Imagine being a multi-Millionaire in the 1960s and leaving
the family “nest,” creating a foundation and helping people along the way in
some of the most bizarre ways? Enter the
world of Kurt Vonnegut and his book, God
Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Eliot
Rosewater, the protagonist, is the son of Lister Ames Rosewater, a US senator,
who established the Rosewater Foundation as a way to avoid paying taxes. The foundation provides Eliot with a
significant annual fund of money to draw upon for living expenses, and much
more. Eliot has had a number of
legitimate traumas in his life that changes his mental state, being a veteran
of World War II and serving as a firefighter, in which he inadvertently killed
a number of people by accident. These
tragic incidents have seemingly impacted Eliot to think about those less
fortunate, which occurred after he was in a mental ward for a year. During this same time, Norman Mushari, a
lawyer for the foundation, finds a clause in the foundation that states if a
Rosewater is mentally incapacitated then another family member would run the
foundation, and reap the benefits of the family trust. Mushari believes Eliot is not mentally steady
and he works to prove it and finds a distant family member he can coax into
being the heir to the foundation. Lucky
for Eliot, his father and the estranged wife of Eliot work hard to get Eliot
back to who he was before the series of tragedies. Eliot begins to do good work for the less
fortunate, placing his phone number on various places in his new home,
Rosewater, Indiana. Eliot receives calls
from people who want to kill themselves and he offers them “straight-talk” and
money to move forward. He does a lot of
eccentric things, but also illustrates that money is not what it all is cut out
to be. The story has levels of absurdity, but Vonnegut is a genius in leaving
the reader with so any metaphors and social commentary. His reference to the characters seemingly are
drawn from the millionaire and political fray – Roosevelt, Goldwater, TS Eliot
to name a few. He also focuses, as he
does in some of his other writings, on loveless relationships, and the lack of
physicality between married partners. It
makes one wonder about his level of thought on civil unions etc. If you like complicated and deep reads, this
one is for you. Or you can read it as a
Eugene Ionesco, theatre of the absurd.
Either way, it is still a fun read.
