’s missing from Player Piano is that Vonnegut voice and style that readers have come to expect from him. Here, in his first novel, he goes for plodding linear narrative, third person narration, and pedestrian character development, three techniques that he abandons over the next ten years. There is plenty of black humor at work here, but he has yet to embrace his pared-down style, the digressive randomness and the bleak whimsy that begin to appear in his next Sirens of Titan and which he has mastered ten years later in Cat’s Cradle. Nonetheless, the reader can see a hint of what is to come in later books, especially in the subplot weaving its way through the novel with the comic figure of the Shah of Bratpuhr who is taking a tour of the United States accompanied by a State Department handler. He visits Ilium, takes a tour of a planned community, meets the president, and visits the Carlsbad Caverns to view the massive supercomputer, EPICAC XIV. The Shah, drinking heavily from his flask of sacred liquor of Sumklish, is curious about all the sights of America, but calls EPICAC a false god when it can’t provide the answer to his riddle, and, to his handler’s consternation, keeps referring to the common Americans he meets on his journey, as Takaru, slaves…
No, his handler tells him, “No Takaru…Ci-ti-zen.”
“Ahhhhh,” said the Shah. “Ci-ti-zen.” He grinned happily. “Takaru—citizen. Citizen—Takaru.”
And lines like that one right there are proof of why, even if this book is a bit of a drag to read, Vonnegut is such a great writer, and why even his weaker books should be read again and again and again.
Here's my review for Slaughterhouse-Five:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
and Jailbird:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
I began the year with Vonnegut’s recently published Letters and liked it so much that I wanted to go back and revisit some of these novels I read way back in high school. Alas, Player Piano did not have much to offer me this second time around. The story is set in a not-so-distant dystopian future, a society run by managers and engineers where machines and computers have been perfected and attend to much of life’s needs. Regular folks like you and me (unless you happen to be a manager or an engineer) lead mundane lives outside the enclaves of these giants of industry (in a way Margaret Atwood has created a similar society in her Maddaddam trilogy with her Compounds populated by elite genengineers while the rest of the population lives in the chaotic pleeblands), but their dreary lives have been robbed of satisfaction because machines have taken away most of what they have done in the past to find meaning in their lives.
For a dystopian society, the world of Player Piano is a fairly mundane place, with no Thought Police or Hunger Games, but the effect on the everyday citizen is still soul crushing. It’s a little like The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit meets the world of Fahrenheit 451, minus a fire department whose job it is to burn books. Interestingly, however, Vonnegut has written his book before either of those two novels. Paul Proteus leads the perfect life. He is head of the Ilium Works, married to a beautiful wife and being groomed to take over Pittsburgh (humorously, in 1952 an author might have seen Pittsburgh as the future locus of industry and technology!). But despite having it all, Proteus feels like something is missing, and it is…his dissatisfaction leads him regularly to visit Homestead, the gritty town on the other side of the river to see how the other half lives, and his pretty little wife just doesn’t understand these longings he has for breaking out of the mold and doing his own thing. Proteus will remind you a bit of Guy Montague, and you’ll probably feel a sense of familiarity with the world of Player Piano. Vonnegut isn’t the first one to explore these themes, and he certainly wasn’t the last, but after having read so many similar books and watched numerous episodes of The Twilight Zone about similar characters searching for a way out of the grey flannel rat race, it all feels rather dreary and dull, even if Vonnegut is doing it so much earlier than many of these other authors.
And therein lies perhaps the best reason to continue reading this book, even if it isn’t one of Vonnegut’s best. If anything, it can be delved into as a sort of artifact and a pretty interesting one at that. It is, after all, Vonnegut’s first novel, published just seven years after he is released from a German POW camp. He’s been to graduate school at the University of Chicago and not done so well there, and then he’s been to work for GE and experienced firsthand its monotonous bureaucracy, and he works all of these threads into the story which introduces many of his themes that he returns to again and again in his later works: the worth of the individual in a society that values conformity, the role of free will versus determinism, an ironic understanding of the absurdity at the core of human life, a concern with progress that fails to take into account the needs of the people it is supposed to be serving, and a tremendous love of humanity tempered by the sure understanding that we human beings are hella stoopid.
But what’s missing from Player Piano is that Vonnegut voice and style that readers have come to expect from him. Here, in his first novel, he goes for plodding linear narrative, third person narration, and pedestrian character development, three techniques that he abandons over the next ten years. There is plenty of black humor at work here, but he has yet to embrace his pared-down style, the digressive randomness and the bleak whimsy that begin to appear in his next Sirens of Titan and which he has mastered ten years later in Cat’s Cradle. Nonetheless, the reader can see a hint of what is to come in later books, especially in the subplot weaving its way through the novel with the comic figure of the Shah of Bratpuhr who is taking a tour of the United States accompanied by a State Department handler. He visits Ilium, takes a tour of a planned community, meets the president, and visits the Carlsbad Caverns to view the massive supercomputer, EPICAC XIV. The Shah, drinking heavily from his flask of sacred liquor of Sumklish, is curious about all the sights of America, but calls EPICAC a false god when it can’t provide the answer to his riddle, and, to his handler’s consternation, keeps referring to the common Americans he meets on his journey, as Takaru, slaves…
No, his handler tells him, “No Takaru…Ci-ti-zen.”
“Ahhhhh,” said the Shah. “Ci-ti-zen.” He grinned happily. “Takaru—citizen. Citizen—Takaru.”
And lines like that one right there are proof of why, even if this book is a bit of a drag to read, Vonnegut is such a great writer, and why even his weaker books should be read again and again and again.
Here's my review for Slaughterhouse-Five:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
and Jailbird:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
June 6, 2017
Disappointed in this one, it was underwhelming. I hadn't read Vonnegut in a long time and was excited to read this. Unfortunately I found the characters rather unlikable, obnoxious, one-dimensional caricatures, while the narrative operated like a chess game in which I could guess most every move before it was made. I also found the messaging heavy-handed. Yeah, I agree or at least am concerned with most of the themes brought up, but it was done with a lack of subtlety that grated on me.
In terms of the societal and cultural critique I generally align with many of Vonnegut's positions. The critique encompasses worship of technology, efficiency, productivity, growth, meritocracy, materialism above all else. There is critique of elites hoarding opportunities, classism, all powerful and dictatorial corporations that strip away our rights couching it under the guise of "freedom" and "progress", the rules and rigidity of corporate management and bureaucracy, marriage of corporations and police state. In this atmosphere the powerful use their moralizing as a cudgel on "poorer" people (the underclass) to strip away their humanity (sound familiar?). Warps into a vulgar sort of anti-humanism camouflaged by grandiose and caricatured moralizing.
In this book elites tell themselves they are heroes, moral heroes, saving the rest of humanity while in actuality most of their actions and motives are self-serving and based on consolidating or increasing their power. Vonnegut makes commentary on all that. The one aspect he doesn't touch on is the environmental aspect and worries from an unrestrained system that cannibalizes everything in sight, and for me I see that as one of the most important issues that could lead to global civilizational crisis. But it's completely understandable that he doesn't hit this aspect because I don't think it was in the cultural zeitgeist of the times, it would take a few decades before this concern would really start to blossom in the culture.
There is a strong critique of techno-utopianism here, and that's cool. I'm fine with that, although Vonnegut comes across as more pessimistic than me on technology. Technology is mere tool, it is how humans use and apply it that matters. Technology, with proper policy and decent thinking, can benefit broad swathes of humanity. I don't fear machines, I don't fear technology, but I worry about the humans behind the machines who leverage these things for their power. The question is will the powerful keep co-opting technology in order to keep funneling and consolidating power and control for themselves, further walling themselves off from the rest of society? or will we have sensible policy and management of these technologies that allows a diverse range of people to benefit? I think we need to work hard to make sure society as a whole benefits.
I don't know a lot about the Frankfurt School, I've only read a few articles. But I wouldn't be surprised if Vonnegut was strongly influenced by their ideas and cultural critique because his own critique pretty much mirrors many of their views. In their views there is a cultural and spiritual sickness plaguing the modern world, with a cult of instrumental reason driving the way: https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-frankf...
It is easy to critique materialism, and the cult of materialism. Unfortunately I think it is valid, there is a spiritual and cultural vacuum and this materialism is filling the void in our culture and our lives. Materialism wouldn't matter as much if we had more solid foundations in spirit and culture. I do think the pendulum may be starting to swing the other way against hyperconsumerism, but it's hard for me to say for sure. In the end I just don't think hyperconsumerism is sustainable, not just in regards to the environment, but not sustainable in the economic, societal, and cultural aspects.
I do appreciate this book for its themes, its prescience, and its relevance to today's problems. I love Vonnegut in general but like I said, in spite of the themes I was disappointed with story-telling, characters, and ideological heavy-handedness. The themes do pose very important questions, questions that we will keep struggling to answer in the coming generations.
In terms of the societal and cultural critique I generally align with many of Vonnegut's positions. The critique encompasses worship of technology, efficiency, productivity, growth, meritocracy, materialism above all else. There is critique of elites hoarding opportunities, classism, all powerful and dictatorial corporations that strip away our rights couching it under the guise of "freedom" and "progress", the rules and rigidity of corporate management and bureaucracy, marriage of corporations and police state. In this atmosphere the powerful use their moralizing as a cudgel on "poorer" people (the underclass) to strip away their humanity (sound familiar?). Warps into a vulgar sort of anti-humanism camouflaged by grandiose and caricatured moralizing.
