Mr. Rosewater: A Novel, God Bless You

- There was a lot of set-up for a story that never developed.

This was my 1st K.V. book.
I usually read/scan reviewers; if a mix of both genders is represented, I find a better chance of enjoying the book. (And, it eliminates the 'fluff'.)

MARS VS VENUS -Interestingly, there were mainly male reviewers & the majority of these gave the book high marks. Of the few women represented, most seemed to agree with me...or, I with them.

Since the book is void of car chases, sex & bloody violence -
WHAT attracts the men... & WHY are women not more positively affected??

Obviously, K.V. was talented, but got too carried away overly detailing his imaginings...& forgot the story line (if there was one). ....His wit did get me through this boring book.

Didn't care for this work very much. It went on and on and on in it's side comentaries and I got bored with it. Still not sure just what he was writing about here. Stopped reading before I was half way through. Bleh!

Now that I have been writing book reviews on almost everything I read, I feel compelled to write at least a few words on this incredible novel of Kurt Vonnegut's - of which thousands of reviews have been written already.

I kept having to check the publishing information to make sure that it was written 46 years ago and not 46 minutes ago. Some of the concepts are so prescient as to seem almost spooky. (Or perhaps that means they are timeless...but caught up in today's crazy political spectrum, I am going with the prophetic angle.)

"Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up..." Can anyone say Wisconsin in 2011?

And, "An even more instructive motto, in the light of history made by the Noah Rosewaters, might be: Grab much too much, or you'll get nothing at all."

I tore through this book, amazed not only by Vonnegut's amazing social commentary, but also by the small pauses of quiet beauty he describes, scenes of a country that was and might not be much longer. "That's such an American sound, you know? School out and the flag down? Such a sad American sound. You should hear it sometime when the sun's gone down, and a light evening wind comes up, and it's suppertime all over the world." So descriptive...I can see and feel the scene exactly.

I must thank my aunt again for what turned out to be one of my best birthday presents...a book that seems one written in the past but most applicable for our tenuous present. If only we had an Eliot Rosewater to save us, to realize the unjust reality he describes that so many Americans now live in.

"...fright about not getting enough to eat, about not being able to pay the doctor, about not being able to give your family nice clothes, a safe, cheerful, comfortable place to live, a decent education, and a few good times? You mean shame about not knowing where the Money River is?"

"The what?"

"The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it - and so were most of the mediocre people we grew up with, went to private schools with, sailed and played tennis with. We can slurp from that mighty river to our hearts' content."

Because even in a land where there is the theoretical chance that a person can become "self made", what matters now more than ever, is how close one was born to that magical Money River.

This story is a remarkable novel about the ruinous effects of wealth, one that’s astoundingly timely still today given its age. While Vonnegut is largely considered a sci-fi author, this brief story is one of his more grounded efforts, though it certainly has a number of fantastic elements in this satire about how stupid some people can be in their dogged pursuit of money.

It’s quite amazing to see how skillfully non-partisan the book is. Lazier readers would be tempted to find fault with the writer’s philosophies as either too supportive or damning of either the upper or lower classes, both of which the book lampoons equally. But the true political agenda here is just to mock all the imbeciles who care so much about money - rich or poor, smart or dumb.

The author's real first priority over making any big social point is just to simply make the reader laugh. In that regard, Vonnegut is once again highly successful. He is one of the rare writers who can actually craft a book funny enough to actually LOL, an even more stunning accomplishment from something born a half-century ago.

“God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” is social satire of the highest order. It is an examination of the human conflict between self-interest and altruism and how these are resolved in a society. The nature of any society is to resolve this conflict that is to bring into harmony the disjoint imperative of competition and cooperation. Vonnegut’s insight is that this is often resolved though a liberal application of hypocrisy and that strategies of naked self-interest and inherited privilege can be masked with hypocritical tenets of self-reliance. However, Vonnegut also shows that continual self-denial in the furtherance of a blind altruism is untenable psychically.

This book contains deep insights. It is also very very funny. It is well worth reading

Elliott is the heir of a family dynasty that goes back centuries were money is passed down to the male heir every generation as part of a foundation specifically created to avoid those pesky tax people. However, there is a big problem with Elliott he is mad, he gives away the foundation's money to people for free, he volunteers for the fire department and dedicates his time to help the people of Rosewater county solve their problems. The nerve! Wasting foundation's money on helping useless people (according to Elliot's father an Indiana senator).

The entire book is dedicated to explaining how Elliot and his wife went nuts, when trying to help the people of Rosewater county and suffered a terrible nervous breakdown that could bring the Rosewater dynasty to an end. The ending of the book is priceless. I laughed so much I cried.

Vonnegut has a genius way of dishing out criticism without being critical and making you smile in the process.

Kurt Vonnegut released God Bless You, Eliot Rosewater in 1965, just before the United States escalated its involvement in Vietnam, but after Lyndon Johnson announced his plan for the Great Society at the University of Michigan in 1964.

Many of the small things that Eliot Rosewater did for the poor were considered band aids. In the same way, Johnson's Great Society offered help to a small segment of society. Medicare, Medicaid, and the Office of Economic Opportunity programs were all examples of Great Society programs that affected a few people. The baby boom had not aged, so Medicare covered a small part of society. The OEO was ineffective and did little to change the lives of the chronically unemployed.

Was Johnson crazy in advocating his Great Society programs? That is one of the questions this novel asks of Eliot Rosewater, a symbol of Johnson in the context I've outlined above. Eliot was not as stable as Johnson but his issues with alcohol do not mean that he was insane, at least, in the way that society defines insanity.

Another reason why people think Eliot is crazy is because he never seems to recognize anyone. Rosewater cannot recognize people that he talked to every day. Is this any different from the way the capitalist system impersonalizes front-line workers from the chief executives that affect the lives of their employees with daily decisions?

The novel mentions some items that may not make sense to today's readers. A Robert Hall Easter Special is a mass-produced suit made by an outlet that advertised heavily in the 1950s and 1960s. Eisenhower jackets were a type of military jacket. The statement that Eliot made about New York City not having a humane thing as a volunteer fire department was not true in the 1960s, and it is not true today. I can walk from my home to the lair of the Gerritsen Beach volunteer fire department, which is one of a handful of volunteer fire departments located in the outer boroughs of the city.

The plot that Vonnegut describes for the short story 2BR02B is the outline of a short story that he wrote later called Welcome to the Monkey House.

Another political symbol relates to the lawyer Norman Mushari. Joe McCarthy was a Republican senator famous for his anti-Communist crusades and Roy Cohn was his right-hand man in those hearings. Vonnegut implied that a man with a poster of those two men, who also read The Conscience of a Conservative - the credo of Barry Goldwater - preferred elephants to donkeys. The rock-ribbed Republican lawyer wanted to siphon money away from the social programs of Eliot, just like the Republicans wanted to reduce Johnson's largesse. Money saved in both cases would end up in conservative pockets, in Pisquontuit or across America.

The famous photo of a prostitute consorting with Shetland Pony in Slaughterhouse Five is actually introduced in this novel. Only in this book, there are two prostitutes pictured with the pony.

My favorite Vonnegut novels are Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle, but this one is pretty good too.

I’d been reading rather serious books and needed something humorous, so I got the Kindle edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. It’d been a while since I’d read Vonnegut. Years ago, I enjoyed Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions, and Hocus Pocus. I also read Cat’s Cradle, but didn’t really go in for it. It was a little too sci-fi for me. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is good, but pretty out there. The beginning is highly structured and organized, but the narrative soon spins off into myriad tangents. At times the writing is practically psychedelic. Imagine if the album The Worst of Jefferson Airplane were a book. The story is a bit of a magic carpet ride. Consequently, it’s hard to say what Rosewater means: commentary on the oddball nature of capitalistic society? The apparent randomness and unfairness of the universe? Everyone will take away something different. It’s not as funny as Breakfast and, for me, not as deep as Hocus Pocus, but it’s still good – funny in places, nicely written, and – best of all – highly imaginative. And it was nice to read something quirky and relatively light. I hope to read more of Vonnegut in the future.

Troy Parfitt is the author of Why China Will Never Rule the World, and War Torn: Adventures in the Brave New Canada.

1) Plot (3 stars) - A disillusioned rich man tries loving the poor and weak to allay his guilt and find meaning, while a thousand miles away his lower-middle class cousin toils away at a life he hates. If one lawyer can prove the rich man is insane, he can transfer the money to the poor cousin and take a sizable chunk for his efforts. The plot works well as a vehicle for Vonnegut's wonderful themes and prose, but in the hands of another it would probably feel a bit slow.

2) Characters (5 stars) - Elliot Rosewater is the lead: a man who inherited a fortune, killed a boy in the war, tried to make amends with his money after, fell into being a drunkard, and ultimately became a "tinhorn saint" to the weak and dumb. He is flanked by a wife who supports him until she gets infected by his vision of the world and institutionalized, and a father who wants him to get off his dead butt and pull himself together. There's also the other set of Rosewaters, the ones who stand to benefit from Eliot's fall. These Rosewaters deal with the self-esteem issues of those in the lower-middle class when surrounded by the wealth of others. As usual, Vonnegut's characters are wise and funny and enjoyable to tag along with.

