Player Piano

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Here, in the basin of the river bend, the Mohawks had overpowered the Algonquins, the Dutch the Mohawks, the British the Dutch, the Americans the British. Now, over bones and rotten palings and cannon balls and arrowheads, there lay a triangle of steel and masonry buildings, a half-mile on each side—the Illium Works. Where men had once howled and hacked at one another, and fought nip-and-tuck with nature as well, the machines hummed and whirred and clicked, and made parts for baby carriages and bottle caps, motorcycles and refrigerators, television sets and tricycles—the fruits of peace.

there wasn’t a true right angle anywhere. The house seemed to have twisted and stretched on its foundations until it had found a position of comfort for all of its parts—like a sleeping dog.

“I’m doctor of cowshit, pigshit, and chickenshit,” he said. “When you doctors figure out what you want, you’ll find me out in the barn shoveling my thesis.”

“Nobody’s so damn well educated that you can’t learn ninety per cent of what he knows in six weeks. The other ten per cent is decoration.”

“Almost nobody’s competent, Paul. It’s enough to make you cry to see how bad most people are at their jobs. If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.”

“Sarge, what was the best piece you ever had?” “A little redheaded half-Swede, half-Egyptian in Farafangana,” said the Sarge without hesitation. “Boy! I hope that’s where they send me.” That much of a fine old American military tradition, Paul supposed, would always be alive—send me where the tail is.

“One minute, they ask you should go out and bust both arms and legs so’s they can say how tough Cornell is. Then the next minute, they want you should live like a goddam missionary,” said Purdy bitterly. “Like in the Army,” said McCloud.

both were likewise broke—forever broke, building flamboyant mansions in Cayuga Heights, buying new cars every six months, dressing expensively….