In this book elites tell themselves they are heroes, moral heroes, saving the rest of humanity while in actuality most of their actions and motives are self-serving and based on consolidating or increasing their power. Vonnegut makes commentary on all that. The one aspect he doesn't touch on is the environmental aspect and worries from an unrestrained system that cannibalizes everything in sight, and for me I see that as one of the most important issues that could lead to global civilizational crisis. But it's completely understandable that he doesn't hit this aspect because I don't think it was in the cultural zeitgeist of the times, it would take a few decades before this concern would really start to blossom in the culture.
There is a strong critique of techno-utopianism here, and that's cool. I'm fine with that, although Vonnegut comes across as more pessimistic than me on technology. Technology is mere tool, it is how humans use and apply it that matters. Technology, with proper policy and decent thinking, can benefit broad swathes of humanity. I don't fear machines, I don't fear technology, but I worry about the humans behind the machines who leverage these things for their power. The question is will the powerful keep co-opting technology in order to keep funneling and consolidating power and control for themselves, further walling themselves off from the rest of society? or will we have sensible policy and management of these technologies that allows a diverse range of people to benefit? I think we need to work hard to make sure society as a whole benefits.
I don't know a lot about the Frankfurt School, I've only read a few articles. But I wouldn't be surprised if Vonnegut was strongly influenced by their ideas and cultural critique because his own critique pretty much mirrors many of their views. In their views there is a cultural and spiritual sickness plaguing the modern world, with a cult of instrumental reason driving the way: https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-frankf...
It is easy to critique materialism, and the cult of materialism. Unfortunately I think it is valid, there is a spiritual and cultural vacuum and this materialism is filling the void in our culture and our lives. Materialism wouldn't matter as much if we had more solid foundations in spirit and culture. I do think the pendulum may be starting to swing the other way against hyperconsumerism, but it's hard for me to say for sure. In the end I just don't think hyperconsumerism is sustainable, not just in regards to the environment, but not sustainable in the economic, societal, and cultural aspects.
I do appreciate this book for its themes, its prescience, and its relevance to today's problems. I love Vonnegut in general but like I said, in spite of the themes I was disappointed with story-telling, characters, and ideological heavy-handedness. The themes do pose very important questions, questions that we will keep struggling to answer in the coming generations.
February 16, 2024
Considering the age of this debut novel by the great Kurt Vonnegut Jr there are certain parallels to this modern life.
The major theme is that modern technology is taking over industry to the point that it leaves many of a certain skill set without a role in society. Vonnegut Jr being a brilliant satirist has made an occasional laugh out loud satire that though showing its age in terms of using the then known machineries seemed to me to have a relevance to the modern use of AI as just one example.
One of the more interesting events in the tale told is that rioters were smashing all the machines up and that the engineers behind the revolt pleaded for them to stop as they had to decide what machines were kept and what were to be destroyed. The rioters took no notice and were even destroying bakeries, for example. What to eat now was the obvious question. Hence, Vonnegut Jr asks the reader the question, if machinery makes for a dull life what do we do without it anyway? The definitive double bind for the opposition to modern technology? One could argue so.
Highly recommended to all Takaru.
P.S
I read a lot of Vonnegut Jr in my youth though the only stand-out to this day is Slaughter-House Five, so with that I have decided to read his oeuvre from the first to the last. This will take time, but so be it. This has come about for 2 reasons. Backlisted covered Galápagos and I have not read that. I need to. Also, a conversation with a well-read neighbour about Vonnegut Jr. I concluded I needed to read him out.
The major theme is that modern technology is taking over industry to the point that it leaves many of a certain skill set without a role in society. Vonnegut Jr being a brilliant satirist has made an occasional laugh out loud satire that though showing its age in terms of using the then known machineries seemed to me to have a relevance to the modern use of AI as just one example.
One of the more interesting events in the tale told is that rioters were smashing all the machines up and that the engineers behind the revolt pleaded for them to stop as they had to decide what machines were kept and what were to be destroyed. The rioters took no notice and were even destroying bakeries, for example. What to eat now was the obvious question. Hence, Vonnegut Jr asks the reader the question, if machinery makes for a dull life what do we do without it anyway? The definitive double bind for the opposition to modern technology? One could argue so.
Highly recommended to all Takaru.
P.S
I read a lot of Vonnegut Jr in my youth though the only stand-out to this day is Slaughter-House Five, so with that I have decided to read his oeuvre from the first to the last. This will take time, but so be it. This has come about for 2 reasons. Backlisted covered Galápagos and I have not read that. I need to. Also, a conversation with a well-read neighbour about Vonnegut Jr. I concluded I needed to read him out.
March 26, 2023
Image: Remington Rand’s UNIVAC computer, circa 1952. The computer, consisting of everything in the room minus the people, could store up to 1,000 12-letter words - that's only about one kb.
When Vonnegut wrote Player Piano in the early '50s, computers were room-sized machines with hundreds of vacuum tubes. They were primarily used for solving complex mathematics and not much more.
Vonnegut, prescient as ever, imagined a time where computers would outperform humans and replace us in almost every job field.
Today that is close to becoming a reality with an estimated 45 million Americans losing their job to AI automation (a quarter of the workforce) by 2030, according to some studies, and a billion people worldwide. AI will affect nearly every occupational group.
Whether Vonnegut believed that computers could ever perform so many jobs better than humans or if he wrote this book tongue in cheek, I do not know.
Regardless, it is hysterical. It is centered around Paul Proteus, one of the lucky few whose IQ is high enough to be given a managerial job by the government. He does not manage people but machines, and thus his job too is redundant.
However, in order to keep the economy going, enough people have to be paid to pump money into it and so the government has to create jobs, necessary or not. There are managers and there are army people and there are those in the "Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps". There might not be work but people still need to be employed.
For instance, Paul comes upon a road crew where, "three men were painting [lines on the road], twelve were directing traffic, and another twelve were resting." Apparently, some things never change.
The machines that have taken away jobs are over-the-top affairs, massive and consisting of numerous wires and lights and tubes that easily overheat. Memory was stored on tape reels, just as it was in the 1950s.
The amazing new technology people are blessed with consists of "electronic door openers, thermostatically controlled windows, radar range, electrostatic dust precipitators, ultrasonic clothes washer built in, forty-inch television screens in the master bedroom, guest room, living room, kitchen, and rumpus rooms, and twenty-inch screens in the maids’ rooms and the kiddies’ rooms".
The latter made me laugh, with 40" tv screens being almost obsolete, making way for ever larger screens.
Unfortunately, many people are unhappy with this new scheme of things, feeling they have little purpose in life. Paul is one of these people, finding himself ever more discontent and wondering if humans wouldn't be better off without any machines.
Here's the funny thing about me and Vonnegut: He's one of my favourite authors and yet I rarely enjoy reading him, at least not for most of the book. I find his novels tiresome while I'm reading them and have to force myself to concentrate.
But I know that I will be rewarded by the time I finish the book because it all comes together so perfectly. The conversations I found tedious to read are necessary to the book's message and build-up and I'm always amazed by how this happens.
I enjoy the last pages of the book and thinking about it afterwards. That is where the reward lies, not in the experience of reading but in thinking about the book.
This novel, Vonnegut's first, is no exception. It is funny. It is imaginative. It is satirical. It is absurd.
Vonnegut was brilliant.
May 27, 2012
I was working as a janitor the day that Kurt Vonnegut died. Sweeping the floors, I listened as the news came over talk radio and I remember distinctly standing up stiff and staring hard at the speakers while the news sank in. I had recently heard in interviews and read Vonnegut sharing his feelings about his own death. That he had reconciled himself to it and felt that he had done much with his life, that he was ready to go (I'm paraphrasing, of course his words were funnier and more acidic). Still, standing there with my broom in an abandoned diner, I cried for Kurt. I wasn't crying because he had gone too soon, or because it was unjust or shocking, I cried for all of us who have to live in a world without him. His voice, his fierce, sentimental, hilarious and acidic cultural commentary shed light on our lives in a way no one else can. No one could ever hope to call "bullshit" so effectively, concisely, and with as much heart as Vonnegut spent his life doing. I have never read a book by Kurt Vonnegut that I didn't adore and this novel is perhaps one of his best.
A beautiful book about the reckless and relentless escalation of technology and automation, questioning if the inexorable rise of gadgetry in our time has really improved the quality of our lives. This was Vonnegut's first novel and it has a decidedly different feel than his larger body of work. It is a bit bleaker in tone and lacks the same degree of absurdist whimsey which Vonnegut later mastered. The humor is still there, but there is a desperation and darkness which is not softened by Vonnegut's typical absurdist shrug.
Written during the technological boom in the wake of WWII, this book was a dystopian projection of where that technology may lead. A significant element of the plot is the massive supercomputer EPICAC, buried in the winding caves of Carlsbad Caverns, a not so subtle reference to ENIAC, the world's first computer, which had gone online just 6 years before this book was published. This computer, which works on paper punch cards, vacuum tubes and magnetic tape, is very much dated with the popular technology of the time. However the dated nature of all the technology central to the story, only reinforces the theme of technology and automation escalating faster than humans can possibly understand the implications.
The protagonist, Paul Proteus, is a gifted and successful engineer on the verge of a breakdown due to his disillusionment with his profession and growing disbelief in the benefits of a fully automated world. He begins to sympathize with the dispossessed working class, which has been segregated by IQ into pointless lives where they have the choice of joining the military or doing construction work. Through this ordering of society by mechanistic intelligence, Vonnegut satirizes capitalism, hierarchical societies and the spiritually and emotionally void nature of a culture which worships the escalation of technology above all other concerns. The novel escalates from there in typical Vonnegut fashion as the reasonably likeable and humble Paul Proteus is pinballed around a world gone crazy.
Despite the novel being 60 years old (an aeon in terms of technological advancement these days), and most of the references to technology being at this point naive, antiquated and understated, this book is not only still relevant, it is more relevant by the second. We live in an age of transition so dramatic and technological in nature that the themes of this book define our era, and there is no writer I would trust more to call bullshit on our brave new world than Vonnegut.