3) Theme (5 stars) - A central theme of this book is the ethics of passing one generation's wealth on to another generation who has done nothing to earn it, and it definitely had me thinking about how fair this societal rule is when money can buy so many advantages for a child. The theme then gets broadened beyond money transfer to the whole concept of loving family more than others, which was interesting as well. As usual, Vonnegut explores very human issues we either don't see, or if we do, chalk it up to "that's just the way it is."

4) Voice (5 stars) - To me, when Vonnegut is at the top of his game, he writes some of the most precise, insightful, and funny sentences in literature. Each is so economically crafted; the words so thoughtfully chosen. He also writes some of the sharpest dialogue, full of misunderstanding and innuendo. His writing can be art of the highest order - good for the head, good for the heart, and good for the smile muscles.

5) Setting (3 stars) - The story takes place in a poor corner of Indiana and along the yacht-studded shore of Rhode Island. But both were in the background and not really the point.

6) Overall (5 stars) - This work doesn't get as much love as other Vonnegut works, and I don't understand why. It's beautifully written and tackles an important message around the American class system. Not only would I recommend it, I would read it again.

This novel explores the idea of it really means to be a decent individual. It's a book that is relevant today and should be read. Money and power are closely examined and once Mr. Rosewater separated himself from the hypocrisy and absurdities of it all, he was able to really be aware what was going on. He left his own little bubble and saw the world and did his best to make a difference in the world in his own way. This is one of the top 5 best Vonnegut books and I surely enjoyed the read.

"God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" is indeed, as many reviewers have said, Mr. Vonnegut's most blatantly socialistic book. However, it is also quite obviously his most Christian. The text's protagonist, Eliot Rosewater, is nothing short of a benign Jesus figure. Numerous biblical references throughout the text are used as corollaries to Eliot's life and the plethora of those references make Vonnegut's point pretty obvious for the reader.
This text is less plot driven than many of Vonnegut's other works, but its themes and importance I think are far superior to many of his better written novels. The first 100 pages or so can be a little dull (not normal in a Vonnegut text) and the slow start is something his readers may not be used to. However, the text does build to what I think is a wonderfully written and executed conclusion.
Two highlights of the book are Eliot's baptism "sermon" for two twin boys that he is asked to baptize. Eliot has no religious titles or significance, so he just speaks to his hope for the boy's futures, ending with a simple and profound statement, "God damn it, you've got to be kind." Another excellent moment in the text is a biting letter written by an orphan named Selena who is serving as the maid in a rich household. The letter is written to the man who runs the orphanage that she came from, and it has the bite and sting that can only come through the eyes of a child. Vonnegut is at the top of his game in these sections.
Further highlighting the idea of Eliot as a Christ figure Vonnegut has Eliot well aware that those he helps are ingrates at best, and almost all are undeserving of his generosity and love. It is a great strength of the text that "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" freely admits that the people who need the help the most are often the most undeserving, and the acknowledgement of that is a great strength of the book.
The most blatant Christian references, and I think the most powerful parts of the text, start on page 264 when Vonnegut has his go to character (Kilgore Trout) explain what Eliot was attempting to do by helping anyone who asked, regardless of the circumstances. The 6 pages where Trout "explains" the "experiment" are worth the price of the book alone. They are stunningly simple and beautiful. I was trembling with joy as I read them. It is really nothing less than a secular Sermon on the Mount.
I won't ruin the end of the book here, but Vonnegut completes the obvious Christ archetype with Eliot in a manner that is unexpected, true to the character of Eliot, and perfect. And then Vonnegut in that way of his stops writing, it is over, the end. The rest is up to you. Very few novels make me think about my obligations to others in this world, this book did. It has stuck with me, and will. And for that I say God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut!

The full title of this work -- "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater or Pearls Before Swine" -- rarely appears when people write or talk about the book. That may be because we're uncertain what the author had in mind when he pinned those words from Matthew 7.6 to the end of his title. Was he asking "Am I wasting my talent on this slight text?" Probably not. He regarded "Rosewater" as among his best books, right behind "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle." Is it a clue to the story line? Plausibly. Eliot Rosewater spent his days dolling out his considerable fortune a pearl or two at a time to the down and out residents of his home town. But he regarded them not as swine, but as the salt of the earth. So do the words suggest his view about the people we've come to regard as the One Percent? Rosewater came into his $10,000-a-day fortune as the scion of wealth and rejected as unfair a system that left the other 99 Percent of us out in the cold. If Vonnegut answers the question in the text, it escapes me. But I lean to the third possibility.

Be that as it may, the book is an easy to read, easy to like tale of a rich man gone to seed, a comment on what's wrong with our system of inherited wealth, one which destroys the haves with the excesses of wealth, puts through the wringer those whose feet keep slipping off the bottom rungs of the ladder as they grope for the top, and relegates the have-nots to the leavings, life on the margins.

Writing came easy to Vonnegut. He looked on it as a trade and saw himself as a tradesman, one very good at what he did and surefooted enough not to depart from what worked. In "Bagombo Snuff Box" Vonnegut spelled out his hard and fast rules for writing a short story. Judging by "Rosewater," he relied on them when writing his novels as well. Rule 3. "Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water." We learn on page 1 exactly what "the boy shyster" Norman Mushari wants: to get control over the Rosewater fortune. As for Rule Six, "Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them - in order that the reader may see what they are made of." Vonnegut's treatment of Rosewater meets the requirement. And there you have the plot. Will the shyster succeed? And if not, by whose wits will he fail?

End note. There's lots more fun to be had reading ""God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater Or Pearls Before Swine." Eliot Rosewater's service as a volunteer fireman in his home town is based on Vonnegut's years of service as a member of the Alplaus (N.Y.) Volunteer Fire Department. From one source we learn that when Vonnegut died members of the department "lowered the American flag to half staff, hung the funeral shroud, and rang a fire bell in accordance with the traditional 5-5-5 alarm used to honor fallen brothers. Vonnegut's name still appears on an old active fire-fighters roster, located next to a screen-print that he donated to the department." Check it out.

Vonnegut was ahead of his time when it came to technology and it's ability to steal jobs and ruin america. He wrote God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater in the mid 60s, before automation had become as prevalent as it has now yet still had the brilliant insight to realize that if we didn't diagnose and recognize this foreseeable problem, americans as he says in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, would have nothing to do anymore. Unfortunately we didn't pay attention enough to the simple theme in this book and automation is now running wild in the streets. Eliot Rosewater was the president of the Rosewater Foundation. He had millions at his disposal. Instead of living the dream life with his wife, he was curious to see what americans were doing and would do with there lives as technology stole there jobs. What would they do in life with no jobs he often pondered. So he sets up shop and makes himself available at all hours to help them out free of charge. A great tale only the wise Kurt V could pen. Read this for the well written story and not the lesson it tries to tell, as that ship as already sank. God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut for trying to warn us!

The Rosewater fortune was stashed in a foundation in order that tax-collectors and other predators might be prevented from getting it. It was to be handed down throughout all eternity to the closest and oldest heirs of Senator Lester Ames Rosewater.
Eliot Rosewater, an itinerate, semi-crazed millionaire, became President of the Foundation in 1964, and Norman Mushari, a five foot three inch, Lebanese attorney began to investigate Eliot. Eliot was crazy as a loon, a drunkard, a Utopian dreamer, a tinhorn saint, and an aimless fool. He married Sylvia Zetterling, who grew to hate him.
Eliot believed that science-fiction writers were poets sensitive to important changes. He idealized Kilgore Trout who had written 87 paperback books, was very poor, and unknown outside the science-fiction field. Trout wanted to ask God, "What in hell are people for?"
Sylvia had a nervous melt-down, burned the firehouse, then was placed in a mental hospital. The psychiatrist was Dr. Ed Brown who coined her disease as being, "Smaritrophia," the hysterical indifference to the troubles of those less fortunate than oneself. Contagion spread like wildfire. Americans had been taught to hate all people who will not, or cannot, work. Also, that Utopias are filled with soul-rot, silliness, poverty, uselessness, and insensitivity.
The solution was so simple that even Eliot could imagine the horror it might engender in the courts. His only rule was;"to be fruitful and multiply."
This is a comic reflection of the absurd. The blurred, wavy line between sanity and madness is funny, terrifying, and very real for the black humorist. Non-conforming fanatics might be forewarned about the dedicated result of mishandled paranoia. Excellent satire.

Eliot Rosewater, the President of Rosewater Foundation, heads a multi-million dollar corporation. Rosewater Foundation's only interest is in helping individuals "in need." The recipients of this foundation's charity, may not necessarily be monetarily indigent, but can be sad, depressed, or simply state that they have been overlooked by the wealthiest 1% of society. All one has to do is telephone the foundation and tell them what he or she needs. Just don't telephone the town's volunteer fire department by mistake. Mr. Eliot Rosewater resided amongst these poor denizens, rather than amongst society's "haves," just because he felt it was the right thing to do.

