q's review
Player Piano
by Kurt Vonnegut
q's review
Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
q's review
rating:
Except for the ones he hadn't written yet, I read Vonnegut's novels in 1985/86. I vaguely recalled Player Piano as one I particularly liked, as it was drier than most of the others and had a tighter structure. I suppose it is and does, though I now don't recall the others well enough to be sure.
It's concerned with a distopian U.S. in which almost all human labor has been replaced by machines. When I read it in the 1980s, automation was still a major fear; I don't know about 1952, when it was written. Now that Asian children seem to be what U.S. workers cannot hope to compete with, the book loses a lot of its resonance. Also, while there are a few male characters who are relatively complex, all female characters are completely flat; this grates a bit.
Still, Vonnegut has some interesting things to say about humanity's needs and how lousy we are at taking care of some of the important ones. And it's structured and written well. Not bad for a first novel, heh.
It's concerned with a distopian U.S. in which almost all human labor has been replaced by machines. When I read it in the 1980s, automation was still a major fear; I don't know about 1952, when it was written. Now that Asian children seem to be what U.S. workers cannot hope to compete with, the book loses a lot of its resonance. Also, while there are a few male characters who are relatively complex, all female characters are completely flat; this grates a bit.
Still, Vonnegut has some interesting things to say about humanity's needs and how lousy we are at taking care of some of the important ones. And it's structured and written well. Not bad for a first novel, heh.