A beautiful book about the reckless and relentless escalation of technology and automation, questioning if the inexorable rise of gadgetry in our time has really improved the quality of our lives. This was Vonnegut's first novel and it has a decidedly different feel than his larger body of work. It is a bit bleaker in tone and lacks the same degree of absurdist whimsey which Vonnegut later mastered. The humor is still there, but there is a desperation and darkness which is not softened by Vonnegut's typical absurdist shrug.
Written during the technological boom in the wake of WWII, this book was a dystopian projection of where that technology may lead. A significant element of the plot is the massive supercomputer EPICAC, buried in the winding caves of Carlsbad Caverns, a not so subtle reference to ENIAC, the world's first computer, which had gone online just 6 years before this book was published. This computer, which works on paper punch cards, vacuum tubes and magnetic tape, is very much dated with the popular technology of the time. However the dated nature of all the technology central to the story, only reinforces the theme of technology and automation escalating faster than humans can possibly understand the implications.
The protagonist, Paul Proteus, is a gifted and successful engineer on the verge of a breakdown due to his disillusionment with his profession and growing disbelief in the benefits of a fully automated world. He begins to sympathize with the dispossessed working class, which has been segregated by IQ into pointless lives where they have the choice of joining the military or doing construction work. Through this ordering of society by mechanistic intelligence, Vonnegut satirizes capitalism, hierarchical societies and the spiritually and emotionally void nature of a culture which worships the escalation of technology above all other concerns. The novel escalates from there in typical Vonnegut fashion as the reasonably likeable and humble Paul Proteus is pinballed around a world gone crazy.
Despite the novel being 60 years old (an aeon in terms of technological advancement these days), and most of the references to technology being at this point naive, antiquated and understated, this book is not only still relevant, it is more relevant by the second. We live in an age of transition so dramatic and technological in nature that the themes of this book define our era, and there is no writer I would trust more to call bullshit on our brave new world than Vonnegut.
June 7, 2007
There was a period in my life when I read all the Vonnegut I could get my hands on, which is mostly a very rewarding experience, but oh man, this is terrible. It's his first novel, and it really should've been a short story - even as a short story, it would've been forgettable. Classic scifi man/machine themes unleavened by the irony I would usually expect from Vonnegut, drawn out far too long, with characters who lack depth or interest. Read, I dunno, anything else by Vonnegut instead, and you'll be okay.
April 4, 2017
Seriously, anything by Vonnegut is a must-read!
September 23, 2022
Really enjoyed this one, and a lot more than I'd anticipated I would...first read it in the 90s, but after immersing myself in his "mature" mode, and so perhaps I didn't appreciate the lengths KV went to try to shoehorn that inimitable style of his into a conventionally-plotted mid-century novel (his Vonneguttiness still oozes from every seam, of course).
There's a paper to be or perhaps already written on Player Piano, Dickens's Hard Times and commodity fetishism—the "melancholy-mad machines" (HT) come off as more alive for much of both books than the unhappy citizens of industrial and post- post-industrial capitalism.
There's another paper to be/already written about early Pynchon-Vonnegut and Norbert Wiener's cybernetics—as that unhappy tourist, the Shah of Brahtpur wants to ask of the giant computer, EPICAC, "What are people for?"
And still another on KV and the plight of art and the artist (especially re: the novel/novelist in particular) under late capitalism.
I'm not gonna write any of those papers, though—I'm gonna go read another Vonnegut novel, or soon. But I'll leave you with a really long passage from this'un about the present future, as KC saw it in 1950, of reading and writing—our future present:
She dried her eyes. “My husband, Ed, is a writer.”
“What’s his classification number?” said Halyard.
“That’s just it. He hasn’t one.”
“Then how can you call him a writer?” said Halyard.
“Because he writes,” she said.
“My dear girl,” said Halyard paternally, “on that basis, we’re all writers.”
“Two days ago he had a number—W-441.”
“Fiction novice,” Halyard explained to Khashdrahr.
“Yes,” she said, “and he was to have it until he’d completed his novel. After that, he was supposed to get either a W-440—”
“Fiction journeyman,” said Halyard.
“Or a W-255.”
“Public relations,” said Halyard.
“Please, what are public relations?” said Khashdrahr.
“That profession,” said Halyard, quoting by memory from the Manual, “that profession specializing in the cultivation, by applied psychology in mass communication media, of favorable public opinion with regard to controversial issues and institutions, without being offensive to anyone of importance, and with the continued stability of the economy and society its primary goal.”
“Oh well, never mind,” said Khashdrahr. “Please go on with your story, sibi Takaru.”
“Two months ago he submitted his finished manuscript to the National Council of Arts and Letters for criticism and assignment to one of the book clubs.”
“There are twelve of them,” Halyard interrupted. “Each one selects books for a specific type of reader.”
“There are twelve types of readers?” said Khashdrahr.
“There is now talk of a thirteenth and fourteenth,” said Halyard. “The line has to be drawn somewhere, of course, because of the economics of the thing. In order to be self-supporting, a book club has to have at least a half-million members, or it isn’t worth setting up the machinery—the electronic billers, the electronic addressers, the electronic wrappers, the electronic presses, and the electronic dividend computers.”
“And the electronic writers,” said the girl bitterly.
“That’ll come, that’ll come,” said Halyard. “But Lord knows getting manuscripts isn’t any trick. That’s hardly the problem. Machinery’s the thing. One of the smaller clubs, for instance, covers four city blocks. DSM.”
“DSM?” said Khashdrahr.
“Excuse me. Dog Story of the Month.”
Khashdrahr and the Shah shook their heads slowly and made clucking sounds. “Four city blocks,” echoed Khashdrahr hollowly.
“Well, a fully automatic setup like that makes culture very cheap. Book costs less than seven packs of chewing gum. And there are picture clubs, too—pictures for your walls at amazingly cheap prices. Matter of fact, culture’s so cheap, a man figured he could insulate his house cheaper with books and prints than he could with rockwool. Don’t think it’s true, but it’s a cute story with a good point.”
“And painters are well supported under this club system?” asked Khashdrahr.
“Supported—I guess!” said Halyard. “It’s the Golden Age of Art, with millions of dollars a year poured into reproductions of Rembrandts, Whistlers, Goyas, Renoirs, El Grecos, Dégas, da Vincis, Michelangelos …”
“These club members, they get just any book, any picture?” asked Khashdrahr.
“I should say not! A lot of research goes into what’s run off, believe me. Surveys of public reading tastes, readability and appeal tests on books being considered. Heavens, running off an unpopular book would put a club out of business like that!” He snapped his fingers ominously. “The way they keep culture so cheap is by knowing in advance what and how much of it people want. They get it right, right down to the color of the jacket. Gutenberg would be amazed.”
“Gutenberg?” said Khashdrahr.
“Sure—the man who invented movable type. First man to mass-produce Bibles.”
“Alla sutta takki?” said the Shah.
“Eh?” said Halyard.
“Shah wants to know if he made a survey first.”
“Anyway,” said the girl, “my husband’s book was rejected by the Council.”
“Badly written,” said Halyard primly. “The standards are high.”
“Beautifully written,” she said patiently. “But it was twenty-seven pages longer than the maximum length; its readability quotient was 26.3, and—”
“No club will touch anything with an R.Q. above 17,” explained Halyard.
“And,” the girl continued, “it had an antimachine theme.”
Halyard’s eyebrows arched high. “Well! I should hope they wouldn’t print it! What on earth does he think he’s doing? Good lord, you’re lucky if he isn’t behind bars, inciting to advocate the commission of sabotage like that. He didn’t really think somebody’d print it, did he?”
“He didn’t care. He had to write it, so he wrote it.”
“Why doesn’t he write about clipper ships, or something like that? This book about the old days on the Erie Canal—the man who wrote that is cleaning up. Big demand for that bare-chested stuff.”
She shrugged helplessly. “Because he never got mad at clipper ships or the Erie Canal, I guess.”
“He sounds very maladjusted,” said Halyard distastefully. “If you ask me, my dear, he needs the help of a competent psychiatrist. They do wonderful things in psychiatry these days. Take perfectly hopeless cases, and turn them into grade A citizens. Doesn’t he believe in psychiatry?”
“Yes, indeed. He watched his brother find peace of mind through psychiatry. That’s why he won’t have anything to do with it.”
“I don’t follow. Isn’t his brother happy?”
“Utterly and always happy. And my husband says somebody’s just got to be maladjusted; that somebody’s got to be uncomfortable enough to wonder where people are, where they’re going, and why they’re going there. That was the trouble with his book. It raised those questions, and was rejected. So he was ordered into public-relations duty.”
“So the story has a happy ending after all,” said Halyard.
There's a paper to be or perhaps already written on Player Piano, Dickens's Hard Times and commodity fetishism—the "melancholy-mad machines" (HT) come off as more alive for much of both books than the unhappy citizens of industrial and post- post-industrial capitalism.
There's another paper to be/already written about early Pynchon-Vonnegut and Norbert Wiener's cybernetics—as that unhappy tourist, the Shah of Brahtpur wants to ask of the giant computer, EPICAC, "What are people for?"
And still another on KV and the plight of art and the artist (especially re: the novel/novelist in particular) under late capitalism.
I'm not gonna write any of those papers, though—I'm gonna go read another Vonnegut novel, or soon. But I'll leave you with a really long passage from this'un about the present future, as KC saw it in 1950, of reading and writing—our future present:
She dried her eyes. “My husband, Ed, is a writer.”
“What’s his classification number?” said Halyard.
“That’s just it. He hasn’t one.”