The only problem was that Eliot's family wanted to have their eccentric relative declared legally insane. Eliot enlists that support of science fiction novelist Kilgore Trout against the advice of many of Eliot's supporters. Would not the public believe that Eliot was an immature man if a mere science fiction author was his greatest supporter?

_God Bless You Mr. Rosewater"_ is one of the more entertaining and unusual books I have ever read. Needless to say, Eliot is widely beloved by his public. Women claimed that he had impregnated them and that they were carrying his unborn babies (what better method to claim an inheritence from Mr. Rosewater huge fund?) Eliot denies these accusations, but aims to make a difference in many of these women's lives anyway.

..just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees." This is the story of Eliot Rosewater, the money he has been entrusted with, and his sanity, or lack thereof. It is also the story of America, capitalism, and its sanity, or lack thereof. As expressed by Vonnegut's alter ego, Kilgore Trout, "The problem is this: how to love people who have no use?... if we can't find reasons and methods for treasuring human beings because they are human beings, then we might as well... rub them out."

This gradual effacement is the story of the residents of Rosewater County, Indiana, and the difficulty of loving them is the problem faced by Eliot Rosewater, and Kurt Vonnegut. These lost and lonely soles, consumed and regurgitated by the relentless appetite of American capital, are difficult creatures to love, indeed. Eliot Rosewater found a way, while Vonnegut was always conflicted between love, despair, and contempt ("sons of suicides seldom do well").

This is Vonnegut at his most sardonic and contemptuous, the schizophrenic humanist and misanthrope. Thankfully, this is Vonnegut at his most socialist, and most of his venom here is directed at the ruling class: "Slurp from the Money River...slurp as much as you want, but try to keep the racket of your slurping down. A poor man might hear."

"P.S. Who really runs this crazy country? These creeps sure don't"

There are similarities between the theme of this book and Nick Hornby's How to Be Good. It's hard to tell if they come to different or similar conclusions. Hornby suggests that one person or even one family is not able to fix what needs fixing in the world singlehandedly and shouldn't try; one should instead try to keep oneself functional and have much more modest ambitions as regards altruism. In this book, Vonnegut uses satire and exaggeration to point out the "craziness" and yet the necessity of loving others unconditionally, even when there seems to be little to love about them, or when there are some very good reasons for withholding love, e.g. alcohol addiction or a criminal record. Both deal with the basic question of what attitude we should have toward people in need whose acquaintance doesn't seem to promise us any personal advantage.

I originally chose this book because of a New York Times article - it was about deodorant use, and it cited this book as describing a country where odors, thought to be society's biggest problem, were finally eliminated by eliminating people's noses. I found it an interesting premise and kept reading and reading to find it, but it didn't turn up until almost the end of the book, as a half-page summary of one of the science fiction books the protagonist had read. Ah well, at least I found it, and I ended up reading a book I probably wouldn't have picked up or even known about otherwise.

I give this book four stars first because it felt quite disconnected, jumping from one incident and set of thoughts of a certain character to another. There are paragraphs with profound insights that I enjoyed and agreed with, e.g. about the value and drawbacks of imperfect human life vs. boring ethereal perfection (disguised as a novel the protagonist was writing), or the part about language teaching on planets that had previously used only mental telepathy (from a book by a science fiction writer the protagonist likes), but these bits seemed to be thrown in simply because the author found them worthwhile and had no other handy place to put them. Maybe they were seeds of ideas that Vonnegut didn't have the time, motivation or adequate material to develop into whole books.

Second, for a long time I was wondering where the story would go, and why what I was reading at any given moment was worth getting through. I suppose in the end it did all contribute to the final point Vonnegut wanted to make, but you have to wade through quite a bit of frivolousness to get there. The book is short, but the silliness prevented me from sticking with it too long in one sitting - I mostly had to take it one or two chapters at a time then put it down for a while.

I think _Rosewater_ was worthwhile, though, and if you're a Vonnegut fan, and/or enjoy philosophical farce, you might like it too.

God Bless you Mr. Rosewater is a challenge to fight for social justice and to support the humanist motto if "God da-n it, you've got to be kind." In his classic opening sentence, Vonnegut says "A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a story about bees." Vonnegut uses skittish plots and a variety of curious characters to lay out a picture of America that is becoming more stratified by money and access to power. As the main character, the ill-begotten fortune is given a birth (original accumulation by Noah Rosewater who sent a substitute to the civil war, allowing him to stay home and make millions in the war effort) and a death (Eliot's surprise decision at the end).

Pisquontuit, Rhode Island and Rosewater County, Indiana are the principle settings for the book and both are everyday small towns comprised of wealth and poverty. Vonnegut describes the inhabitants of each as "The lives led there were nearly all paltry, lacking in subtlety, wisdom, wit or convention - were precisely as pointless and unhappy as lives led in Rosewater, Indiana." The stratification of wealth is most poignantly illustrated in his depiction of Pisquontuit, where Fred Rosewater intermittently enters the drugstore that has the coffee shop for the rich, then the news store that has the coffee shop for the poor.

Although America's rich have devised laws to propagate their wealth untouched through the generations, you can still gain access to the "money river" by becoming a "slurper." Norman Mushari, young lawyer, learned in law school that, "just like a good airline pilot should always be looking for places to land, so should a lawyer always be looking for situations were large amounts of money were about to change hands." Hence comes the plot line. Eliot Rosewater is the heir to the $87,472,033.61 Rosewater fortune. To make sure he gets his dibs, Mushari wants to prove that Eliot is insane thereby redirecting the money river to a distant cousin, Fred Rosewater, in Pisquontuit.

Besides Elliot Rosewater and Fred Rosewater, the third important Rosewater is Senator Lister Ames Rosewater. Clearly, he personifies the idea proposed by the subtitle "pearls before swine." Similar to Ebenezer Scrooge prior to his visits from Christmas ghosts, Senator Rosewater represents the attitude of the aristocratic rich that social programs and wealth reallocation initiatives are frivolous because we should not waste good things on people who will not appreciate them.

In usual Vonnegut style, the reader is clearly and repeatedly presented the theme of the book in no uncertain terms. Early in the book, he writes "When the United States of America, which was meant to be a Utopia for all, was less than a century old, Noah Rosewater and a few men like him demonstrated a folly of the founding fathers in one respect: those sadly recent ancestors hadn't made it a law in the utopia that wealth of each citizen should be limited. This oversight was engendered by a weak-kneed sympathy for those who love expensive things, and by the feeling that the continent was so vast and valuable, and the population so thin and enterprising, that no thief, no matter how fast he stole, could more than mildly inconvenience anyone."

Again, later in the book, Kilgore Trout has this to say in reference to Eliot's apparent capricious financial support of his neighbors' needs: "Well... what you did in Rosewater County was far from insane. It was quite easily the most important social experiment of our time, for it dealt on a very small scale with the problem whose queasy horrors will eventually be made world-wide by the sophistication of machines. The problem is this: how to love people who have no use?"

Although it's probably destined to wallow in the monolithic shadows of Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is a superb novel and an easy gem (albeit a relatively minor one) in the Vonnegut canon. At heart, it's a sharp, satirical, and darkly funny portrait of American capitalism at its worst, and a genuinely engrossing tale of one man's attempt to change things for the better.

The man in question is Eliot Rosewater, a drunken volunteer fire fighter and renegade philanthropist. He's also the privileged heir to a massive family fortune and the President of a charitable organization that was established by his family as a thinly veiled tax shelter. After an eventful stint in the Second World War, Eliot decides to use his vast wealth in order to help people. He moves to a desperately poor town named after his family, and makes it his mission to unconditionally love and support every human being that asks for his help. When his family learns that he's actually using a charitable organization's funds to carry out acts of charity, he's declared everything from irresponsible to insane. Soon, his wife is divorcing him, his father is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and a conniving lawyer is carrying out a devious plan to take a chunk of the Rosewater fortune for himself.

In Vonnegut's hands, this disturbingly realistic premise becomes the ideal framing device for his own razor-sharp commentary on class, wealth, greed, politics, love, and the ever-elusive American Dream. The story is told with plenty of characteristic dark humor and sly sarcasm, balanced by a genuine affection for humanity and an oddly graceful ending.

It's not his best novel- the story does drag in a few places, and there is a notable lack of focus- but its still an excellent work. Get this if you're a Vonnegut fan.

_Eliot Rosewater was the scion of an extremely wealthy family- his grandfather had even married a Rockefeller. Eliot stood to inherit control of the vast family fortune through the Rosewater Foundation (a legal entity constructed to shield that fortune from taxation.) But then Eliot went off to WW2 to become a highly decorated Captain of combat infantry. He served with men from all walks of life. Oh yes, he also accidentally bayoneted a 14-year old non-combatant, and afterwards tried to throw himself under a truck. After this he was never the same, much to his rich and powerful family's distress. While he did come back to graduate from Harvard Law and assume control of the foundation, he started behaving...irrationally. He started to actually use the money to HELP people! He also started drinking, wandering, and visiting volunteer firehouses- among other eccentricities.

