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Timequake
Timequake
Timequake
Audiobook4 hours

Timequake

Written by Kurt Vonnegut

Narrated by Arthur Bishop

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

From the beloved author of Slaughterhouse-Five an Cat's Cradle comes Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake--“Wry and trenchant...highly entertaining.”—The New York Times Book Review

According to Kurt Vonnegut's alter ego, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a global timequake will occur on February 13, 2001, at 2:27 p.m. It will be the moment when the universe suffers a crisis of conscience: Should it go on expanding indefinitely, or collapse and make another great big BANG? For its own cosmic reasons, it decides to back up a decade to 1991, giving the world a 10-year case of deja vu, making everybody and everything do exactly what they'd done during the past decade, for good or ill, a second time.

As a character in, and a brilliant chronicler of, this bizarre event, Kurt Vonnegut casts his wicked wit and his unique perspective on life as he lived it and observed it, for more than seventy years.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 28, 2015
ISBN9781427264084
Timequake
Author

Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut is the author of many novels including the internationally best-selling Slaughterhouse 5, Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions.

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Reviews for Timequake

Rating: 3.543926641100076 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

1,309 ratings38 reviews

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Really not sure what to make of this book!

    The blurb on the back says:

    "Timequake explores what happens to Vonnegut when, in 2001, a 'timequake' hits. The universe has a decade of self-doubt, shrinking back to 1991 and forcing everybody to relive the last 10 years of their lives exactly as they had before, but without free will. The same mistakes. The same corny jokes. The same doses of clap."

    Now, I don't know what you think that's going to be, but I certainly wasn't expecting the wierd and wonderful mix of fiction, autobiography, musings and history that I found. Based very losely around the 'timequake', Vonnegut explores the ideas around losing free-will for 10 years and then suddenly finding yourself 'free' again. Would you cope? What would you do? When Free Will kicks back in, would you notice or would you sit back and expect it all to happen again? Using his alter-ego, fictional author Kilgore Trout, as well as his own personal experiences and those of other fictional and real people he covers a wide range of thoughts and situations.

    I found this an eclectic read, but not a book that I could sit and read for any length of time. Each chapter is only 2 or 3 pages and then we jump, like a butterfly, to the next chapter and next set of, not necessarily related, musings.

    I was told Vonnegut was one of 'the authors to read' and I still believe that - just don't do what I did and start with this book. I don't know if he wrote any more after it, but he certainly wrote it expecting it to be his last. Read an earlier once first!

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Quite a unique story. I found it quite enthralling. It did not disappoint.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I'm not sure exactly what I've just read but I found it enjoyable and engaging and thus a fast read. Some of the autobiographical bits made me feel awkward reading them as they felt fairly intimate and other times I felt like Vonnegut was a crotchety old man yelling to get off his lawn. The book does make me wonder if I'm not officially out to pasture, living daily my own personal little timequake, but at the same time it made me want to make sure each day was low-key positive so I would be unexpectedly pleased to repeat it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Enjoyed.
    But I do love him.
    Well worth your time.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Everything in this novel works because it shouldn't. A story mainly revolving around a discarded first draft and characters explained from the point of view by the author should be a mess. But Vonnegut makes it work because they real story is hidden within how he tells the story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    My favorite Vonnegut yet!