“Then how can you call him a writer?” said Halyard.
“Because he writes,” she said.
“My dear girl,” said Halyard paternally, “on that basis, we’re all writers.”
“Two days ago he had a number—W-441.”
“Fiction novice,” Halyard explained to Khashdrahr.
“Yes,” she said, “and he was to have it until he’d completed his novel. After that, he was supposed to get either a W-440—”
“Fiction journeyman,” said Halyard.
“Or a W-255.”
“Public relations,” said Halyard.
“Please, what are public relations?” said Khashdrahr.
“That profession,” said Halyard, quoting by memory from the Manual, “that profession specializing in the cultivation, by applied psychology in mass communication media, of favorable public opinion with regard to controversial issues and institutions, without being offensive to anyone of importance, and with the continued stability of the economy and society its primary goal.”
“Oh well, never mind,” said Khashdrahr. “Please go on with your story, sibi Takaru.”
“Two months ago he submitted his finished manuscript to the National Council of Arts and Letters for criticism and assignment to one of the book clubs.”
“There are twelve of them,” Halyard interrupted. “Each one selects books for a specific type of reader.”
“There are twelve types of readers?” said Khashdrahr.
“There is now talk of a thirteenth and fourteenth,” said Halyard. “The line has to be drawn somewhere, of course, because of the economics of the thing. In order to be self-supporting, a book club has to have at least a half-million members, or it isn’t worth setting up the machinery—the electronic billers, the electronic addressers, the electronic wrappers, the electronic presses, and the electronic dividend computers.”
“And the electronic writers,” said the girl bitterly.
“That’ll come, that’ll come,” said Halyard. “But Lord knows getting manuscripts isn’t any trick. That’s hardly the problem. Machinery’s the thing. One of the smaller clubs, for instance, covers four city blocks. DSM.”
“DSM?” said Khashdrahr.
“Excuse me. Dog Story of the Month.”
Khashdrahr and the Shah shook their heads slowly and made clucking sounds. “Four city blocks,” echoed Khashdrahr hollowly.
“Well, a fully automatic setup like that makes culture very cheap. Book costs less than seven packs of chewing gum. And there are picture clubs, too—pictures for your walls at amazingly cheap prices. Matter of fact, culture’s so cheap, a man figured he could insulate his house cheaper with books and prints than he could with rockwool. Don’t think it’s true, but it’s a cute story with a good point.”
“And painters are well supported under this club system?” asked Khashdrahr.
“Supported—I guess!” said Halyard. “It’s the Golden Age of Art, with millions of dollars a year poured into reproductions of Rembrandts, Whistlers, Goyas, Renoirs, El Grecos, Dégas, da Vincis, Michelangelos …”
“These club members, they get just any book, any picture?” asked Khashdrahr.
“I should say not! A lot of research goes into what’s run off, believe me. Surveys of public reading tastes, readability and appeal tests on books being considered. Heavens, running off an unpopular book would put a club out of business like that!” He snapped his fingers ominously. “The way they keep culture so cheap is by knowing in advance what and how much of it people want. They get it right, right down to the color of the jacket. Gutenberg would be amazed.”
“Gutenberg?” said Khashdrahr.
“Sure—the man who invented movable type. First man to mass-produce Bibles.”
“Alla sutta takki?” said the Shah.
“Eh?” said Halyard.
“Shah wants to know if he made a survey first.”
“Anyway,” said the girl, “my husband’s book was rejected by the Council.”
“Badly written,” said Halyard primly. “The standards are high.”
“Beautifully written,” she said patiently. “But it was twenty-seven pages longer than the maximum length; its readability quotient was 26.3, and—”
“No club will touch anything with an R.Q. above 17,” explained Halyard.
“And,” the girl continued, “it had an antimachine theme.”
Halyard’s eyebrows arched high. “Well! I should hope they wouldn’t print it! What on earth does he think he’s doing? Good lord, you’re lucky if he isn’t behind bars, inciting to advocate the commission of sabotage like that. He didn’t really think somebody’d print it, did he?”
“He didn’t care. He had to write it, so he wrote it.”
“Why doesn’t he write about clipper ships, or something like that? This book about the old days on the Erie Canal—the man who wrote that is cleaning up. Big demand for that bare-chested stuff.”
She shrugged helplessly. “Because he never got mad at clipper ships or the Erie Canal, I guess.”
“He sounds very maladjusted,” said Halyard distastefully. “If you ask me, my dear, he needs the help of a competent psychiatrist. They do wonderful things in psychiatry these days. Take perfectly hopeless cases, and turn them into grade A citizens. Doesn’t he believe in psychiatry?”
“Yes, indeed. He watched his brother find peace of mind through psychiatry. That’s why he won’t have anything to do with it.”
“I don’t follow. Isn’t his brother happy?”
“Utterly and always happy. And my husband says somebody’s just got to be maladjusted; that somebody’s got to be uncomfortable enough to wonder where people are, where they’re going, and why they’re going there. That was the trouble with his book. It raised those questions, and was rejected. So he was ordered into public-relations duty.”
“So the story has a happy ending after all,” said Halyard.
November 7, 2007
Is it acceptable to call a soft sci-fi dystopian novel badass? Does that reveal the total nerd at the core of my character?
The only reason I can see for this book not to be mentioned as one of Vonnegut's greats is that it's edged out by the half-dozen or so outright masterpieces in his canon. But for a first novel, this is ace. It's Vonnegut's most conventionally structured novel, and possibly even his least original. The plot is more or less a tweaking of Huxley's 'Brave New World' (Vonnegut himself has admitted this). Yet frankly, I like it better than that dystopia, as 'Player Piano' is more focused, has better flow, and the satirical elements don't rely as much on suspension of disbelief.
Kurt Vonnegut was not a luddite. This is important to keep in mind when considering the book's premise. The idea of mechanical labor replacing human workers is simply the means around which Vonnegut builds his multi-tiered assault on corporate aristocracy, to borrow an excellent and underused term from David Korten. The satire is wicked-sharp. Consumerism, the class divide, barriers to entry of higher education, and even peace-time mentality all get their comeuppance in Vonnegut's portrayal of a near-future America where socialism and manufactured material desires are used to sate the drive of the lower class (most of the population), while ass-kissing mono-talents get drunk off their own wealth and power. It's socio-political satire that's refreshingly more socio than political, and it's no less relevant now, 55 years after its first pressing, than it was then. Somewhere in the book's final third, the resistance movement gains a strong voice, and the writing may coax the reader into aligning with it. The wit and intellect of the author really comes through here: does this story have any heroes, or are the revolutionaries really just anarchists who by their nature must shake up whatever order there is?
After this, his first novel, Vonnegut went on to write far more original and versatile works, many of which I've read. Absent here are the non-linear narratives, single-word commentary sentences, chatty introductions and frequent narrator editorializing which would become his M.O. However, reading 'Player Piano' should make it obvious why he soon created his own rules for writing a novel: with his very first, he'd already done all he could within the bounds of conventional composition. 'Player Piano' is Vonnegut's most straightforward narrative, but also possibly his harshest and most thorough satire; his social discontent and bitterness does not jump out in short bursts here, but is more cool and collected, and therefore able to seethe beneath every word of this carefully constructed and brutal depiction of the powers-that-be and the trail of human wreckage left behind in the name of "progress".
The only reason I can see for this book not to be mentioned as one of Vonnegut's greats is that it's edged out by the half-dozen or so outright masterpieces in his canon. But for a first novel, this is ace. It's Vonnegut's most conventionally structured novel, and possibly even his least original. The plot is more or less a tweaking of Huxley's 'Brave New World' (Vonnegut himself has admitted this). Yet frankly, I like it better than that dystopia, as 'Player Piano' is more focused, has better flow, and the satirical elements don't rely as much on suspension of disbelief.
Kurt Vonnegut was not a luddite. This is important to keep in mind when considering the book's premise. The idea of mechanical labor replacing human workers is simply the means around which Vonnegut builds his multi-tiered assault on corporate aristocracy, to borrow an excellent and underused term from David Korten. The satire is wicked-sharp. Consumerism, the class divide, barriers to entry of higher education, and even peace-time mentality all get their comeuppance in Vonnegut's portrayal of a near-future America where socialism and manufactured material desires are used to sate the drive of the lower class (most of the population), while ass-kissing mono-talents get drunk off their own wealth and power. It's socio-political satire that's refreshingly more socio than political, and it's no less relevant now, 55 years after its first pressing, than it was then. Somewhere in the book's final third, the resistance movement gains a strong voice, and the writing may coax the reader into aligning with it. The wit and intellect of the author really comes through here: does this story have any heroes, or are the revolutionaries really just anarchists who by their nature must shake up whatever order there is?
After this, his first novel, Vonnegut went on to write far more original and versatile works, many of which I've read. Absent here are the non-linear narratives, single-word commentary sentences, chatty introductions and frequent narrator editorializing which would become his M.O. However, reading 'Player Piano' should make it obvious why he soon created his own rules for writing a novel: with his very first, he'd already done all he could within the bounds of conventional composition. 'Player Piano' is Vonnegut's most straightforward narrative, but also possibly his harshest and most thorough satire; his social discontent and bitterness does not jump out in short bursts here, but is more cool and collected, and therefore able to seethe beneath every word of this carefully constructed and brutal depiction of the powers-that-be and the trail of human wreckage left behind in the name of "progress".
February 16, 2016
This novel, Vonnegut's first, is a more traditional narrative than his later books. The story is told linearly, the chapters are much longer, etc. However, the unmistakable Vonnegut themes are very much present, and make their first appearances here. "Player Piano" deals with the ideas of the danger / dehumanizing effects of technology and how that interacts with basic human dignity. Writing in 1952 about the "false gods" of technology, one need only look around today to think that Vonnegut was a prophet foretelling our doom.