_Eventually, he ended up in Rosewater, Indiana- a depressed backwater that his family had long ago used up and abandoned to found the beginnings of their fortune. He found the people there to be without pride, without hope, without work. So he opened up an office over the liquor store in order to help anyone who needed his help. The sign on the door said simply, "Rosewater Foundation: How Can We Help You?" So Eliot Rosewater, philanthropist, poet, volunteer fireman, Harvard graduate, and drunk proceeded to help any and all that came to him for help.

_Needless to say his family could not allow such insanity to continue. Why even Eliot's psychoanalyst came to the conclusion that Eliot was a pervert. The nature of his perversion being the fact that he had channeled all his psychic energy into bringing Utopia to earth for all those in need. What could be more abnormal in modern, capitalist society?

_This is my absolute all time favorite Vonnegut novel- and I have read them all.

Every once in a while a book gets the binding that it deserves.

Eliot Rosewater was the scion of an extremely wealthy family- his grandfather had even married a Rockefeller. Eliot stood to inherit control of the vast family fortune through the Rosewater Foundation (a legal entity constructed to shield that fortune from taxation.) But then Eliot went off to WW2 to become a highly decorated Captain of combat infantry. He served with men from all walks of life. Oh yes, he also accidentally bayoneted a 14-year old non-combatant, and afterwards tried to throw himself under a truck. After this he was never the same, much to his rich and powerful family's distress. While he did come back to graduate from Harvard Law and assume control of the foundation, he started behaving...irrationally. He started to actually use the money to HELP people! He also started drinking, wandering, and visiting volunteer firehouses- among other eccentricities.

Eventually, he ended up in Rosewater, Indiana- a depressed backwater that his family had long ago used up and abandoned to found the beginnings of their fortune. He found the people there to be without pride, without hope, without work. So he opened up an office over the liquor store in order to help anyone who needed his help. The sign on the door said simply, "Rosewater Foundation: How Can We Help You?" So Eliot Rosewater, philanthropist, poet, volunteer fireman, Harvard graduate, and drunk proceeded to help any and all that came to him for help.

Needless to say his family could not allow such insanity to continue. Why even Eliot's psychoanalyst came to the conclusion that Eliot was mentally ill. The nature of his illness being the fact that he had channeled all his psychic energy into bringing Utopia to earth for all those in need. What could be more abnormal in modern, capitalist society?

This is my absolute all time favorite Vonnegut novel- and I have read them all.

The plot of this book, such as it is, consists of the attempt of a young, unscrupulous attorney to wrest control of a large trust fund from a scrupled, but unconventional scion of a habitually unscrupulous family. Meanwhile, the scion attempts to live as authentically charitably as he can. As one might expect, the issue is the scion's sanity.

Mr. Vonnegut's writing here is typically quick and darkly humorous. Untypically, though, the target of his disdain doesn't appear worthy of the attention. Vonnegut takes on the industry/universe surrounding old unearned money/power and more-or-less effectively savages every component - including the recipients of the charity. Few sacred cows, however, are slain in the attack. Indeed, the book strikes me as almost rote - delivering exactly the characters and interactions one would expect from a satire of the old-monied. As my "star rating" shows, I don't find this to be a bad book or uninteresting, but it's not the quality of most of Vonnegut's other work. If you're starting on your Vonnegut, save this one for later.

Vonnegut is one of those genius writers that you can't help but love. "Slaughterhouse 5" was my first venture into the realm of Vonnegut, but I have to say that I think I enjoyed this tale much more. Perhaps because the topic is closer to my heart, or perhaps I was able to identify more closely with the characters, I found this novel to be both thought provoking and utterly hysterical.

The short synopsis - The heir to a ridiculously large family fortune would rather spend his days helping the poor and destitute than attending the large social gatherings which his family feels he should prefer. Naturally this means that he is insane right? His family and one rather unscrupulous attorney seem to think so. They begin their plans on having him declared mentally incompetent, but he may have a trick or two up his sleeve.

I often find that I have to be in the right mood to read through a Vonnegut book, for some reason this one gripped me and I was done with it in less than 2 hours. The characters were hysterical, slightly caricaturistic and over the top, but entirely identifiable and comparable to someone we all know. This entire tale is a treatise on capitalism, money, redistribution of wealth, and the question of selflessness vs insanity. If you like Vonnegut, then this is already on your list. If you haven't encountered Vonnegut, give this book a try for an amusing look at true satire.

What are people for? How do you love people who are useless?
This must be Vonnegut's most existentialist novel. Of course, his philosophical excursions are merely short amusing walks, not expeditions into the deep.

'You can safely ignore the arts and sciences. They never helped anybody.'
Words of Eliot Rosewater, super rich American with a good heart, and a fondness for the poor and the booze. He squanders his huge fortune in small installments on the undeserving. What a weirdo, right? A family branch wants to grab his wealth based on an insanity plea.
His wife, in contrast, is diagnosed with samaritrophia, the opposite mental illness, that shuts away a person's social conscience. She just can't be bothered by poverty, misery, or misfortune. Her own happiness is what counts, but actually, one wonders at this diagnosis. She seems to be too unhappy to qualify as a pure egotist.
Seems to me that samaritrophia is widely found and a very American disease. The GOP seems to have developed it into an ideology: down with freeloaders.

As much as I generally enjoy reading Mr. Vonnegut's stories, once in a while I have to wince. Even though brief and simple, his sentences are sometimes transporting amazing errors. Consider this: 'The tricycle had belonged to Eliot as a child.'
Let's not dwell on this, please, but he could have been a little more careful.
Then again, he was not into the fine details, more the large ideas.

God Bless you Mr. Vonnegut because only you could still be this good in what remains one of your lessor books.

Ostensibly the story of 87 million dollar plus inheritance, this book tells the tale of a man and a family beset by the duties of wealth.

On the one side we have Elliot Rosewater, the young heir who disdains personal use of the money to devote in service of others. Instead of a hair shirt, Elliot drinks constantly, wears dirty clothes and sleeps in the makeshift office of his own Rosewater foundation from which he disperses periodic grants of money to the needy.

On the other side, we have Senator Rosewater, Elliot's father, who's fosuced more about on what the money can do for him. Senate, a place in society, a concern for producing priviledged and dominant decendents so he can better the value of the Rosewater name.

We feely oddly uncomfortable to the extent we empathize with the Senator and chagrin at the son.

And in the end we wonder at Elliot's actions. How do or don't they ultimately service his father's ends?

Regardless of these issues, Vonnegut is always good reading but for first time Vonnegut readers I would probably suggest Slaughterhouse Five and Cat's Cradle in that order. Read him when he was being really really deep instead of just deep.

"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward." Kurt Vonnegut

On a mission to prove that Eliot Rosewater is legally insane, an attorney named Mushari is investigating Eliot's life, relationships, and actions. Between Eliot's strange relationship with his French wife, his drunkenness, and his overwhelming generosity, one can't tell if Eliot is insane or the world around him is insane.

Vonnegut captures with great skill Eliot's sarcastic ideas and extremely dark, but funny jokes. At one point Eliot reads about the bombing of Dresden and his reaction is an expected outcome to the story and representative of Vonnegut's personal confrontation with one of the most important incidents of his own life.

As Vonnegut writes in: "A Man without a Country": "Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.", the scattered stories of Eliot's interactions with the world describe the world's craziness with a loud laughing fear. "God bless you Mr. Rosewater" is another fabulous book by a gifted writer.

Though this is not quite his best or most complex work, I enjoyed this novel for many reasons. First, it does lean heavily towards a Socialistic viewpoint. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. The novel is a thinly veiled critique towards capitalism and a sadly poignant look at the future of the impoverished. One man makes it his life's goal to help out the unfortunates using his money and position. He is then considered mentally unsound by those who are in positions of power and authority.

The book is well written in typical satirical Vonnegut style. The novel is not as compelling or deep as Slaughterhouse Five or Cat's Cradle, but it is an enjoyable, top notch work by itself. If one didn't have an entire body of Vonnegut works to compare this to, it would stand out as a very good novel by itself (hence my four star rating). Just compared to other Vonnegut novels it is slightly lacking.

This is a sharp but loving portrait, full of character and humour, of an imperfect America.

The story sees Eliot Rosewater squandering the profits on his fortune and slimy lawyer Norman Mushari wheedling to transfer those funds to Rosewater's impoverished rustic cousins (whilst inveigling a hefty commission for doing so!) To do this he must prove Eliot is insane, but when you have 87 million dollars, what is lunacy?

God Bless You, Mr Rosewater is a wonderful concise little story with a wry eye for the eccentricities of the super rich and a knowing wink to the delinquencies if the dirt poor, ending with a requisite twist that is beguiling and satisfying, and throughout retains the depth and intelligence of great literature.

Although not quite up to the level of Breakfast of Champions, which is among my favorite books of all time, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is still a breathtaking, amazing, humorous read. In fact, after I finished it I was inspired to grab another of Vonnegut's works, Welcome to the Monkey House.