    The wit....word play....surreal concepts....all are here....elegantly strung together, as only Kurt could
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The premise is brilliant: Once upon a time the universe decided to rewind things ten years. Everyone has to relive the previous ten years over again. Some are put back in prison. Others are brought back to life. Everyone realizes rather quickly that they can't do anything to alter things. They relive an entire decade as slaves to their own former choices.Things get interesting when they re-approach the 10 year mark where the universe decided to do grand rewind. After living ten years on auto-pilot, people don't know what to do with free will!Unfortunately, the actual book doesn't live up to the brilliance of the plot. Vonnegut's meandering random style—which in other works is unique and endearing—is too scattered here. There are moments of brilliance but, in the end, too much confusion.Ting-a-ling!
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This book starts out with an interesting premise, but fails to deliver. The universe gets tired of expanding, and begins to contract. It resets itself 10 years into the past, and everyone has to live the 10 years over, exactly as they lived it before, with no chance to change. It's just on autopilot. Unfortunately, the book tends to ramble, and loses the story in what might be autobiographical bits and various rambling, unconnected thoughts of the author. This could have worked, and did in places, but not consistently. And somewhere around the middle of the book, the author develops a most annoying habit of repeating phrases ad nauseum, apparently deciding they were so witty they needed to be said for every character that came through and in every chapter, or just getting the idea that something was funny. The worst of it was the incessant repeating of what the author once said was "his favorite joke" - leading it to be repeated 90 times a day by everyone following his death. And he said it about a dozen times in this novel. This would not be viable even if it had been genuinely funny the first time it was said. Good points about the book: the appearance of Kilgore Trout. The use of oddball imagery and strange situations that the author is known for. An intriguing premise.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What a completely different boot than I thought it would be. Probably one of the best surprises this year for me. I’m giving a second listen. Yes it’s that interesting.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Then free will kicked back in. Ting a ling mf.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Thanks God it is finished. An excruciatingly long array of dad-jokes arranged randomly and interconnected by swear words that seemed places there by a cheeky juvenile teenager or a senile old man. Now back to read something that makes sense.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Too convoluted for me
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    At turns funny, coarse and profound with Mr. Vonnegut a good companion.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I bought Timequake back when it came out in 1997. I remember being excited when I saw it on the book shelf. A new Kurt Vonnegut novel! Wow! I discovered Vonnegut when I was in college, maybe 5 years earlier, and greedily tore through most of his bibliography while I was in school and studying American Literature anyway. Some of his books I liked more than others, but I liked all of them to a degree nonetheless. Not a bad apple in the lot (imo). However, the reviews at the time (in 1997, for Timequake) weren't good. "Not really a novel," they said. "Wanders all over the place," they commented. "Best skipped," they opined. I chalked this up to a last effort by an aging novelist that might have been a cash grab and not much more. So it sat on my shelf for the last 25 years next to all of his other books, some with spines considerably well worn and creased, this one pristine and untouched.Then a few days ago, a friend from work recommended it. Said it was his favorite Vonnegut novel. "What?" I thought. "Has it achieved some sort of cult following in the last 25 years that I've been quietly and ashamedly unaware of?" Well, I'm not sure about that, but I will tell you this: it was an absolute treat to get to read some fresh new (to me) Vonnegut this late in the game. As he has been dead for 15 years, I certainly didn't consider I'd be in this position again. I guess I'd forgotten about Timequake. But having this opportunity has been delightful.That said, were the critics correct? Somewhat. It isn't really a novel. And Vonnegut kind of says that in his introduction (more on that later). It's a lot of autobiography mixed in with fictional characters and elements relating to the titular quake. It does wander all over the place. True. But for someone who relishes his writing, that was fine. I don't really expect a solidly defined beginning, middle, and end from a Vonnegut book, so I wasn't disappointed when I didn't get one. Is it best skipped? Absolutely not for any fan. Read and enjoy. I would just recommend that this not be your introduction to Vonnegut. Get some of his more popular novels under your belt first. Maybe even save this for the absolute last. Learn a little about the man before you read this. Pick up his biography if you have the time, or at least skim his Wikipedia page. He references many real people from his life in this book and having that knowledge, plus some idea of his past works, puts all of that into context.Now, about his introduction. I'm fascinated. Did he really write an entire novel (Timequake One) just to throw most of it out, keep certain pieces, and write this novel (Timequake Two) around its filleted remains? He says he spent 10 years writing Timequake One, and the timequake in the novel occurs over a period of 10 years. Is this a coincidence? Doubtful. It would be a marvelous work of metafiction if this was merely a structure for telling the story that he really wanted to tell, which was Timequake Two. I suspect he is being completely up-front and honest in his introduction, but I was left with a grain of doubt.Let me share one more iota with you. From Chapter 5:"I still think up short stories from time to time, as though there were money in it. The habit dies hard. There used to be fleeting fame in it, too... No more. All I do with short story ideas now is rough them out, credit them to Kilgore Trout, and put them in a novel."It's a shame, I think, that he stopped. There was no market for them, he said. But that's not true at all. Welcome to the Monkey House is still one of my favorite collections of all time. I would have jumped at the chance to read another like it. He had wonderful ideas. Those he credited to Trout in Timequake would have made fascinating stories if he had bothered to flesh them out to three thousand or nine thousand or even fifteen thousand words.Contrast that to this passage I recently came across from Stephen King. It's in the introduction to his collection Everything's Eventual. He says:"I've continued to write short stories over the years, partly because the ideas still come from time to time—beautifully compressed ideas that cry out for three thousand words, maybe nine thousand, fifteen thousand at the very most—and partly because it's the way I affirm, at least to myself, the fact that I haven't sold out, no matter what the more unkind critics may think. Short stories are still piecework, the equivalent of those one-of-a-kind items you can buy in an artisan's shop. If, that is, you are willing to be patient and wait while it's made by hand in the back room."I shudder at the thought of comparing King to Vonnegut or vice versa. They are very different creatures. Their output is akin to apples and oranges, technically both fruit but very different experiences once you dig into them. Or rather, sometimes you want a cold beer and sometimes you want a dry Merlot. It all depends on what you are in the mood for, or what you are pairing them with. Is one better than they other? Opinions vary. But I digress.I appreciate King's approach to writing. He just wants to tell stories and doesn't care so much about the format. Granted, given the money he's made, perhaps he can afford to expend time on short stories with little profit to be gained. Perhaps Vonnegut only wanted to focus on novels which he felt he could sell. Still though, after 10 years working on Timequake One, if he had instead come out with a book of the short stories he credited to Kilgore Trout, I would have snatched that off the bookshelf just as quickly. I think the lesson to be learned here is from King. Writers should write. And if what they come up with is best suited for short form fiction, write it. Sort out what to do with it later.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Probably my least favorite of Vonnegut's books. It's still okay, but too self-referential and solipsistic. I'm surprised a reference to this book hasn't shown up in Lost yet.... Oh right, Abrams only likes to mention the popular books.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A fascinating and fun blend of fiction and autogiography. I suppose this is not too surprizing, given that Vonnegut's real life is too unbelievable for fiction.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    My least favourite Vonnegut I've read by quite a margin. Some wonderful little bits of writing dotted through (I love the phrase "Clinically bughouse" ) but in general it became a real chore to read, especially when moving away from his own life.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is Mr. Vonnegut's last book - half science fiction, half biography, done in a way that only Vonnegut can do. First - it shouldn't work. But it does. With short, pragmatic paragraphs, that get straight to the point - its an easy read with deep undertones.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This isn't a typical novel, but then Vonnegut wasn't a typical novelist. I've only read a handful of his books, but many don't have much of a plot, and the author himself is frequently a character. And he was ... a character, that is. I didn't know him, of course, but from his writing I sense a man of strong opinion and deep dismay about what people sometimes do. War was one of the big ones because he'd served in a big one. He had first hand knowledge of what they were like. Promoted as necessary, honorable, and glorious by those who start them, they were (and continue to be) just premeditated ways of spreading death, destruction, and misery. He was, perhaps, more of a disillusioned idealist than a cynic.

