"And people still laugh about as much as they ever did, despite their shrunken brains. If a bunch of them are lying around on a beach, and one of them farts, everybody else around laughs and laughs, just as people would have done a million years ago."
Galapagos was the very first Kurt Vonnegut book that I ever read- serendipity saw me come across it at the school library when I was thirteen years old. Thirteen years later I don't think a more glorious introduction could have been made.
You know what is going to happen right from the beginning, the ghost of Leon Trout (son of fictitious sci-fi author Kilgore Trout) has no qualms about informing you of how, a million years in the future (well, 999,980 if you consider that most of the events were meant to have taken place in 1986), the Laws of Natural Section have seen human beings evolve, their Big Brains shrinking and their bodies adapting to a life of fishing and copulation on the Galapagos Archipelago. The tale that follows then is the story of how 'modern' humans came to be, the chronicle of the few passengers who stole away from a dying planet on the Bahia de Darwin and found themselves stranded on a volcanic rock for the remainder of their lives and thus making them the Adam and Eves of a new world where children are furry and have flippers.
It isn't just about Natural Selection, but an array of other subjects that are too far reaching to go into now, but would make it an enjoyable book to study further. He does make it clear that we don't fit into this world and we are destroying it, that our big brains cause most of the problems in the world and it would be much easier if we evolved to the same level as the animals that surround us.
I have very little knowledge about the life that Vonnegut has lead which makes me uncomfortable trying to establish what he was trying to say about incestuous relationships but what I do know now after rereading it is that this was one of those dark, poignant books that has had an obvious impact on my thought processes. He makes some brilliant points about war, money, fame, religion, sex, politics and the meaning of life. Which he succeeds in not giving an answer to.
Darkly comic, a little sad and thought provoking- I'd read it again, in another thirteen years.
Not to mention that every time for the past thirteen years when someone farts in public I can't but think of the passage quoted above.
22 Down, 30 To Go
Galapagos was the very first Kurt Vonnegut book that I ever read- serendipity saw me come across it at the school library when I was thirteen years old. Thirteen years later I don't think a more glorious introduction could have been made.
You know what is going to happen right from the beginning, the ghost of Leon Trout (son of fictitious sci-fi author Kilgore Trout) has no qualms about informing you of how, a million years in the future (well, 999,980 if you consider that most of the events were meant to have taken place in 1986), the Laws of Natural Section have seen human beings evolve, their Big Brains shrinking and their bodies adapting to a life of fishing and copulation on the Galapagos Archipelago. The tale that follows then is the story of how 'modern' humans came to be, the chronicle of the few passengers who stole away from a dying planet on the Bahia de Darwin and found themselves stranded on a volcanic rock for the remainder of their lives and thus making them the Adam and Eves of a new world where children are furry and have flippers.
It isn't just about Natural Selection, but an array of other subjects that are too far reaching to go into now, but would make it an enjoyable book to study further. He does make it clear that we don't fit into this world and we are destroying it, that our big brains cause most of the problems in the world and it would be much easier if we evolved to the same level as the animals that surround us.
I have very little knowledge about the life that Vonnegut has lead which makes me uncomfortable trying to establish what he was trying to say about incestuous relationships but what I do know now after rereading it is that this was one of those dark, poignant books that has had an obvious impact on my thought processes. He makes some brilliant points about war, money, fame, religion, sex, politics and the meaning of life. Which he succeeds in not giving an answer to.
Darkly comic, a little sad and thought provoking- I'd read it again, in another thirteen years.
Not to mention that every time for the past thirteen years when someone farts in public I can't but think of the passage quoted above.
22 Down, 30 To Go
Labels: End of the World, Kurt Vonnegut