Kurt Vonnegut's unique ability is to look at different aspects of the world around us that we take for granted as being "normal," & then point out the absurdity of it all. In this book, one among several ideas that he takes aim at which many take for granted in everyday life is class distinction, and the huge effect it can have upon one's life: to have won the genetic lottery of being born rich. But what makes the main character, Eliot Rosewater, really strange is that he chooses to personally use his vast, family fortune to help people from his small, hometown of Rosewater, Indiana that the modern world has largely rendered without hope, use, or purpose. He does not just throw money at these people's problems, although he is not above doing just that. Humorously, he runs a dingy foundation located above the town liquor store all by himself, with a hotline written by hand in every phone booth throughout the city. That way, in between drinking himself into oblivion, he personally deals with all of the rundown inhabitants' problems, big & small. He is essentially an eccentric saint: a fat, disheveled, drunk, Harvard graduate with all the money in the world, who just wants to help people.

Thus, an ambitious lawyer sets out to steal the family wealth by proving Eliot's selfless actions to be insane. Vonnegut once again pokes fun at what society deems "normal" behavior and how many regard being motivated purely by self interest as being the only rational course of action. As usual, Vonnegut introduces a number of strange & memorable characters, while keeping the reader laughing throughout. Kurt Vonnegut's unique take on the world is truly timeless & never seems to grow out of date, despite the fact that the book was written in 1965. Take a peek into the world of Vonnegut and come away knowing a little more about reality.

The misanthropy that started manifesting in Kurt Vonnegut's previous book, Cat's Cradle, reaches not only epidemic levels in God Bless You Mr. Rosewater (1965), but seriously damages the novel's dramatic flow as Vonnegut defers to his spleen at the expense of his artistic integrity. After setting up a very promising plot premise in the book's early pages, Vonnegut then spends most of the rest of the book delivering scene after scene showing various characters acting the fool and knave, all undergirded by the notion that life (or at least life in America) is unfair to the fools at the expense of the knaves. Meanwhile, that promising plot premise goes a-begging, finally dying with a whimper at the novel's conclusion.

I assume Vonnegut must have been going through a very bad Swiftian period in his life when he wrote God Bless You Mr. Rosewater (and perhaps Cat's Cradle as well) because there is a decided mean spiritedness in this narrative that goes beyond satire. Just as a minor but telling example: at one point Vonnegut alludes to a young woman working a lunch counter as "the not-very-clean idiot girl behind the counter." There's no other characterization. She's just an idiot (and not very clean). Why? Because Vonnegut, the third-person narrator, dubs her so with no reason given. Does it make any difference to the story? No. She's a very minor character and her idiocy or personal hygiene has no effect on the plot. It's a throwaway but the implication is that this is a world with smelly idiots holding all menial jobs.

Now, let me emphasize that there is nothing wrong with a satirist showing people acting foolishly. The problem comes when there is no change up from that one-note approach. Taken in isolation, as a short story, say, each of Vonnegut's chapters in God Bless You Mr. Rosewater could have been an excellent piece. But strung together, they became not just tiresome but irritating, a one-note symphony of misanthropy.

It's especially irritating because the first chapters set up a very interesting premise: a young lawyer discovers that the heir to one of the country's largest fortunes could forfeit it to some distant relative if he is found by a court to be insane. And that heir, Eliot Rosewater, is suspected of lunacy even by his relatives, largely because Eliot insists on giving his money away to whoever asks for it. This could have been an excellent satiric point but Vonnegut undercuts it by showing Eliot to actually be a man teetering on the edge of sanity and not just someone deemed to be so by those who disagree with his activities. So even the moral center of the novel is a loonie!

I liked Vonnegut's first book, Player Piano, though I thought it had some structural flaws. I loved Mother Night, which at this point I think is by far his best book (I'm reading him chronologically). The Sirens of Titan was highly imaginative if a bit undisciplined but with Cat's Cradle, the misanthropy really began to come to the fore and in God Bless You Mr Rosewater it positively festers.

In "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" Kurt Vonnegut (one of my favorite authors) takes on the class system, capitalism, and philanthropy to splendid, wickedly funny -- and hopelessly accurate -- effect. It is the tale of the Rosewater family, which has amassed a fortune totalling $87,472,033.61 and devised an elaborate foundation to protect their money from the American government that would try to tax it away from them. Through meaningless acts of "charity" (such as loaning expensive art to a museum for an exhibition, and then taking it back) the foundation ensures that the Rosewater fortune will always be firmly controlled by the Rosewater family. Trouble brews when an ambitious young lawyer decides to prove that the current foundation head, Eliot Rosewater, is crazy so that an estranged cousin can take over -- getting the lawyer a nice chunk of the family fortune in the process. This will not be so difficult to do because Eliot has been doing the unthinkable since taking over the foundation from his Senator father: he has been using it to do actual charitable work. You see, Eliot suffered a breakdown after accidentally killing three innocent firefighters (one a mere fourteen years old) in Europe during WWII. Desperate to atone for his mistake, Eliot has returned to his hometown of Rosewater, Indiana to make a difference in the world. Within a year he has spurned the wealthy families in town who aspire to his company and come to be revered by the impoverished townsfolk as a saint. He helps anyone who needs it -- in one instance he has an abusive husband arrested, then turns around and hires him a lawyer when he can't afford one on his own. To the world at large these are the actions of a man who has totally lost his mind. But has he?

Vonnegut masterfully navigates the reader through the saga of the Rosewater clan and the novel's themes with only one stumble to be found in the all-too quick ending. The rest of the book forgives this mistake. You can't go wrong with Vonnegut, and in "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" the remarkable author is at his satiric best.

This book, which has been touted as a "brilliant satire on almost everything", is, in fact, one of Vonnegut's second-rate novels. It is perhaps his most pessimistic, cynical, darkest book of them all. It's also different from the majority of his work in that it is fairly straight-forwardly written; it doesn't jump around on narrative detours like most of his books do. The story is told in fairly linear fashion. It is certainly a good book, and a nice, quick read (like all Vonnegut, it has that indescrible weird factor - not suspense, in the typical fashion - that keeps you reading it); it's just that it doesn't have that Great Underlying Moral like his best books do. The book's main character is Eliot Rosewater (undoubtedly a familar persona to Vonnegut fans), and he gives in this book - to everybody - what seemingly no one is willing to give these days: unconditional love. In turn for this, he is spit on by the world. This book says, in typical Vonnegut candor, Help people; you won't be appreciated for it, and you will probably even be ridiclued, but do it, anyway. It also says, Most people don't deserve help - they are worthless, useless, and stupid - but do it, anyway. Also, this book is a sharp-toothed satire of the American welfare system. Vonnegut's view of welfare echoes mine: it was a good idea to start out with, but its usefulness has passed. People who don't need it are milking it shamelessly, and the time has come to drastically re-organize it, or dispense with it alltogether. Vonnegut also tackles the issue of inherited wealth, and all forms of riches you earn by birthright, or other similar cirumstances, without actually earning yourself. Of course, this inevitably raises the subject of Communism. This book has a lot of interesting ideas, and points, but they are never brought together into that single, incredible cohesive whole, like they are in his best books. Certainly, it is a worthy read for fans; others, however, would be wise to start elsewhere.

This novel is a science fiction story about a family of aristocrats which is being torn apart by greed, and the desire to help the poor. It's a very harsh critique of the capitalist economic system, and I have to agree with the centralized message Vonnegut writes about. In the 21st century, I think many people will feel the lessons to be found in the book still ring true today.

While this novel is not first-tier work by Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five, and Cat's Cradle are much better,) I still think this book is very funny, daring, and well-written. I loved how the book ends. Vonnegut's descriptions are also second to none.

Eliot Rosewater was the scion of an extremely wealthy family- his grandfather had even married a Rockefeller. Eliot stood to inherit control of the vast family fortune through the Rosewater Foundation (a legal entity constructed to shield that fortune from taxation.) But then Eliot went off to WW2 to become a highly decorated Captain of combat infantry. He served with men from all walks of life. Oh yes, he also accidentally bayoneted a 14-year old non-combatant, and afterwards tried to throw himself under a truck. After this he was never the same, much to his rich and powerful family's distress. While he did come back to graduate from Harvard Law and assume control of the foundation, he started behaving...irrationally. He started to actually use the money to HELP people! He also started drinking, wandering, and visiting volunteer firehouses- among other eccentricities.

Eventually, he ended up in Rosewater, Indiana- a depressed backwater that his family had long ago used up and abandoned to found the beginnings of their fortune. He found the people there to be without pride, without hope, without work. So he opened up an office over the liquor store in order to help anyone who needed his help. The sign on the door said simply, "Rosewater Foundation: How Can We Help You?" So Eliot Rosewater, philanthropist, poet, volunteer fireman, Harvard graduate, and drunk proceeded to help any and all that came to him for help.

Needless to say his family could not allow such insanity to continue. Why even Eliot's psychoanalyst came to the conclusion that Eliot was a pervert. The nature of his perversion being the fact that he had channeled all his psychic energy into bringing Utopia to earth for all those in need. What could be more abnormal in modern, capitalist society?