    If you approach Timequake as a typical novel, you'll probably be dissatisfied. It's primarily an autobiography liberally splashed with history and personal commentary loosely tied together with illustrative fictional anecdotes. But it is entertaining. It is informative. It may not be a great novel, but it is a good book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    TimeQuake seems like Kurt Vonnegut's farewell to his readers. It is not a proper novel at all, but a mish-mash of an idea for a novel, various short stories by his alter-ego, Kilgore Trout, and recollections of Vonnegut's extended family. I listened to the audio version of this book on a long car trip, which was perfect, because there was no long plot to get lost in, merely a series of amusing anecdotes.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Not one of his most inspired books, but enjoyable nevertheless. Silly me, I just really like a plot and this didn't have one. Ting-a-ling.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    There were maybe a dozen moments when I was laughing out loud with this book. Vonnegut has some fantastic criticisms of our society. However, I didn't enjoy the rambling, almost thought-flow style of the book. It's also extremely repetitive which was a conscious device, I'm certain, but for me it didn't add anything. I enjoyed Slaughterhouse Five, so I'm going to try another Vonnegut book before I decide if I love him or just respect him.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Basics

    In 2001, a timequake hits, which means everyone in the world must relive the last ten years of their life. They can’t change anything, and they have no free will. Though according to Kilgore Trout, that might not be different than things usually are.

