Wealth in kindness

Two books to post about tonight: #417. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut, and #143. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides.

First off, Rosewater. I read in a few places that Vonnegut rated this book highly among his work, and even the back cover of the copy I read claims it to be "Vonnegut's funniest satire". I guess perhaps he thought this because it was a bit politically based...or maybe because he was sort of making social commentary? Either way, I'm not sure I appreciated the book as much as its author did.

The style reminded me a lot of Catch-22, in the sense that it kept schizophrenically changing subjects and viewpoints, often approaching queer thoughts and situations that I felt like I wasn't keeping up with.

I have been watching the t.v. show Parks and Recreation lately though, and I kept being reminded of Bobby Newport in Eliot. I liked him (as much as I could like a character in a book I wasn't very engaged in) for his sincerity and innocence. 

I guess looking back now, it seems like Mushari and Fred's role seemed a weakly employed tactic to get the end result of Eliot to give away all his money. They seemed to get tossed away at the end, just as throughout the entire plot, Mushari's whereabouts only popped up whenever Vonnegut seemed to remember that he had neglected him a bit too long. Obviously that probably wasn't his intent, but I felt it was poorly executed.

I read The Virgin Suicides online, as I did the other previous melancholy feminine favorites. It makes the idea of suicide rather pretty and like a fairy tale. There was a misty, still, airiness that was captured through the narrator's experiences - it was a perfect choice to tell the story from an observer's point of view. Distance is what captured the mystery that was so vital in describing the girls, and watching the girls through windows and dreams was the reason for my continued interest and hunger (just as the boys') for more contact.

I look at my claw foot tub with its long, draped linen curtains and imagine what a scenic suicide I would conduct there, like Cecilia. Not in the emo, self deprecating way, but in an artfully serene, natural way. 

The question I cannot overcome though, is how the Lisbon parents could ever have continued living the way they did after Cecilia. Would parents not want to rid the house of such negative vibes, if only for their daughters? Why lock them up, and force imprisonment on them in a decaying environment? Mr. Lisbon, I could accept. But his wife was outlandishly out-of-control, and her uptight precautions were the saddest part, resulting in the demise of the family.

Perhaps I will watch the movie. Kirsten Dunst seems an appropriate Lux.