Frankly, I have a hard time nailing down "Player Piano" because I think it meant something different in its original context than perhaps it does now. There are times when the novel seems very anti-communist and anti strong centralized government. The line is even uttered by a government official "Are you against us?" implying that the State knows what is best for all. Clearly Vonnegut does not think that is the case. There is also a very intriguing character, the Reverend Lasher. Of particular interest to me was a scene in a saloon where the Reverend gives a lovely speech on the dangers of class warfare. Moments such as this seem tailor made for the early 1950s and what was happening at the time. They come across as a defense of capitalism and American values. If one has read Vonnegut's biography they know that despite the image many people have of him, these were issues that he cared about deeply.
I don't want to give away plot points, but the text left me with the distinct impression that Vonnegut had a negative opinion of the impetus and results of most revolutions. The novel is full of contradictions, showing the good and bad aspects of capitalism, communism, messianic leaders, uprisings / revolutions, technology, the advances of science, etc. I don't see where the novel comes down decidedly in one camp or the other. However, one thing the book seems definitive about is in its belief that the general population are nothing more than sheep that easily drift from whim to whim. Like Shakespeare Mr. Vonnegut, in this book at least, seems to have a low opinion of the masses. You only have to pay attention to the "common man" during an election season or during the midst of the latest pop culture fad to see that Vonnegut's pessimism is justified.
"Player Piano" is not as brilliant as Vonnegut's later books. It meanders at times and could have been edited into a "tighter" novel. However, there are many moments scattered throughout that make it worth your attention. It is thought provoking and timely, despite being 60 years old. It endures, and that alone is reason enough to read it!
Frankly, I have a hard time nailing down "Player Piano" because I think it meant something different in its original context than perhaps it does now. There are times when the novel seems very anti-communist and anti strong centralized government. The line is even uttered by a government official "Are you against us?" implying that the State knows what is best for all. Clearly Vonnegut does not think that is the case. There is also a very intriguing character, the Reverend Lasher. Of particular interest to me was a scene in a saloon where the Reverend gives a lovely speech on the dangers of class warfare. Moments such as this seem tailor made for the early 1950s and what was happening at the time. They come across as a defense of capitalism and American values. If one has read Vonnegut's biography they know that despite the image many people have of him, these were issues that he cared about deeply.
I don't want to give away plot points, but the text left me with the distinct impression that Vonnegut had a negative opinion of the impetus and results of most revolutions. The novel is full of contradictions, showing the good and bad aspects of capitalism, communism, messianic leaders, uprisings / revolutions, technology, the advances of science, etc. I don't see where the novel comes down decidedly in one camp or the other. However, one thing the book seems definitive about is in its belief that the general population are nothing more than sheep that easily drift from whim to whim. Like Shakespeare Mr. Vonnegut, in this book at least, seems to have a low opinion of the masses. You only have to pay attention to the "common man" during an election season or during the midst of the latest pop culture fad to see that Vonnegut's pessimism is justified.
"Player Piano" is not as brilliant as Vonnegut's later books. It meanders at times and could have been edited into a "tighter" novel. However, there are many moments scattered throughout that make it worth your attention. It is thought provoking and timely, despite being 60 years old. It endures, and that alone is reason enough to read it!
July 20, 2021
“‘The machines are to practically everybody what the white men were to the Indians. People are finding that, because of the way the machines are changing the world, more and more of their old values don’t apply any more. People have no choice but to become second-rate machines themselves, or wards of the machines.’”
Two weeks ago, it occurred to me that it might be a fine idea to read Kurt Vonnegut’s novels in their chronological order because I really enjoyed Slaugherhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle a couple of years ago, and so I bought myself the Library of America’s edition of Vonnegut’s novels and started with his first novel Piano Player. My first thought after finishing it was, “Damn, why didn’t you make notes from time to time? This way, you could have written an in-depth review on this remarkable novel, pondering on where Vonnegut proved prophetic or especially insightful with regard to human nature instead of just saying how much you liked it.” However, this book cast such a spell on me that I was too avid going from chapter to chapter and did not feel like stopping for a moment to jot anything down.
Drawing from his experience at General Electric, where he worked as a publicist, Vonnegut envisions an American society, after World War III, in which mechanization has vastly replaced the need for human labour and society is run according to the principle of efficiency. What used to be regarded as a “free market” has now, under the influence of the last war, become a planned market economy, where people are classified according to their I.Q.s and their lives are mapped out for them from their birth onwards and depending on their readiness to adapt to social norms, such as school exams. Individual choice plays no decisive role in anybody’s life anymore, and those who are deemed to be superfluous to the economy, the vast majority, are either enlisted in the Army or into the Reconstruction and Reclamation ranks, basically units of road builders – occupations that are more or less intended to give them something to do for the sake of keeping them busy. No one in this society can be said to suffer from unfulfilled physical needs and they also have a fair share of luxury, but still, the awareness of no longer doing something really useful, of mattering as an individual, is ubiquitous and gnawing away at many people, to different effects. Vonnegut uses the Shah of Bratpuhr, a foreign visitor to the United States, as a means of showing his readers various aspects of this dystopian society, with the Shah’s insouciant outspokenness raising questions that his guide prefers to sideline, e.g. when in the face of the super-computer EPICAC that now runs the American state and takes all major decisions, the Shah asks what people are still needed for. The storyline around the Shah is quite typical of dystopian novels in that it makes us travelling companions of someone who is unused to the social mores of the country he visits, just like in Swift’s satirical travelogue Gulliver’s Travels. The second strand of the novel, however, is centred around Doctor Paul Proteus, a 35-year old engineer whose career has been, up to now, exemplary but who nevertheless feels dissatisfied with his life. All of a sudden, Paul has to make up his mind whether to join the insurrection of the Ghost Shirts, a group of malcontents who, having infiltrated the state, want to take a stand against the inhuman mechanized economic system, or to betray them to those in power for the sake of continuing in his career. Ironically, at first, he does not so much as take a decision but tumbles from one fait accompli into another.
Admittedly, this novel is primarily meant as a criticism of capitalism and its tendency to regard human beings merely and foremost in terms of their usefulness for the market. This becomes obvious in the character of Rudy Hertz, a former worker in Dr. Proteus’s factory, whose skills have been translated into a pattern according to which the machines that have taken over his job run – just like the eponymous piano player works:
Already the first sentence of the novel, a reflection of Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, makes us expect the advent of civil war, and there will be a civil war alright later on iin the novel, but with a result that may be as surprising as it is able to show Vonnegut’s clear insight into human nature. Still, for all the pessimism that comes across in the ending of the novel – pessimism, which, nonetheless, is not devoid of a deep attitude of humanism –, the book seems to boil down to a message we had better consider in times where politics appear to hand over the sceptre to “science” – whatever this means, in the singular – and where figures and statistics clandestinely acquire the power to decide whether individual rights can be still afforded or are to be seen as a danger to all of us, namely:
”That there must be virtue in imperfection, for Man is imperfect, and Man is a creation of God.
That there must be virtue in frailty, for Man is frail, and Man is a creation of God.
That there must be virtue in inefficiency, for Man is inefficient, and Man is a Creation of God.
That there must be virtue in brilliance followed by stupidity, for Man is alternately brilliant and stupid, and Man is a creation of God.”
Those who claim that happiness may not be grand must have excluded dignity as one of its prerequisites.
Two weeks ago, it occurred to me that it might be a fine idea to read Kurt Vonnegut’s novels in their chronological order because I really enjoyed Slaugherhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle a couple of years ago, and so I bought myself the Library of America’s edition of Vonnegut’s novels and started with his first novel Piano Player. My first thought after finishing it was, “Damn, why didn’t you make notes from time to time? This way, you could have written an in-depth review on this remarkable novel, pondering on where Vonnegut proved prophetic or especially insightful with regard to human nature instead of just saying how much you liked it.” However, this book cast such a spell on me that I was too avid going from chapter to chapter and did not feel like stopping for a moment to jot anything down.
Drawing from his experience at General Electric, where he worked as a publicist, Vonnegut envisions an American society, after World War III, in which mechanization has vastly replaced the need for human labour and society is run according to the principle of efficiency. What used to be regarded as a “free market” has now, under the influence of the last war, become a planned market economy, where people are classified according to their I.Q.s and their lives are mapped out for them from their birth onwards and depending on their readiness to adapt to social norms, such as school exams. Individual choice plays no decisive role in anybody’s life anymore, and those who are deemed to be superfluous to the economy, the vast majority, are either enlisted in the Army or into the Reconstruction and Reclamation ranks, basically units of road builders – occupations that are more or less intended to give them something to do for the sake of keeping them busy. No one in this society can be said to suffer from unfulfilled physical needs and they also have a fair share of luxury, but still, the awareness of no longer doing something really useful, of mattering as an individual, is ubiquitous and gnawing away at many people, to different effects. Vonnegut uses the Shah of Bratpuhr, a foreign visitor to the United States, as a means of showing his readers various aspects of this dystopian society, with the Shah’s insouciant outspokenness raising questions that his guide prefers to sideline, e.g. when in the face of the super-computer EPICAC that now runs the American state and takes all major decisions, the Shah asks what people are still needed for. The storyline around the Shah is quite typical of dystopian novels in that it makes us travelling companions of someone who is unused to the social mores of the country he visits, just like in Swift’s satirical travelogue Gulliver’s Travels. The second strand of the novel, however, is centred around Doctor Paul Proteus, a 35-year old engineer whose career has been, up to now, exemplary but who nevertheless feels dissatisfied with his life. All of a sudden, Paul has to make up his mind whether to join the insurrection of the Ghost Shirts, a group of malcontents who, having infiltrated the state, want to take a stand against the inhuman mechanized economic system, or to betray them to those in power for the sake of continuing in his career. Ironically, at first, he does not so much as take a decision but tumbles from one fait accompli into another.