This is my absolute all time favorite Vonnegut novel- and I have read them all.

Oh yes, it also offers one of the best descriptions of the absurdity and injustice of the class system in the U.S. As one of the characters asks, who does run this crazy country? These cr**ps sure don't.

Mark Twain, Orwell, Houellebecq, Vonnegut. Without a doubt some of the best social science out there was not produced in Ivy League schools but out of cranky typewriters in a basement (well, Vonnegut was in Cornell). From the first devastating sentence on (money and honey) this book is a direct indictment of inherited wealth and the so-called "free-enterprise" system. For Vonnegut innovation and creativity are not related to acummulation, but stealing is. Vonnegut shares with Thorstein Veblen (cited on the text) his admiration for people that really do productive things, and mixes it with the sadness of somebody who knows what is going to happen to those people in the "service economy". The end of the book seems abrupt, but is very sweet and rewarding ("yeah!" I screamed). By the way, please note that the baddest character in the book is not the rich and conservative senator but the lawyer trying to steal his way into riches. So true.

There was something in Vonnegut's first rush of books that is lacking in his later novels. Although I enjoy his later books and for the life of me I can't say what this mystery quality is, whatever it is it tends to elevate even his minor books into affairs that are far more memorable than they tend to be. Maybe because the themes and images he's using here were new to him and he was still comparitively young . . . I don't know. It's not for me to say. This novel has a simple premise and a simple plot and moves unsurprisingly from point A to point B and yet I still have an incredibly enjoyable experience reading it, even though I finished it basically on my lunch break over the course of maybe an hour and a half. The premise then is that Eliot Rosewater has a lot of love to give to the world and spends most of his time doing very nice things for people who are almost pathetic enough to not deserve it, simply because he was born rich and feels he has a lot to give to the world. A lawyer, meanwhile wishes to prove that he is insane and has it in him to make quite the case. The book basically waffles back and forth between the lives of the various people Eliot helps, the comically depressing lives of some of these people, a little Rosewater family history and the lawyer's attempt to gather information on Eliot's apparent insanity. All of these pieces don't cohere into the great whole that his absolute best books (like Slaughterhouse-Five) do, but the pieces themselves are great fun and Vonnegut's humanity has never been as apparent here. It doesn't have the grim central event like the bombing of Dresden to put everything in context but somehow he manages to make the book moving and hilarious at the same time. The plot of course is slight and it's a fairly direct book, though the ending is about as abrupt as can be (and is mentioned in a later Vonnegut book I think, fortunately I forgot about it). This won't ever be regarded as one of his classics but even a minor work by an author working at his peak is worth another look and while the rewards here may not be as grand, they're simple and pleasant in their own small way.

Take a fresh look... I must have read Mr. Rosewater over 40 years ago, when I poured through everything Kurt Vonnegut wrote...as fast as I could read, and as fast as he could write. I recall liking it, but not one of my favorites. Having given it a reread several weeks ago, it has taken on a whole new life. In our new world of massive economic inequality and incredible excesses of corporate greed, Eliot Rosewater should be our new American hero...and Vonnegut (not surprisingly), prophetic in his creation. It is a quick read, a simple premise, and yes even has the great Kilgore Trout playing a prominent role...but Eliot is who you will close the book remembering for a long time.
"Pretend to be good always, and even God will be fooled." Eliot Rosewater

With "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater", Vonnegut takes on the sordid issue of class. The main character, Eliot Rosewater, has inherited vast wealth, but feels lost and adrift until he moves to a small town and spends all his time giving "uncritical love" and money to the depressed, disenfranchised locals. His behavior completely mortifies his elitist Senator Father and psychologically troubled princess wife. It also allows a greedy young lawyer ammunition to have him declared insane; the only way possible to get his hands on part of his fortune.

If recent studies have shown that rich people are no more intelligent (at least in terms of IQ) than poor people, this is something that Vonnegut clearly knew decades ago. It's clear from this novel that he believed that the "haves" and "have-nots" were usually separated by little more than luck; usually involving being born into the right circumstances. Eliot's father subscribes to the conventional American wisdom that hard work is all it takes to succeed. Eliot's idol, Science Fiction writer Kilgore Trout, has a more ambivalent point of view. The reader is left to make their own conclusion.

Great novel. Well I guess it a novel. It is a very original approach. Only downside is that I felt like the ending was a bit lacking . I was expecting more based on the book. In any event read it. It not on the level of slaughterhouse five or welcome to the monkey house but, hey Vonnegut at average is still head and shoulders above most.

Mr. Vonnegut has put forth a great piece of literature that binds together the worlds of poverty and gross wealth in a study on what makes human beings worthwhile or worthless and the make up of the architect of man.
This novel is a collage of introspection and lessons. Using religious allegory, Vonnegut shows that human beings are only human-- whether poor or rich. His god figurine, when all sculpted by the end of the book, shows the reader a view on the creator of man: entropic on the surface, yet acutely set in his ways of good, even after the denouncment of him by his people. Take this view however you wish.
Vonnegut's god is all of us: rich, poor, filthy, crazy... the list goes on. And Vonnegut raises the strange question: Was God crazy for producing mankind?
This novel is thought provoking, entertaining, and enlightening. Take my view however you wish.

This Kurt Vonnegut novel looks at Eliot Rosewater, a rich eccentric who decides to make the world (or at least his town) a better place. Rosewater is rich, drunk, blessed with a social conscience, and he sets out to help improve the lives of the lonely, the ignored, and the losers in the town of Rosewater, Indiana. For this philanthropy Rosewater is seen as insane or close to it. The story looks at both Mr. Rosewater and some of the people whose world he brightens. The book is a bit depressing at times, but contains a powerful message and quite a bit of critique at greed, hypocrisy and other human frailties. Some may note the similarity of two names (Rosewater, Roosevelt) who believed in helping people. This novel doesn't have quite the power of Vonnegut's top works like SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, but it's an entertaining read.

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors. I like almost all of his books, but found this one to be just so so. It was interesting, but far from my favorite – Player Piano, Cat’s Cradle and Sirens of Titan, which are all better choices for someone wanting to start reading Vonnegut.

As a reader of historical fiction, I hadn't read any Vonnegut. Upon his death, I vowed to read him. Finally five years later, I finally tried this one, primarily because it was a book at hand.

As to its being almost 50 years old, it holds up well. One reason is that there are no direct references to the Vietnam War or the Civil Rights movement to date it. There is an openly gay character who is naturally woven into the story, which is unusual for the time. The theme is even more relevant now that what was once the 10% has become the 1%.

The novel began with a great satire. Somewhere in the middle the satire was no longer subtle. Perhaps it would be a better short story, or an even shorter novel. The ending was unsatisfactory, almost as though Vonnegut didn't know exactly how he wanted to end it.

I'm not sure where or how this fits in with the Vonnegut oeuvre, but it didn't meet my expectations for this writer. I'm aware that this is considered a lesser work, and will try another.

This is a great book as Vonnegut points out a lot of the flaws of our society in a comical way. Great Satire!
This book starts out a bit slow and at times was hard to keep my attention, definitely not as gripping as Slaughterhouse five and Cat's Cradle.
The second half of this book is where it started to catch my interested and made me really enjoyed this novel.
This is just all my personal opinion, I know plenty of people who say this is there favorite book by Vonnegut. So to each their own.

Overall great novel by Kurt Vonnegut.

Eliot Rosewater is giving away his money (and love and attention) to deserving people... and some maybe not so deserving. This proves he is crazy. Hence the subtitle "Pearls Before Swine."
That's the setup in this minor Vonnegut novel. Eliot has no illusions about the quality of the people he sometimes helps or how far his help will go. But he insists that the world would be a better place if everyone gave a little something to each other. This in turn sets Eliot up for a confrontation with a lawyer and his Senator father as the family fortune is threatened because Eliot can be proven insane. After all, he's giving it away. He must be crazy. Kilgore Trout comes to the rescue with his usual comically inverted (and yet somehow truer) morals.
This isn't Vonnegut's best but it is a pleasant and gentle novel with a bit of a moral and some good comic moments. A nice read.

Out of all Vonnegut's novels, this is by far the best. One reason is that there are no sci-fi trappings, no silliness about time travel or aliens, nothing but a real study of American history and the impact of wealth and greed on the ideal of democracy. While short and exceedingly easy to read, the book feels like an epic narrative, since it sweeps from the very rich to the very poor, from the battlefields of the Civil War to the modern sailing playgrounds of the very rich. It feels much longer and richer than it is in terms of page count alone.

For the first and last time, Vonnegut takes the time to outline a realistic setting,Rosewater County Indiana, and observes the effects of poverty there with all the power (but none of the sentimentality) of John Steinbeck at his best. At the same time he cuts back to New York, writing about the rich Rosewater clan and the wealthy families of Pisquontuit with all the power (but none of the sentimentality) of Edith Wharton. Last of all, he uses a brilliant series of flashbacks to describe America's tragic fall from the courage and carnage of the Civil War to the squalor and self-indulgence of America today. The Civil War sections alone are unique in Vonnegut's work; he captures the horror of the casualty rates without in any way denying or shying away from the ideals of the Union Army. He writes about the civil war with all of the power (but none of the sentimentality) of Southern apologists like Charles Frazier.