    My Thoughts

    This is a very polarizing book among Vonnegut fans, and I can see why. The story of the timequake is not particularly strong. It’s mostly pushed to the wayside and replaced with personal stories from Vonnegut, making it partially autobiographical. Those portions of the book were very strong, heartfelt, interesting, a wonderful peek inside the life of a man I admire a great deal.

    But then he keeps eventually winding his way back to the timequake, which just isn’t quite as engaging, and I think he knew that. He struggled to make it work, but it falls short. There are a lot of clever moments, but resorting to repeating over and over that these characters are just reliving old stuff makes it feel stale. It pays off nicely when the timequake ends, and a lack of choice for so long makes everyone inert, having to be shaken out of intense ennui. But payoff doesn’t totally make up for some shaky spots.

    I think my main problem with mixing his own story with a fictional one is it’s not smooth at all. The transitions are jarring. It feels like two different books mashed together. With things that mostly work, at least for me, but the flow really doesn’t hit the mark.

    This is where a personal journey with a book is so important. All that fussing I just did doesn’t really mean a thing. Because I read this at a time when I needed it so badly. Vonnegut knew this was his last book. He was getting old, and he took this opportunity to talk about aging. Part of getting older is losing people, because everyone around you is getting older, too. So there are some bits in here about losing people he loved and how that made him feel.

    At first I thought that would be too heavy for me, because I recently lost someone very close to me. It turned out to be the best thing for me, because if there is anything that draws me to Vonnegut, it’s his world view. So even though it was an uneven tale with some choppy parts, this book spoke to me. I can’t ask for more than that.

    Final Rating

    4/5
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Seemed more like a transcript of a monologue than a Vonnegut book
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Plot: 2 stars
    Characters: 2 stars
    Style: 2 stars
    Pace: 2 stars

    I don't know why I remember liking Vonnegut. I have memories of loving Breakfast of Champions back in college, and thinking Galapagos wasn't half bad. This? Reads more like a rambling digression of a senile person who just wants to humble brag about a dull, limited life. Meh.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This isn't really a novel but an autobiographical ramble mixed with snippets about the timequake. Vonnegut fans will enjoy it especially the reemergence of SciFi writer Kilgore Trout (Vonnegut's alter-ego). Kilgore's prescription for PTA (Post Timequake Apathy) is the recurring theme: "You were sick, but now you are well again, and there is work to do."
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5

    According to this book's preface, Vonnegut spent the best part of a decade working off-and-on on a novel called Timequake, but just couldn't get it to gel; eventually he gave it up as a bad job and cannibalized the usable bits of it, mixing them up with scattershot bits of memoir and his own folksy philosophical musings. Real-life characters, often members of Vonnegut's own family, mix with fictional characters drawn from the novel - notable his sf-writing alter ego Kilgore Trout - and there's a similar blending of real-life and fictional events. Vonnegut does, quite carefully, indicate which is which in case readers get confused.

    The result is something that its publishers, equally carefully, don't bill as a novel. What it works best as is something that might be regarded as a rambling memoir but to me seems better considered as a snapshot of the interior of a fiction writer's mind while s/he's in the process of reminiscing: it's not that s/he is actually getting confused between real and invented events, just that both types have equal importance and, in a sense, equal validity. There are those mornings when you don't want to/aren't really yet awake enough to get out of bed, while at the same time you're not really asleep, and your mind seems to be wandering not under the control of your conscious impulse, mixing real events with whimsies and speculations and story ideas; that's what this reads like.

    I picked this up in expectation of a time-travel novel, so of course was chagrined to discover its true nature. Even so, I found it entertaining enough, irritatingly trite at times, amusing at others; the usual mix. Some of the many Kilgore Trout short stories that Vonnegut summarizes through the book would make, I think, pretty good Vonnegut stories; a pity he never wrote them. Overall, my verdict's a sort of ho-hum.