Admittedly, this novel is primarily meant as a criticism of capitalism and its tendency to regard human beings merely and foremost in terms of their usefulness for the market. This becomes obvious in the character of Rudy Hertz, a former worker in Dr. Proteus’s factory, whose skills have been translated into a pattern according to which the machines that have taken over his job run – just like the eponymous piano player works:
”And here, now, this little loop in the box before Paul, here was Rudy as Rudy had been to his machine that afternoon – Rudy, the turner-on of power, the setter of speeds, the controller of the cutting tool. This was the essence of Rudy as far as his machine was concerned, as far as the war effort had been concerned. The tape was the essence distilled from the small, polite man with the big hands and the black fingernails; from the man who thought the world could be saved if everyone read a verse from the Bible every night; form the man who adored a collie for want of children; from the man who … What else had Rudy said that afternoon? Paul supposed the old man was dead now – or in his second childhood in Homestead.”
Already the first sentence of the novel, a reflection of Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, makes us expect the advent of civil war, and there will be a civil war alright later on iin the novel, but with a result that may be as surprising as it is able to show Vonnegut’s clear insight into human nature. Still, for all the pessimism that comes across in the ending of the novel – pessimism, which, nonetheless, is not devoid of a deep attitude of humanism –, the book seems to boil down to a message we had better consider in times where politics appear to hand over the sceptre to “science” – whatever this means, in the singular – and where figures and statistics clandestinely acquire the power to decide whether individual rights can be still afforded or are to be seen as a danger to all of us, namely:
”That there must be virtue in imperfection, for Man is imperfect, and Man is a creation of God.
That there must be virtue in frailty, for Man is frail, and Man is a creation of God.
That there must be virtue in inefficiency, for Man is inefficient, and Man is a Creation of God.
That there must be virtue in brilliance followed by stupidity, for Man is alternately brilliant and stupid, and Man is a creation of God.”
Those who claim that happiness may not be grand must have excluded dignity as one of its prerequisites.
December 3, 2014
There are probably several reasons why Kurt Vonnegut was such a popular writer, but I will give you two.
Reason one: His personality. Vonnegut had a distinct voice. Sarcastic and biting, yet also forever sticking up for the little guy. He was funny as hell. He had Personality - and it was this Personality that his readers adored. With each successive novel, his readership craved more of the same, which meant that the actual plot of the books became less important than the voice of Vonnegut himself speaking though narrators that resembled each other more and more, and all the narrators eventualy became not even thinly disguised versions of Vonnegut himself.
Reason two: The man knew his craft. Which, unfortunately I think, mattered less and less as the Personality took over. To get a sense of how gifted a writer he was - how tightly he could plot, how quickly he could develop a diverse range of characters, how expertly he could build tension and keep a reader's attention - one should read both the short stories found in Welcome to the Monkey House and his first novel Player Piano. In both these books the Personality of Vonnegut had yet to become the dominate force in his writing, and so the full range of his craftsmanship can be appreciated.
At least that's what I think.
Reason one: His personality. Vonnegut had a distinct voice. Sarcastic and biting, yet also forever sticking up for the little guy. He was funny as hell. He had Personality - and it was this Personality that his readers adored. With each successive novel, his readership craved more of the same, which meant that the actual plot of the books became less important than the voice of Vonnegut himself speaking though narrators that resembled each other more and more, and all the narrators eventualy became not even thinly disguised versions of Vonnegut himself.
Reason two: The man knew his craft. Which, unfortunately I think, mattered less and less as the Personality took over. To get a sense of how gifted a writer he was - how tightly he could plot, how quickly he could develop a diverse range of characters, how expertly he could build tension and keep a reader's attention - one should read both the short stories found in Welcome to the Monkey House and his first novel Player Piano. In both these books the Personality of Vonnegut had yet to become the dominate force in his writing, and so the full range of his craftsmanship can be appreciated.
At least that's what I think.
December 16, 2015
For his first book in 1952 Kurt Vonnegut made an entry in a long string of dystopian novels stretching back to (where else) Eugene Zamyatin's 1921 classic We. It's not the best entry.
The We Lineage
In order of quality:
1984
We
Brave New World
Player Piano
Anthem
These books all deal with futures in which social class has ossified and production has mechanized. They deal with the automation of society, and with socialism (in wildly different ways).
Vonnegut was a socialist. The way he deals with it is boring. The long section in the middle set at a company team-building retreat seems padded, even before we get to the complete play contained in it. And (as usual) he has no idea what to do with women. The new machines take away work from both genders: mechanical work for men, dishwashing for women. Seriously, that's it. Lead character Paul Proteus's wife is a shrew (although she does, in fairness, get one scene that's not bad).
Shitty Wives in Literature
Edith Stoner
Mildred Montag
Dominique Francon
Rosamond Vincy
Anita Proteus
Vonnegut's point - that people need to work to feel useful - seems surprisingly valid. I say surprisingly because not having to work sounds fine to me. But we continue to see unemployment as a great personal embarrassment, and we continue to more or less invent stuff for people to do. My job is about three levels removed from anything that could remotely be considered useful. So, decent point: simplistic and boring execution.
Vonnegut famously graded his own books. His best book by a long shot, Slaughterhouse-Five, gets a cocky A+, as (more arguably) does the okay Cat's Cradle. He gave Player Piano a B. I think he was being generous.
The We Lineage
In order of quality:
1984
We
Brave New World
Player Piano
Anthem
These books all deal with futures in which social class has ossified and production has mechanized. They deal with the automation of society, and with socialism (in wildly different ways).
Vonnegut was a socialist. The way he deals with it is boring. The long section in the middle set at a company team-building retreat seems padded, even before we get to the complete play contained in it. And (as usual) he has no idea what to do with women. The new machines take away work from both genders: mechanical work for men, dishwashing for women. Seriously, that's it. Lead character Paul Proteus's wife is a shrew (although she does, in fairness, get one scene that's not bad).
Shitty Wives in Literature
Edith Stoner
Mildred Montag
Dominique Francon
Rosamond Vincy
Anita Proteus
Vonnegut's point - that people need to work to feel useful - seems surprisingly valid. I say surprisingly because not having to work sounds fine to me. But we continue to see unemployment as a great personal embarrassment, and we continue to more or less invent stuff for people to do. My job is about three levels removed from anything that could remotely be considered useful. So, decent point: simplistic and boring execution.
Vonnegut famously graded his own books. His best book by a long shot, Slaughterhouse-Five, gets a cocky A+, as (more arguably) does the okay Cat's Cradle. He gave Player Piano a B. I think he was being generous.
July 13, 2021
I have enjoyed every Kurt Vonnegut book I read… until now.
Player Piano is Vonnegut’s first novel but his other books that I have read are so very good that I could not help but have high expectations for this one even though it is his debut. It is set in a future where society has been fully mechanized, humanity is fully served by machines resulting in demarcation among the masses who were formerly of the workforce, and a social divide where the managers and engineers are the elites living luxurious happy lives while the rest are bereft of purpose. The narrative mainly features Dr. Paul Proteus a disillusioned engineer who is beginning to feel that something is wrong with society and is disturbed by the meaningless lives of the masses. He eventually decides to do something about it.
What I love about Vonnegut’s books are his wonderful idiosyncratic humour, his snappy, witty prose, the eccentric short chapters, and the recurring refrains he uses in his later works. Player Piano is lacking in these beloved features, while it is not mundane or conventional it is oddly turgid and not compelling. This is one of the few of his books that were labeled as science fiction. If I remember correctly (do let me know if I am mistaken) only this book, The Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle were published and marketed as sci-fi. While his other works such as Slaughterhouse-Five and Galápagos use sci-fi elements like aliens, time travel, the far future, and such, they are used as satirical props rather than the main focus; and they are much better than Player Piano. The trouble is Player Piano does not work as sci-fi, we are told society is fully mechanized but it is not supported by any kind of vivid world-building that would give us a sense of what this world looks like. Machines are vaguely described in passing as automated but Vonnegut is not interested in describing any machine in any detail, only the resultant ennui they are causing to the people. Consequently, it is difficult to imagine how it would feel to live in this society.
Putting aside the sci-fi issue, the narrative suffers from a lack of focus, Vonnegut goes off on so many tangents that it plays hell with the narrative flow. Looking back at my review for Breakfast of Champions he did something similar there too, but the difference is Breakfast of Champions is often hilarious but Player Piano has a much lower quotient of humour. There is also no pacing to speak of, just when things are getting interesting the author goes off on a dull tangent that stops the flow of the plot, after a while, he resumes the story of Paul Proteus, but soon veers away again. I was interested in Paul’s attempt to change his life and what his wife’s reaction will be given that her values are the polar opposite of his. Unfortunately, Vonnegut keeps moving away from this storyline to introduce numerous other characters that I can not keep track of until I stopped caring. Eventually, I just gritted my teeth to plow through the novel and finish it. I should have abandoned it before the halfway point but Vonnegut keeps enticing me with the Paul side of the narrative.
I don't want to be overly critical of this book because I am a fan of Kurt Vonnegut, and this book is loved by many. While I have very little appreciation for it I am sure that its finer points must have escaped me. An author of Kurt Vonnegut’s caliber should always have the benefit of the doubt. Suffice to say that I personally cannot recommend this book but if you want to read it you may want to get opposing opinions elsewhere, or simply dive into it.