Eliot Rosewater is an ideal American hero,and a fascinating foil to Billy Pilgrim in SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE. Both are All-American guys. But where Billy is an average Joe, Eliot is a scion of wealth and privilege. Where Billy is a ninety eight pound weakling, Eliot is a sailing and tennis champ. Billy is a one-dimensional anti-war propaganda device, (too "pure" to acquire even the most basic military discipline) while Eliot is a much-decorated officer who fights well and suffers as only a brave man can.

The greater power of Eliot Rosewater means that the stakes are much higher. Unlike Billy Pilgrim, Eliot is not a passive weakling but a crusader who sacrifices wealth and privilege to help the poor. His warmth, gentleness and paternal concern for the less fortunate are rendered with tenderness and humor. Vonnegut creates a convincing modern day saint and gives him a real experience among fully realized victims of modern America.

As always in Vonnegut, the few flaws in the book all involve women. Eliot's wife Sylvia is flayed raw again and again as a spoiled socialite who simply can't muster up the gumption to stand by Eliot's side. Vonnegut apologizes for her -- but with a sneer. He never seems to have realized that not all women are as fragile and treacherous as his own mother, who, as he never gets tired of telling us, abandoned him by committing suicide at an early age. By the same token, Fred Rosewater of Rhode Island, Eliot's distant cousin, is rendered as gentle and long-suffering, while his wife Caroline is a one-dimensional shrew. Vonnegut can't get away from an instinctive hostility to women as women, as if the mere biological condition of womanhood were some sort of moral weakness.

His social criticism, as bracing as it is, often suffers as a result. For example, in the Rhode Island section, he feels like lashing out at the rich, so he writes (quite memorably) "four fat, stupid, silly widows in furs were laughing over a bathroom joke printed on a cocktail napkin." Hell of a sentence! Sounds like Joseph Cotten in SHADOW OF A DOUBT. But what does it really mean?

What's odd here is that Vonnegut is attacking the rich, only it seems he only means women. And what he hates about women is that they know about sex? That they enjoy sex? That sex exists? That somehow wanting sex killed off the men folk? As Thackeray's Becky Sharp puts it, he leaves women under the weight of an accusation that is, after all, unspoken.

Still, this is the one Vonnegut book that really has the feel of a fully accomplished novel, a genuine American classic. It has moral depth and epic scope that he never achieved again.

Wasn't a huge fan of this book. Made me chuckle a few times, but was never really grabbed by the plot. Doesn't really go anywhere and the characters aren't incredibly interesting. This is my least favorite Vonnegut so far. Hopefully it won't get any worse than this. At the end of the day, it wasn't a terrible book, I just didn't enjoy it as much as the other Vonnegut novels I have read.

I just finished reading this book for the first time since I was in college - and I am 43 now. It is much different than I remember it. Being a book about money and distribution of same, it is natural and right that I would see it much differently now, after being emeshed for years in the workaday capitalistic world, than when I was an idealistic college student. However, having said that, I wonder how much of the book REALLY is about money, and how much of it is really about pride, humanitarianism, and being a friend. Elliot Rosewater simply wants the world to be a better place. He does not really deceive himself into thinking that money itself is a cureall - he seems to understand that charity, in and of itself, is not the answer. Self respect and holding one's head up is. Is Elliot really crazy? Heck, yes! But just because he's crazy does not mean that all of his ideas and thoughts are insane. Like most of Vonnegut's books, this is a fable - you could pick it apart all day if you like on the facts and the contradictions - but that would not diminish it. It is a fine fable, and contains many truths. It's a good book.

vonnegut is addictive
his choice little phrases, and witty little quips, make well worth, reading a book which is not to par with his others.
it is not that this is a bad book, for by no means is it.
it is written in his typical manner, running little plot fragments back and forth, and casually waxing on about mild side threads...which i personally find to be one of my favourite things about his writing, the attention to details, however trivial they may seem.
kilgore trout features into this book a little bit, and samples of his writings are present as well
fun fun stuff
but, read other vonnegut before taking this one on.

Vonnegut is a joy to read. The fact that all his works are available to read as part of the "Unlimited" program was a happy find for me. It has been years since I first read Vonnegut's works and they have not lost any of their lustre over the years. This book was an excellent critique of the absurd social divisions and the nature of American life, that has become even truer now than when it was written.

The New York Times called it a comic masterpiece but, it's more than just that. Published in 1965 it's a satirical portrayal of the rich and their idiosyncrasies which delves into the power of money and it's corrupting influence on those who have it and those who don't. Though it pokes fun at the financial shenanigans and associated guilt that sometimes afflicts heirs of mass fortunes it really can be viewed as nothing new when compared to the elite of contemporary times, however, the rich of today have really outdone corruption and exploitation of the working class and poor and their shenanigans pale in comparison. One could even say that the 'One Percent' have succeeded in elevating exploitation of the working class or, the 'Ninety Nine Percent' to a sociopathic art form.

I have LOVED Vonnegut since I was in middle school (just a couple of years ago, ahem) And have recently started re-reading him. This unfortunately, was not one of my favorite works by him. Somehow it is lacking the subtlety and humor of many of his other works. Still not a bad read, just not one I would recommend if you are just getting to know him.

I couldn't help being slightly disappointed with this one. I suppose one of your favorite authors will sometime let you down a little. It's still a good read, but considering he has so many other better books, this isn't essential Vonnegut, unless you are a big fan and want to read all his novels. It's true what everyone says about Vonnegut though, he is very addictive. Once you get into him you will want to read all of his work.

That said, the book goes everywhere in all directions, one minute you are interested in what happens next, and then the book just goes off on something else and for a little too long. I enjoyed reading about Elliot's encounters and conversations with the people of Rosewater, but I wanted more. I enjoyed reading about Fred Rosewater, but it was almost too little, too late. And another big problem was that Vonnegut brings in a couple useless characters and talks about them and a past situation when we could be reading more Eliot or Fred. I know it's very Vonnegut and I understand the connections with the message, but it wasn't all a good thing with this one.

I suppose Vonnegut said all that he wanted to say in this book, but I would have read more if it was there. It's a short, light read, and although it is preachy, it's still an honest and moral take on society and life, just don't expect it to be as good as, "Breakfast of Champions" or "Mother Night."

The subject matter in this story is as relevant today as it was the day it was written. I find it interesting how that seems to be true time and again with great works of literature. It seems that mr. Vonnegut has a way with ideas and words that satiate to the core.

An excellent book by Vonnegut, and one that I read fairly quickly.

Dealing with some great social commentary that may as well have been written this year instead of half a century ago, Vonnegut humorously illustrates some of humankind's attitudes to both mediocrity and mediocracy. Prevalent in America at the time of writing, it's clear that this book would've been quite divisive upon release.

Vonnegut again, delivers a great story driven through one character's trials and tribulations, no matter how unplausible.

Others have described the plot of this book quite adequately; I'd just like to add my own personal thumbs-up! I've read only one other Vonnegut book so far -- Breakfast of Champions -- but I'm already a big fan! Vonnegut is brilliant at tweaking the establishment in a blatant yet subtle way. And I love his sense of place -- places he's spent time in: Indianapolis, rural Indiana, New England. This book was a joy to read, and I'm looking forward to reading more of his books!

GOD BLESS YOU MR.ROSEWATER was a fun book to read but it went nowhere! Until I got to the last page, I was waiting for something exciting to happen but that excitement never came.
The story is of Eliot Rosewater who is the president of the enormously rich Rosewater Foundation. Eliot gives money to anyone who asks and gives everyone his kindness and love. But Norman Mushari, a nasty lawyer, is out to prove that Eliot is insane and the family foundation should be given to a distant cousin.
This book was published in 1965 and was one of Vonnegut's first 5 books. This is a good book but definitely not one of the esteemed writer's best. This book is a fun quick read and I would recommend reading it. But for anyone under the age of 15, it would bore the hell out of them.

Vonnegut gives us an excellent commentary on the dichotomy of social hierarchies, as well as making us laugh out loud. He conflicted the drunk with all the money and the runty lawyer who wants to swindle him out of it. We can see that there are factions within factions and utterly wealthy men who still have hearts in this fictional world adorned by the ideas of a very inventive Mr. Kilgore Trout. Volunteer firemen, fishermen and senators all in one little book. Classic Vonnegut.

I quote from the book: "They do not work and will not. Heads down, unmindful, they have neither pride nor self-respect.....
More. Give me more. I need more are the only new thoughts they have learned." Vonnegut wrote this about the poor and lazy back in 1965. It reminds me exactly of the 2013 beneficiaries of the Obama benefit nation. Why work? Why even bother to pretend to look for work? President Obama will take care of you, protect you from the evil rich. (Translation: economic redistribution - take from the producers and give to the shiftless.) Vonnegut hits it right on the head, he predicted the much expanded welfare nation. In the book Vonnegut also unleashes a diatribe against the "trust fund babies." Rants against the shiftless rich. However, in later years, after Vonnegut had made his money, bought his Manhattan home, vacationed at Cape Cod, partied with the "beautiful people" etc. he lived the same lifestyle he so railed against. Vonnegut left his Indianapolis roots and spent the last twenty years of his life is suicidal depression, waiting and wanting to die.