    The time-travel premise is pretty yummy, although one can see why Vonnegut had such difficulty constructing a coherent novel from it:

    The timequake of 2001 was a cosmic charley horse in the sinews of Destiny. At what was in New York City 2:27 p.m. on February 13th of that year, the Universe suffered a crisis in self-confidence. Should it go on expanding indefinitely? What was the point?

    It fibrillated with indecision. Maybe it should have a family reunion back where it all began, and then make great big BANG again.

    It suddenly shrunk ten years. It zapped me and everybody else back to February 17th, 1991, what was for me 7:51 a.m., and a line outside a blood bank in San Diego, California.

    For reasons best known to itself, though, the Universe canceled the family reunion, for the nonce at least. It resumed expansion. Which faction, if any, cast the deciding votes on whether to expand or shrink, I cannot say. . . .

    That the rerun lasted ten years, short a mere four days, some are saying now, is proof that there is a God, and that He is on the Decimal System. He has ten fingers and ten toes, just as we do, they say, and uses them when He does arithmetic.

    See what I mean about whimsy?

    Everyone in the world has to relive that decade doing exactly the same as they did on the first runthrough. They have to observe as passengers as they make all the same mistakes, undergo the same joys and tragedies, fall in and out of love with the same suitable or unsuitable people. At the end of the timequake, when the world once more reaches "what was in New York City 2:27 p.m. on February 13th" of 2001, free will is suddenly restored to the human population -- with devastating results. People who were walking or running tend to fall over when unexpectedly finding they have to take charge of their bodies once more; tough luck if you were going down a flight of stairs. Car drivers and plane pilots may find themselves with just moments before disaster to recover their sensibilities; too many of them don't, and so there's considerable carnage. And so on. Kilgore Trout is one of the few to realize what's going on . . .

    A few weeks ago I reread Philip K. Dick's Counter-Clock World, a novel based on a sciencefictional premise that was weird and wonderful and thought-provoking in the best skiffy fashion, yet at the same one that you could see from the outset was almost impossible to transform into a satisfactory novel. Sure enough, Dick wasn't really able to pull off Counter-Clock World. Yet I think I enjoyed his failed attempt more than I did Vonnegut's reaction to the same problem, which was to bottle out of the novel and instead produce this ragbag, however much it intermittently sparkles.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    "We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!"Timequake is not up to the standard of Vonnegut's earlier novels, and he knew it. Having read this book shortly after I read Palm Sunday, I found it very repetitive. He hits on similar themes in a lot of his books, and this one is no different. But repeating the same anecdotes, almost word-for-word? Well... it's still Vonnegut and it still put a melancholy smile on my face. I'm glad he was still farting around in his 70s.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This book starts out with an interesting premise, but fails to deliver. The universe gets tired of expanding, and begins to contract. It resets itself 10 years into the past, and everyone has to live the 10 years over, exactly as they lived it before, with no chance to change. It's just on autopilot. Unfortunately, the book tends to ramble, and loses the story in what might be autobiographical bits and various rambling, unconnected thoughts of the author. This could have worked, and did in places, but not consistently. And somewhere around the middle of the book, the author develops a most annoying habit of repeating phrases ad nauseum, apparently deciding they were so witty they needed to be said for every character that came through and in every chapter, or just getting the idea that something was funny. The worst of it was the incessant repeating of what the author once said was "his favorite joke" - leading it to be repeated 90 times a day by everyone following his death. And he said it about a dozen times in this novel. This would not be viable even if it had been genuinely funny the first time it was said. Good points about the book: the appearance of Kilgore Trout. The use of oddball imagery and strange situations that the author is known for. An intriguing premise.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Only an author who is very well established and very much respected could get away with having written this book. I've seen it described in various locations (as I read up on it after, trying to understand what the HECK I'd just read) as a "postmodernist shrug" and a "semi-autobiographical stew." The whole book had the feeling of sitting in front of a fire with your greatly aged grandfather and listening to him ramble about his youth, when he's come to a point in life where he can no longer recall for sure which bits of his past are truth and which bits are his past as he wishes it had gone. There were a few really lovely mini-stories, images, and turns of phrase, but if you're looking for a coherent narrative, go pick up a collection of his short stories instead. Those remain, by far, my favorite of his works.