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The Sirens of Titan
Aug. 26th, 2020 10:39 pmThe Sirens of Titan is the second novel by Kurt Vonnegut that I've read - and I wasn't expecting it to be funny. But the first chapter is a hilarious and exquisitely written piece of genius.
The book tells the story of a man who has fallen foul of a phenomenon in space and materialises at different places in the solar system on a specific schedule, and can also see the whole future of humanity. He orchestrates various events he already knows will happen and believes he is manipulating people in order to bring them about.
Unfortunately, after the first chapter, the book got progressively weirder, less funny and more problematic for me. There's half a page of racist stereotyping, two sentences of random homophobia - and the only female character is both presented and treated incredibly badly (towards the end, she *thanks* one of the other characters for raping her earlier in the story - yikes!).
There's a lot that's very interesting about the book, and I definitely saw some of the origins of The Hitchhiker's Guide in some of the plot twists. But it's ultimately very sad, and also suggests that the whole of human existence is entirely futile, which is a bit depressing.
I'm not sure how much I really enjoyed it overall, but I'm glad I read it and may look out for some more of Vonnegut's work in the future.
The book tells the story of a man who has fallen foul of a phenomenon in space and materialises at different places in the solar system on a specific schedule, and can also see the whole future of humanity. He orchestrates various events he already knows will happen and believes he is manipulating people in order to bring them about.
Unfortunately, after the first chapter, the book got progressively weirder, less funny and more problematic for me. There's half a page of racist stereotyping, two sentences of random homophobia - and the only female character is both presented and treated incredibly badly (towards the end, she *thanks* one of the other characters for raping her earlier in the story - yikes!).
There's a lot that's very interesting about the book, and I definitely saw some of the origins of The Hitchhiker's Guide in some of the plot twists. But it's ultimately very sad, and also suggests that the whole of human existence is entirely futile, which is a bit depressing.
I'm not sure how much I really enjoyed it overall, but I'm glad I read it and may look out for some more of Vonnegut's work in the future.