Player Piano is Vonnegut’s first novel but his other books that I have read are so very good that I could not help but have high expectations for this one even though it is his debut. It is set in a future where society has been fully mechanized, humanity is fully served by machines resulting in demarcation among the masses who were formerly of the workforce, and a social divide where the managers and engineers are the elites living luxurious happy lives while the rest are bereft of purpose. The narrative mainly features Dr. Paul Proteus a disillusioned engineer who is beginning to feel that something is wrong with society and is disturbed by the meaningless lives of the masses. He eventually decides to do something about it.
What I love about Vonnegut’s books are his wonderful idiosyncratic humour, his snappy, witty prose, the eccentric short chapters, and the recurring refrains he uses in his later works. Player Piano is lacking in these beloved features, while it is not mundane or conventional it is oddly turgid and not compelling. This is one of the few of his books that were labeled as science fiction. If I remember correctly (do let me know if I am mistaken) only this book, The Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle were published and marketed as sci-fi. While his other works such as Slaughterhouse-Five and Galápagos use sci-fi elements like aliens, time travel, the far future, and such, they are used as satirical props rather than the main focus; and they are much better than Player Piano. The trouble is Player Piano does not work as sci-fi, we are told society is fully mechanized but it is not supported by any kind of vivid world-building that would give us a sense of what this world looks like. Machines are vaguely described in passing as automated but Vonnegut is not interested in describing any machine in any detail, only the resultant ennui they are causing to the people. Consequently, it is difficult to imagine how it would feel to live in this society.
Putting aside the sci-fi issue, the narrative suffers from a lack of focus, Vonnegut goes off on so many tangents that it plays hell with the narrative flow. Looking back at my review for Breakfast of Champions he did something similar there too, but the difference is Breakfast of Champions is often hilarious but Player Piano has a much lower quotient of humour. There is also no pacing to speak of, just when things are getting interesting the author goes off on a dull tangent that stops the flow of the plot, after a while, he resumes the story of Paul Proteus, but soon veers away again. I was interested in Paul’s attempt to change his life and what his wife’s reaction will be given that her values are the polar opposite of his. Unfortunately, Vonnegut keeps moving away from this storyline to introduce numerous other characters that I can not keep track of until I stopped caring. Eventually, I just gritted my teeth to plow through the novel and finish it. I should have abandoned it before the halfway point but Vonnegut keeps enticing me with the Paul side of the narrative.
I don't want to be overly critical of this book because I am a fan of Kurt Vonnegut, and this book is loved by many. While I have very little appreciation for it I am sure that its finer points must have escaped me. An author of Kurt Vonnegut’s caliber should always have the benefit of the doubt. Suffice to say that I personally cannot recommend this book but if you want to read it you may want to get opposing opinions elsewhere, or simply dive into it.
May 2, 2021
This book shows the looming reality to encroaching technology as we see robots replace the human workforce in the industrial setting. Pre-programmed ways of thinking, conformity, and thinking outside-the-box all clash into themselves in Kurt Vonnegut's first story. I enjoyed this read.
March 20, 2021
4.5
страхотен Вонегът
страхотен Вонегът
July 14, 2017
Player Piano felt different from other Vonnegut books: the sentences weren’t as bare, the pages were full and his fingerprint felt more spread out. Chapters ran twenty pages long which allowed for little details to creep in (like how a phone becomes moist after talking on it for a few minutes) and the main message of the book felt more sunken into the story than usual. If Vonnegut’s prose is fast food and James Joyce a steak house, then Player Piano falls somewhere around Applebee’s but with good food.
---
Something close to Paul Proteus dies, and in an emotional state, he orders that its body be brought to his office. It isn’t until he sees the corpse in his office that he realizes his order made no sense. Empathy impedes reasoning.
People have all kinds of special skills which give them money, purpose and meaning. When people had jobs that used their special skills they complained about their jobs, and when jobs were scarce they complained about not having a job. We instinctively look at the ‘other’ and desire it; to be content is to not be human. Desire impedes gratitude.
Kroner and Finnerty find certainty in their beliefs: Kroner is a CEO of sorts and Finnerty becomes a leader of a movement to protest robots. Paul is left stagnant, not sure of what fulfills him. Uncertainty impedes progress.
There are so many little contradictions and truths spread throughout this book but everything seems to fall under the umbrella of “March Forward," which is Vonnegut’s cynical yet hopeful view of: yeah, we mess up, but keep trying to do better.
---
This was my last Vonnegut novel (I still have to read his short stories,) so I thought I would do a quick recap:
I’ve always been wowed by how Vonnegut could have hope for people even after he witnessed the horror at Dresden.
In Player Piano (1952) his view of humanity leaves room for the potential of good.
In Sirens of Titan (1959) he promotes looking within ourselves as a solution to our problems.
In Mother Night (1961) he finds romance.
In Cat’s Cradle (1963) a simple Bokononist greeting using our bare feet builds human connection (you should try it, it really does.)
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) shows the root of human goodness: be kind to ourselves and others.
Slaughterhouse-five (1969) positions life as worth living in spite of the horrors we create.
Breakfast of Champions (1973) shows how once you peel back all the crap in life and get down to its bare bones, you are left with ‘beams of light’ and a simple message: be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool!
In Galapagos (1985) he advocates for burning it all down, just like the aftermath of the robot protests. Sometimes a forest rots and needs a fire to clear it out so it can Move Forward.
Vonnegut championed simplicity, he was cynical optimism personified.
---
Something close to Paul Proteus dies, and in an emotional state, he orders that its body be brought to his office. It isn’t until he sees the corpse in his office that he realizes his order made no sense. Empathy impedes reasoning.
People have all kinds of special skills which give them money, purpose and meaning. When people had jobs that used their special skills they complained about their jobs, and when jobs were scarce they complained about not having a job. We instinctively look at the ‘other’ and desire it; to be content is to not be human. Desire impedes gratitude.
Kroner and Finnerty find certainty in their beliefs: Kroner is a CEO of sorts and Finnerty becomes a leader of a movement to protest robots. Paul is left stagnant, not sure of what fulfills him. Uncertainty impedes progress.
There are so many little contradictions and truths spread throughout this book but everything seems to fall under the umbrella of “March Forward," which is Vonnegut’s cynical yet hopeful view of: yeah, we mess up, but keep trying to do better.
---
This was my last Vonnegut novel (I still have to read his short stories,) so I thought I would do a quick recap:
I’ve always been wowed by how Vonnegut could have hope for people even after he witnessed the horror at Dresden.
In Player Piano (1952) his view of humanity leaves room for the potential of good.
In Sirens of Titan (1959) he promotes looking within ourselves as a solution to our problems.
In Mother Night (1961) he finds romance.
In Cat’s Cradle (1963) a simple Bokononist greeting using our bare feet builds human connection (you should try it, it really does.)
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) shows the root of human goodness: be kind to ourselves and others.
Slaughterhouse-five (1969) positions life as worth living in spite of the horrors we create.
Breakfast of Champions (1973) shows how once you peel back all the crap in life and get down to its bare bones, you are left with ‘beams of light’ and a simple message: be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool!
In Galapagos (1985) he advocates for burning it all down, just like the aftermath of the robot protests. Sometimes a forest rots and needs a fire to clear it out so it can Move Forward.
Vonnegut championed simplicity, he was cynical optimism personified.
April 5, 2024
A commendable early attempt at greatness, this was written before Vonnegut attained his whacky genius status. His later, weirder novels are better, but this one gave us a glimpse of things to come.
December 9, 2016
"The most beautiful peonies I ever saw," said Paul, "Were grown in almost pure cat excrement" (300).
Awesome...
I began to read this book the week SOL (an acronym Vonnegut would have loved.... like his EPICAC computer mainframe...) testing commenced at the high school I teach at... a full week, in other words, of licensed teachers getting paid to STARE at children take standardized computer-based examinations. These are the tests that apparently establish competence or confirm mental infirmity. The description of Player Piano on the dust jacket made my decision to read the book that much more poignant:
"Want the computer to solve all your problems? Want machines to give you everything you need? Want to be taken care of from cradle to grave by an industrial society that knows what is best for you? Want to find out what hell is really like?"
Most of the students I teach (in spite of the best efforts of their teachers...) would answer in the affirmative to each of the above questions. And furthermore, hell, for my 9th and 11th grade students, would be a room without a wall socket, cellphone reception, or a WiFi password. Dystopia? Ha!!!
As a Vonnegut fan / fan of dystopian-themed lit in general, I enjoyed Player Piano. I would not, however, recommend this as an introduction to Vonnegut for new readers--it lacks the fluidity, perceived brevity, and good-humored irreverence other books of his (Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, Timequake, Breakfast of Champions, etc.) possess. However, as a literary artifact--especially for devotees of Vonnegut's work--Player Piano is worth your time; evidence of his future philosophical meanderings and socio-political perspectives are (albeit in a primal state) embedded within.
Vonnegut's jabs at the higher education institutions of the future, in spite of the book's vintage (1952), read like prophesy. In the U.S., the plethora of hungry-for-profit universities, online PhD programs, "accelerated" degrees, and "Hollywood Upstairs Medical College-type" institutions (see The Simpsons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqImk...) tout the idea that "education = intelligence = respect = power", regardless of when/where/how said credentials are obtained. In Player Piano, protagonist Paul Proteus' realtor has a PhD in real estate, and he brags of his writing the "longest dissertation" of any real estate student at his university. Later in the book, a state dept. official is discredited and vocationally reclassified when his degree from Cornell is discovered incomplete (and therefore useless/meaningless) due to a mistakenly missing "physical education" credit. Education is the key, of course, but Vonnegut asks us to contemplate the practicality of the keys we choose to cut...
From page 150:
"Doctor Proteus--this is Mr. Haycox."
"How are you?" said Paul.
"'Dr.," said Mr. Haycox. "What kind of doctor?"
