We and Player Piano

[you]

Yeah I think as a whole, its working very well, and the world is much more unimaginable than 1984 - so he does have a harder task... but ive came across a few analogies I find tenuous and sprawling- and they kinda stick im my mind a bit - maybe because I find they spoil a very gripping read of a very well realised world. Its probably unfair to compare it to other dystopic novels like BNW and 1984 because we have read the first version of these, translations are often tricky.

Personally I think Huxley takes many more soft sci fi aspects away from the book than orwell - the carrot ( total sexual 'freedom', the lack of privacy, the notion of human beings as cells within an efficient body etc... obviously there is a alot of communism wrapped around all this ) as a means of social control rather than the orwellian stick..

The Biblical connections I dont really get that much either, I think wikipedia has something about it.

 

[IdleRich]

"I really liked the beginning and was interested in the bits where he 'died' but felt sometimes that he was gesturing towards effects he couldn't quite pull off."

I've finished the novel now and I have to admit that I've changed my mind somewhat. I disagreed with you previously on the above point but towards the end it went more and more that way. It kind of felt as though he was steering a car and at a certain point he lost control and it just veered further and further away from where he wanted it to be; I think you're spot on to say that he couldn't quite pull off the "modern" effects that he was going for. Shame because overall I did enjoy it but every now and again it felt like a bit of a mess and as though you were struggling against the author to try and extract exactly what was going on from the text (and that this wasn't intentional).

 

[jenks]

I finished Player Piano the other night. Really pleased now that this was recommended - for some reason my memory of it was that it was Vonnegut before he got good. However I was entirely wrong.

The prose style seems to loosen and become more Kurt like the more the story unfolds - the first fifty pages being the most 'writerly', lots of imagery and metaphors which are poetic and quite traditional. It's as if he is discovering his style whilst he is writing - there are a few set scenes where his ear for dialogue is pitch perfect.

Also for the early fifties it also feels very modern - both in style and content.

Obviously I have avoided writing anything concrete about the plot and its themes until everyone else has read it, how's it going?

 

[IdleRich]

I've been very busy, I will buy it today I promise. Sorry to lag so far behind.

 

[you]

Ive started it- great little bit after the discussions for the mechanised mouse trap involving a rather unlucky mog...

Great example of Zamyatins tenuous metaphors on page 194... just loses it - however he does mention his spiraling analogies and whatnot in the last chapter- the narrator acknowledges them- cant help but think its half deliberate- half not pulled off as he wanted though - because even with the narrators acknowledgement of his dreamy tendencies they persist and the impacts and implications the the actions within this futuristic world are kinda lost- still- as they were long ago back when the narrator was losing the plot. Idle- what did you think about the end??

 

[IdleRich]

I've been ill but I promise that I will go and buy Player Piano in a minute and start reading it very soon afterwards.

 

[you]

Really quite like 'Player Piano'- jolly good yarn. Lots of odd methods
used - like the Hubert Selby Jr style rant by the wrecks and reeks
worker, seems to stand out like a sore thumb and so far I havent
really seen this stream of thought prose since- but despite this it
felt right and very very effective. Paul Proteus and Ed Finnerty are
becoming really 3d and textured and im only a third through it ( dont
seem to have much time to read at the moment ). The world, Ilium and
the other side of the river are allways very real- juggling different
worlds is something I felt Huxley didnt do all that well - especially
not as well as Atwood in Oryx and Crake. I think the themes of
mechanisation managermania etc seem very relevant - especially at the
time of writing- post war.... its good that he addresses the subject
full on and doesnt treat the particular themes ( industialisation/
technocracy ) as existing within a vacuum. Wotsizface who wrote that
book about that couple ( sorry, cant remember - at work ) would have
had a much better book had he addressed the war - in my opinion, for
what its worth.

Idle- you started? Initial thoughts?

 

[IdleRich]

Sorry, no. Tried to get it in Borders but they haven't got it. Should I order it or does anyone know anywhere that I can pick it up easily today/tomorrow?

 

[IdleRich]

Really sorry about the delay on this, I haven't been able to find it in a shop so I'm going to order it.

 

[jenks]

Glad to hear that!

I'm ok with waiting for everyone else - lets me get on with some other reading I've had planned.

I think you'll like it when you finally get it.

 

[IdleRich]

Feel about taking so long... oh well, it's ordered now. Blimey, ten quid was the cheapest I could find in the uk!

 

[jenks]

Mine cost me £2.50 but i did buy it when i was 19 and i'm guessing I am significantly older than you

 

[IdleRich]

I'm thirty.... so if you are significantly older than me then that represents amazing planning.

 

[jenks]

As I said, significantly older!

Who would have known that my purchase of that book in Burgess Books in Hitchin back in198- would prove to be useful for a discussion with total strangers using the equivalent of my zx spectrum!

how very sci-fi. Vonnegut would be pleased.

