Hypocrite: Fred Rosewater's wife is said to despise him for being so poor and dull, while having failed to notice that she's every bit as poor and every bit as dull as he is. note In fairness, since he's the breadwinner of their household, her being as poor as him is pretty much inevitable. The author is considered from a religious point of view an atheist, but I prefer the term ‘humanist’ – the same I use in my own census poll – because he still cares about human beings and believes we have a future as a species, despite massive evidence to the contrary. The Baby Trap: Anita got Paul to marry her by claiming to be pregnant. Not only was she not pregnant, she actually can't have children at all. Sylvia Rosewater, who was born Sylvia DuVrais Zetterling, is from Paris. She's married to Eliot and eventually started to dislike him. Her father is the greatest living cellist. Her mother sponsors painters. She eventually divorces Eliot and enters a convent. And Samuel bought newspapers, and preachers, too. He gave them this simple lesson to teach, and they taught it well: Anybody who thought that the United States of America was supposed to be a Utopia was a piggy, lazy, God-damned fool. Samuel thundered that no American factory hand was worth more than eighty cents a day. And yet he could be thankful for the opportunity to pay a hundred thousand dollars or more for a painting by an Italian three centuries dead. And he capped this insult by giving paintings to museums for the spiritual elevation of the poor. The museums were closed on Sundays.

Some folk do benefit by the legal arrangements of corporate capitalism. There are "about seven" in Rosewater County, Indiana for example. But aside from them, it's the fraudsters who end up on top. Legal arrangements being what they are, the corporate world is, as the Romans knew it would be, like the "1812 Overture played on a kazoo." That is to say a false representation of something magnificent: the instinct to do something beneficial for ones fellow man. He was the youngest, the shortest, and by all odds the least Anglo-Saxon male employee in the firm. He was put to work under the most senile partner, Thurmond McAllister, a sweet old poop who was seventy-six. He would never have been hired if the other partners hadn't felt that McAllister's operations could do with just a touch more viciousness. However, Vonnegut manages to offer some of the best advice EVER for new human beings...and the rest of us, rich and poor, would do well to follow his lesson:Non c'è nulla di intelligente da dire su un massacro. Si suppone che tutti siano morti, e non abbiano più niente da dire o da pretendere. Dopo un massacro tutto dovrebbe tacere, e infatti tutto tace, sempre, tranne gli uccelli. E gli uccelli cosa dicono? Tutto quello che c'è da dire su un massacro, cose come "Puu-tii-uiit?" Author Filibuster: Vonnegut's characters (particularly Eliot Rosewater and Kilgore Trout) are often surrogate mouthpieces for his social and political views.

Vonnegut is also notable because he was one of the first modern science fiction authors to get serious attention in the literary world. Although your literature professors (and Vonnegut himself) may try to tell you he's not actually a science fiction writer, the aliens and time-travel seem to disagree. The 'Verse: Vonnegut's stories and characters have a tendency to overlap with one another. If it's one of his fictional works, expect at least a cameo from Kilgore Trout and/or the Tralfamadorians. Food Porn: Many delicious-sounding recipes are used as a framing device (although Vonnegut explains in the preface that he has tinkered around with the recipes, which are based on recipes from various real life cookbooks, and that they will not work if tried at home). They are also a reference to Rudy's abilities as a cook, and how he feeds and cares for his family as a means of atoning for the damage he has done. It's like I'm out in a big boat, and I see one fellow in a rowboat who's tired of rowing and wants a free ride, and another fellow who's drowning. Who would you expect me to rescue? Mr. Cedar - who's just tired of rowing and wants a free ride? Or those men out there who are drowning? Any ten year old child will give you the answer to that. E' un libro contro la guerra?"-"Si,"dissi, "credo.""Sa cosa rispondo quando uno mi dice che sta scrivendo un libro contro la guerra? Dico: perchè non scrive un libro contro i ghiacciai allora?" Quello che voleva dire, naturalmente, era che ci saranno sempre guerre, che impedire una guerra è facile come fermare un ghiacciaio. E lo credo anch'io.”The New England premiere of the show was performed from April 14–24, 2016 by Cape Cod Community College, in West Barnstable Massachusetts. The cast was made up of primarily students and most had heard of the book (Kurt Vonnegut was a resident of the area) however not many knew that it had been made into a musical. As a story, Vonnegut is his usual hilarious self, letting his character as narrator drop several times and revealing personal asides. Beneath the surface, the author conveys an allegory about our spiritually hollow lives, a not so subtle dig at capitalism, having more money than sense. Noah and his brother George inherited from their pioneer father six hundred acrees of farmland, land as dark and rich as chocolate cake, and a small saw factory that was nearly bankrupt. War came. It was hard to not think of that department, and of the rather upsetting current political climate, as I was reading “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater”.

The Rosewater Foundation has more money than God. When Eliot Rosewater, the current head, starts making people nervous with all his talk of redistributing wealth, Norman Mushari decides to put Eliot's sanity to test in court and reaches out to the Rhode Island branch of the Rosewater family. Kurt Vonnegut, Junior was an American novelist, satirist, and most recently, graphic artist. He was recognized as New York State Author for 2001-2003. Vonnegut knew stuff about corporate life that most folk don't. Namely that 1) no one owns the corporation and 2) that the essence of the corporation is the separation of control (dominium in legalese) and benefit (usufructus). The corporation is essentially and magnificently useless. It is an arrangement that would have driven Roman lawyers insane, mainly because they equated control and benefit: if you got the use of something, you owned it. Breaking the link between control and benefit was to them dangerous, not to say impossible. Accessibility Statement: Unfortunately, since we don’t own our building, we’re limited in the accessibility accommodations we can provide, but want to make sure that customers have an understanding of what to expect before visiting.

While Vonnegut doesn’t personally appear in his own novels, his alter egos most certainly do. Partially based on a fellow writer, but also undoubtedly Vonnegut himself, one of my favorite characters, Kilgore Trout, makes his first appearance in a Vonnegut novel. Likewise, In 'Pearls Before Swine,' Stephas Pastis provides commentary in his own appearances. Something else worth mentioning, Eliot Rosewater’s sporadic attempts to do good don’t offer much of a plot, but again like the comic strip, his actions are replete with social commentary. Maybe more could be said about the two, but I’ll end the comparison there. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is a solid Vonnegut read! And did I mention this was Kilgore Trout’s first appearance in Vonnegut’s work? 4.5 stars

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. Inspired, Eliot gives, in a way that can be regarded as either Christian or Socialist – to each according to their needs. Vonnegut, embarrassed by his allegory, disclaims, "All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental, and should not be construed." And so the construction must end here. Thank you. The Atoner: Eliot Rosewater develops a Thing about supporting volunteer firemen after he kills some of them in World War II Germany, mistaking them for soldiers. In this book, Vonnegut tells the story of Eliot Rosewater, a millionaire and trustee of a large fortune, who develops a *gasp* social conscience and wants to give away his money to poor people; this leads a lawyer working for his corporation to think he is mentally insane. Incidentally, if the trustee is proven to be mentally unfit, the money passes down to the nearest relative, and the lawyer is hoping to grab a slice of the pie for himself in the transition process.

By the time I read Eliot Rosewater’s story, I could still laugh, thanks to my then mid-teen sister’s youthful giggling presence in my life, but it was after my ‘accident’, so Mr. Rosewater was for me a bitterly sardonic type of laugh.