"Doctor of Science," said Paul.
Mr. Haycox seemed annoyed and disappointed. "Don't call that kind a doctor at all. Three kinds of doctors: dentists, vets, and physicians. You one of those?"
"No. Sorry."
"Then you ain't a doctor."
Later in the book, Vonnegut draws interesting (here comes that patented irreverence!) parallels between the waning Native American population of the 19th century U.S. frontier and humankind (imperfect, frail, inefficient, and "stupid"), in relation to the continued automation of industry and, well, of everything. Player Piano's rebellion, The "Ghost Shirt Society", is "...determined to disprove; that I'm no good, you're no good, that we're no good because we're human" (299). In a society where humans, their culture, and their potential contributions to the world are increasingly irrelevant in light of mechanical innovation, Paul Proteus comes to endorse a sort of philosophical luddism--not one rooted in techophobia but rather in necessity: "Men, by their nature, seemingly, cannot be happy unless engaged in enterprises that make them feel useful. They must, therefore, be returned to participating in such enterprises" (285).
I could have fun with this book, as a teacher, paired with some of my other favorite dystopian classics:
Fahrenheit 451,
Brave New World,
1984,
Heart of Darkness,
The Road.
Even though Player Piano isn't hitting on "all cylinders" in relation to some of Vonnegut's more complete works, there is early evidence of his poignant humor that seems absent in the other dystopian classics mentioned above. Give it a shot if you are a Vonnegut buff!
Awesome...
I began to read this book the week SOL (an acronym Vonnegut would have loved.... like his EPICAC computer mainframe...) testing commenced at the high school I teach at... a full week, in other words, of licensed teachers getting paid to STARE at children take standardized computer-based examinations. These are the tests that apparently establish competence or confirm mental infirmity. The description of Player Piano on the dust jacket made my decision to read the book that much more poignant:
"Want the computer to solve all your problems? Want machines to give you everything you need? Want to be taken care of from cradle to grave by an industrial society that knows what is best for you? Want to find out what hell is really like?"
Most of the students I teach (in spite of the best efforts of their teachers...) would answer in the affirmative to each of the above questions. And furthermore, hell, for my 9th and 11th grade students, would be a room without a wall socket, cellphone reception, or a WiFi password. Dystopia? Ha!!!
As a Vonnegut fan / fan of dystopian-themed lit in general, I enjoyed Player Piano. I would not, however, recommend this as an introduction to Vonnegut for new readers--it lacks the fluidity, perceived brevity, and good-humored irreverence other books of his (Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, Timequake, Breakfast of Champions, etc.) possess. However, as a literary artifact--especially for devotees of Vonnegut's work--Player Piano is worth your time; evidence of his future philosophical meanderings and socio-political perspectives are (albeit in a primal state) embedded within.
Vonnegut's jabs at the higher education institutions of the future, in spite of the book's vintage (1952), read like prophesy. In the U.S., the plethora of hungry-for-profit universities, online PhD programs, "accelerated" degrees, and "Hollywood Upstairs Medical College-type" institutions (see The Simpsons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqImk...) tout the idea that "education = intelligence = respect = power", regardless of when/where/how said credentials are obtained. In Player Piano, protagonist Paul Proteus' realtor has a PhD in real estate, and he brags of his writing the "longest dissertation" of any real estate student at his university. Later in the book, a state dept. official is discredited and vocationally reclassified when his degree from Cornell is discovered incomplete (and therefore useless/meaningless) due to a mistakenly missing "physical education" credit. Education is the key, of course, but Vonnegut asks us to contemplate the practicality of the keys we choose to cut...
From page 150:
"Doctor Proteus--this is Mr. Haycox."
"How are you?" said Paul.
"'Dr.," said Mr. Haycox. "What kind of doctor?"
"Doctor of Science," said Paul.
Mr. Haycox seemed annoyed and disappointed. "Don't call that kind a doctor at all. Three kinds of doctors: dentists, vets, and physicians. You one of those?"
"No. Sorry."
"Then you ain't a doctor."
Later in the book, Vonnegut draws interesting (here comes that patented irreverence!) parallels between the waning Native American population of the 19th century U.S. frontier and humankind (imperfect, frail, inefficient, and "stupid"), in relation to the continued automation of industry and, well, of everything. Player Piano's rebellion, The "Ghost Shirt Society", is "...determined to disprove; that I'm no good, you're no good, that we're no good because we're human" (299). In a society where humans, their culture, and their potential contributions to the world are increasingly irrelevant in light of mechanical innovation, Paul Proteus comes to endorse a sort of philosophical luddism--not one rooted in techophobia but rather in necessity: "Men, by their nature, seemingly, cannot be happy unless engaged in enterprises that make them feel useful. They must, therefore, be returned to participating in such enterprises" (285).
I could have fun with this book, as a teacher, paired with some of my other favorite dystopian classics:
Fahrenheit 451,
Brave New World,
1984,
Heart of Darkness,
The Road.
Even though Player Piano isn't hitting on "all cylinders" in relation to some of Vonnegut's more complete works, there is early evidence of his poignant humor that seems absent in the other dystopian classics mentioned above. Give it a shot if you are a Vonnegut buff!
July 22, 2010
For some reason I had thought that I had long ago run through the works of Kurt Vonnegut. He was one of the first writers whose books I can remember consciously deciding that I needed to read each and every one of. The moment is still clear in my memory- I had just been introduced to Kilgore Trout and his trunk of pulp novellas in Breakfast of Champions. I'm not quite sure what happened with that goal, but I'm guessing I lost the thread of the quest sometime after reading Galapagos back in high school. So it was with much joy that I received the news that my book club had decided to read Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano, published in 1952.
Dr. Paul Proteus lives in an allegedly utopian world. All industry has been mechanized, the sweat of the worker's brow replaced by the drip of oil from the pistons and pulleys manufacturing all the household goods, widgets and whatsits that EPICAC, a giant computer inhabiting the immenseness of the Carlsbad Caverns, has computed that Americans need in order to be happy. Only those who can program or repair the machines still have jobs in the traditional sense, the rest of the country's vast labor pool being forced to join either the army or what amounts to the Works Project Administration building bridges and roadways. As a member of the elite cadre that maintains the machines, and thus their power, you would think Proteus would be far more satisfied with his life. Yet he's not. He feels more at home slumming in bars with the disaffected across the river than he does in his immaculate home with his status-seeking wife and it's only a matter of time before this dissatisfaction with the world becomes out and out rebellion.
This book is classic Vonnegut in the sense that he has clearly seen the future repercussions of what his society was moving toward and railed against it as best he knew how. I can't help but draw comparisons to the rampant unemployment of today and the growing hordes of dispossessed unable to find even the most mundane of jobs. A service economy with no one to service. Vonnegut knew that, regardless of how often we rail against the strictures of employment, the majority of people derive satisfaction in earning an honest dollar. Remove this obligation and you are also likely to remove the sense of self worth a person has. Regardless of whether or not it's healthy to base one's self worth on their employability, this is the cultural message we inherit at birth- the value of honest labor. Of course, it's easy to rail against a system that disenfranchises millions but, as Vonnegut shows in Player Piano, it's damn near impossible to root it out.
What is missing from Player Piano, and the reason I can't give it that fifth star, is the trademark sense of humor that runs rampant through his other books. Sure, he's got his dystopian world and his biting satire but there is no sense of detachment or whimsy here. This is Vonnegut at his most acerbic, the cynicism that he would return to in his final years of writing during the Bush reign. This is a book written by a man who fully understands the harm that humans inevitably wreak upon ourselves and our world, but who has yet to admit to himself that it's all just one giant joke and the best thing we can do is lean back, sip our whiskey, and say "so it goes."
Dr. Paul Proteus lives in an allegedly utopian world. All industry has been mechanized, the sweat of the worker's brow replaced by the drip of oil from the pistons and pulleys manufacturing all the household goods, widgets and whatsits that EPICAC, a giant computer inhabiting the immenseness of the Carlsbad Caverns, has computed that Americans need in order to be happy. Only those who can program or repair the machines still have jobs in the traditional sense, the rest of the country's vast labor pool being forced to join either the army or what amounts to the Works Project Administration building bridges and roadways. As a member of the elite cadre that maintains the machines, and thus their power, you would think Proteus would be far more satisfied with his life. Yet he's not. He feels more at home slumming in bars with the disaffected across the river than he does in his immaculate home with his status-seeking wife and it's only a matter of time before this dissatisfaction with the world becomes out and out rebellion.
This book is classic Vonnegut in the sense that he has clearly seen the future repercussions of what his society was moving toward and railed against it as best he knew how. I can't help but draw comparisons to the rampant unemployment of today and the growing hordes of dispossessed unable to find even the most mundane of jobs. A service economy with no one to service. Vonnegut knew that, regardless of how often we rail against the strictures of employment, the majority of people derive satisfaction in earning an honest dollar. Remove this obligation and you are also likely to remove the sense of self worth a person has. Regardless of whether or not it's healthy to base one's self worth on their employability, this is the cultural message we inherit at birth- the value of honest labor. Of course, it's easy to rail against a system that disenfranchises millions but, as Vonnegut shows in Player Piano, it's damn near impossible to root it out.
What is missing from Player Piano, and the reason I can't give it that fifth star, is the trademark sense of humor that runs rampant through his other books. Sure, he's got his dystopian world and his biting satire but there is no sense of detachment or whimsy here. This is Vonnegut at his most acerbic, the cynicism that he would return to in his final years of writing during the Bush reign. This is a book written by a man who fully understands the harm that humans inevitably wreak upon ourselves and our world, but who has yet to admit to himself that it's all just one giant joke and the best thing we can do is lean back, sip our whiskey, and say "so it goes."
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