 

[you]

Going to post- really got into this and enjoyed it- Jenks- every now and then the style just exploding into Vonnegut - i was reading a play structured segment this morning - really felt like a weird breakthrough to Vonnegutworld.

Ive kinda off this book of late- ought to pick it up again and read it though, kinda been on a music binge lately.

 

[IdleRich]

This turned up yesterday - hopefully I will be able to start it today. I apologise that this has actually turned into a progress report on my attempts to procure the book rather than a review of it.

 

[IdleRich]

OK, started reading the book yesterday and it's flowing along nicely, I've read almost half of it already and it feels so much easier to read than almost everything I've dipped into recently. It's not exactly in the same style as other Vonnegut I've read but every now and again there is a recognisable touch.
I like the way that the world they live in is slowly introduced and is not necessarily immediately nightmarish in the way of the world in, say, 1984 - however, as it goes on slightly darker aspects become visible which I find quite effective. On the other hand there are a couple of rather heavy-handed bits where the pay-off occurs too soon after the set-up to have any power. On about page three Paul is reminiscing about an old lather operator he knew briefly years ago called (I think) Rudy Hertz, a few pages later he goes to a bar frequented by the lower orders and is accosted in a friendly manner by a rough looking menial - imagine Paul's (but not the reader's) surprise when the unfortunate lumpen turns out to be that very same Rudy Hertz that he hasn't seen for years! Likewise when Finnerty borrows and then returns his car and Paul notices that his gun is missing "oh well, it must have been stolen when I left it downtown" - no it hasn't you ninny, Finnerty took it!
It's also strange that the book seems to be an attack on capitalism but the system that features is a centrally organised one that is run by the mega-computers. Maybe that doesn't matter and just serves to illustrate that various types of faceless systematization can be identical, I don't know. Either way, there is a sentence where Paul says something about how he is convinced that the situation of humanity now is a huge botch but he is also convinced that the situation was arrived at by a faultless logic of cause and effect which seems to demonstrate that it could be no other way - an idea (both the "botch" and its inevitability) that have been repeatedly debated on this website.

 

[IdleRich]

Another thing I meant to mention is that I don't like the way that Anita's lack of fertility is used as some kind of metaphor for her ambitious personality. Basically her lack of children is often portrayed as somehow related to her career obsessed nastiness (I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out later on that she can have children and it was all a trick at poor old Paul's expense).

"It was the maid's day off and Paul found Anita in the kitchen, the picture, minus children, of domesticity"

Little snidey comments like that seem most un-Vonnegutian. Guess that even he had some of the attitudes of his era.

 

[IdleRich]

Almost finished now and still enjoying it although there are numerous things that annoy me. Another example of the punchline coming too quickly is when Paul says to himself that the worst thing he could say to his wife would be to point out that she would be on the other side of the river if it wasn't for him. Then, two paragraphs later, he says exactly that - but it doesn't really have any force to show the deteriorating relationship between them because there hasn't been any time for you to digest that and see it as the unsayable, it fails as a bombshell because you've only just found out about it.
One thing that is the same in 1984 (as far as I remember), We and Player Piano is the discovery of a rebel cult that recognises our hero as displaced and dissatisfied enough to be potentially worth recruiting - is it because after creating such a dystopian future that is the only option left to the author to bring in any kind of dramatic progression - or are they all deliberately mirroring each other? I like the idea of this Ghost Shirt/Ghost Dance group anyway - if only because I've always found the idea of ghost dance fascinating, and sad of course in its doomed lunacy. I don't really see why you would name a rebel movement after something that failed so badly though although I can see the parallels he's making between the indians and the "average people" who have been forced out by the brave new world of mechanisation and saviour machines.

 

[IdleRich]

And finished now.

"One thing that is the same in 1984 (as far as I remember), We and Player Piano is the discovery of a rebel cult that recognises our hero as displaced and dissatisfied enough to be potentially worth recruiting - is it because after creating such a dystopian future that is the only option left to the author to bring in any kind of dramatic progression - or are they all deliberately mirroring each other?"

Also, the revolution has to fail in each case - why is that? Arguably because none of the authors would have known what could happen next.

"I like the idea of this Ghost Shirt/Ghost Dance group anyway - if only because I've always found the idea of ghost dance fascinating, and sad of course in its doomed lunacy. I don't really see why you would name a rebel movement after something that failed so badly though"

OK, I see now, no-one except Lasher knew that the Ghost Shirt didn't work (except how could they not know? If the Indians had won then America as it is in the book wouldn't exist presumably) and he didn't care because he knew that they were destined for (hopefully glorious) failure anyway.

Another thing I meant to mention was the slightly tired role of the innocent who sees more than the supposed experts - here filled by the comedy visitor from overseas. Look, he keeps erroneously describing the free workers as slaves - but when you think about it who is really right? Are they really free? Yeah, I get it.