This book seems to make arguments about the sanity of those that provide an abundance of charity and whether government subsidizing people's well being and daily subsistence creates individuals that are fully dependent and ultimately replaces God with those that are acting as caretaker. It was a little difficult to follow some of the story as the time lapsing was difficult to understand.

this was the first Vonnegut book I read--and I've read most of them--and it remains my favorite. I tried to become a volunteer fireman, but, frankly, felt I lacked the courage. It made me want to go to courage school, or compassion school. I had too much I needed to learn first. I need more books like this.

I almost never read books anymore, but today I started this novel on the bus when I was going to my family's house for Thanksgiving and I surprised myself and read the whole thing. I've been a fan of Kurt Vonnegut for a while and I've read a lot of his books and this is definitely one of his best works. It might not be as good as his three best-known works but it is still a 5 star book. It was never boring, I loved each of the characters, especially Eliot, and while it wasn't as funny as some of his others I still laughed a great deal. This is going down as one of my favorite Vonnegut books.

Elliot Rosewater is a wealthy man who decides to use his money to help people and is considered crazy because of it. This book is also an
indictment of capitalism. I like Kurt Vonnegut and I liked this book.

Kurt Vonnegut's book, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is about money, power, and greed. The main character, Elliot Rosewater has abandoned his amazing lifestyle in New York to try an experiment of the human soul. He is a drunk, fat, dirty, and rich. He has a lot to give to the world and spends his time doing nice things for people, yet these people are so pitiable, they don't deserve it. Not everyone is happy with Eliot's work. Lawyers try to find him insane and unable to use the family fortune. The books switches between the lives of people Eliot helps, the depressing lives of some of them, the lawyers attempt to find Eliot insane and some Rosewater family history. Vonnegut makes you question Eliot's insanity or his overly niceness to the very end. It also questions the class system in America. The book has its funny moments. Overall it was an alright book and I recommend it if you want a quick, humorous read.

Another Vonnegut masterpiece. Vonnegut uses many of his characters that appear in many of his other works. Mr. Rosewater is a great guy who takes his job running a charitable foundation seriously. He learns that humanity is often more important than money in helping people in need.

This book has all the makings of a classic Vonnegut text. However, it lacks depth, and the plot never really thickens. By the end of the novel, I was asking myself, "Wait, how did we get to this point in the story?" The overall idealism which is used to give character development to Rosewater takes away from the reality of the situation. The novel does have rewarding characteristics, but I do not think this should be the first book by Vonnegut that one reads.

A conniving lawyer wants a chunk of a foundation's money, and schemes to prove the current head of the foundation is insane so he can orchestrate a coup d'etat and get a commission when his hand-picked successor takes over. However, the line between "insane" and "saintly" is very blurry...

As with most Vonnegut, the "plot" is the weakest element, and one reads the work for the dark humor and social insights. This is especially the case here, where things fall apart at the last chapter in (to me) a most unsatisfactory and unsatisfying way. Given the number of 5-star reviews, others are much more forgiving about this.

Not KV's best, but not his worst, either. Maybe worth reading once, especially if you like the author.

I am a huge Kurt Vonnegut fan and working on the completion of the rest of his works. I can't say that Glod Bless You Mr. Rosewater is my favorite Vonnegut work (Cat's Cradle, or Sirens of Titan are just unbeatable), but, I can say that this is easily the funniest novel that I have ever read by anyone. I would definitely recommend it.

I loved this book and so will you. This novel truly displays how generosity can affect the world and how one person can make a difference. To the truly generous it seems rather selfless and only natural to give, but to the greedy and rich it is viewed as a rather insane act. The book has Vonneguts usual dark humor and dark tone which always give his novels a unique touch. A must read for Vonnegut fans!

This book relates the travails of Mr. Rosewater.
His life is the story of every sane person living
in the insane world. Symbols and analogies to the state of society run rampant in Vonnegut's satire.
Everybody exists in this novel in some form or another, whether you are the money-greedy lawyer or the disappointed father. If you wish to attempt a better understanding of your life, read it.

Most of us see the world within the confines of our circumstances. This is not a negative value judgment but rather the reality of the boundaries presented to us by our parents, our peers and the events of our particular lives and the events of the outside world that push and help shape what we see as the possibilities for our own lives and the world.
A few people are blessed with the ability to imagine what might be around the corner. Kurt Vonnegut is one of those people. Also armed with a sharp wit and ability to both touch our funny bone and shock our conscience, he has created a novel that makes us laugh and cry at the same time. A book that you will ready at various stages of your life, it is a must read.

I've been through most of the Vonnegut collection, and this is one of the better ones. The thing I love about Vonnegut, is he creates all these peripheral characters and Trout sci-fi plots that are such wonderful ideas in and of themselves. I wish he would explore them more fully. I especially would have liked to read more about Lila. Well, I guess it goes to show you good ideas are a dime a dozen.

Okay, so God Bless You... may not be the the best thing Vonnegut's ever written, but Vonnegut on an off day is still well worth reading. This book has all his trademarks, from biting social commentary and blazing satire to dark humor and quirky characters. It's a speedy read that will make you both laugh and wince by turns. Don't make it the first Vonnegut book you read -- for that, I'd suggest Slaughterhouse 5 -- but if you're a fan give it a whirl.

This is an inspiring book that is still extremely relevant to what's going on in the world, maybe it should be put on a required reading list for schools. Oh wait, they don't read full books anymore, only chapters...

In a review, the reader tries to create a sense of the book; the task is to boil down the essence of the work and to summarize and give opinion about the quality of the object in a very subjective manner. I am making a project of finding that essence in the most constrained manner possible. Here, I present you with a haiku review. I hope you like the review and take under consideration a purchase of the work.

Decided to start
rereading Vonnegut. Good
the second time too.

Demonstrates a good knowledge of American history--impressive really.
Humor: excellent. very funny.
Eliot Rosewater: kind of a pathetic ideal. makes you suspicious of KV-whether this is what he actually thought of life, that it would be alright if only one had no less than 10L's of Kentucky Whiskey on hand, and a massive fortune to philanthrophize with.

Still one of my all time favorites.

Sere seer, Vonnegut foresaw our collective futures and sought to jibe us into healthy, redemptive action with wit, wisdom, and Weltschmerz.

"We do,doodley do, doodley do, doodley do,

What we must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must;

Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, muddily do,

Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust."

--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Sonnet for Vonnegut

He told the truth, but most ignored his words.

He wrote a string of tragicomic books,

Reiterating wisdoms never blurred.

They laughed, they praised; but home they went. The brooks

Still babbled, and the birds still nested. He,

Who smoked beneath a curly head of hair,

Would speak on campuses. He knew that we,

A species crawling from its ancient lair

To dominate the seas, the lands, the skies,

Would soon eviscerate the world for all

Except a few strong sets of weedy flies,

Some rodents, and some ants. The human flaw

Was that we failed to listen to our sages,

Who taught, appalled. Too cheap, we wrecked the Ages.

(c)2004 by David Kleist

"God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater", is one of Kurt Vonnegut's greatest books. It is based around Eliot Rosewater, a warm hearted, eccentric millionare, and presendent of the Rosewater Corporation, a incredibly rich foundation that is passed along from father to son. He abandons the high life in NYC, and moves to Rosewater County in Indiana, his family's home. Eliot begins to help the poor people (which is all of Rosewater County) with their personal problems, and soon becomes the "father" of them all. A lawyer, seeking the Rosewater fortune for himself, sets out prove that Eliot is insane. I won't tell you the ending, but suffice to say that it is excellent. Vonnegut shows us thatmoney isn't everything, and a poor person from Indiana is just as important as a Senator from New York. A matchless book.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is a great read. It is funny, and something to go in between books of intellectual substance. Without requring much thought, Vonnegut entertains with a delightful smile. I can't get over the absurdity of Kilgore Trout and the Eccentricity of Mr. Rosewater. This book is short and sweet.

What a fantastic book! It is one of the only books that I"ve read were I really wished it would not end. The content came across as light but imbued with deep thought. The writing was weird and fun--it made for an enjoyable read. I can't remember a character study that I've liked more.

Fantastic read, I just finished it and it actually brought a tear to my eye it was so beautiful. Also I was listening to Georgia Lee by Tom Waits. Good combination. This one like most Vonnegut's has complex characters that all intertwine, I've always admired his screen play style novels that really feel like reading a long good movie. This is the 3rd Vonnegut where the last sentence made it for me, at least emotion wise. He always ties it back in and leaves the readie satisfied and wanting more. On to the next one!

This was a great novel. I am not usually one to sit down and read a book cover to cover in one sitting, but I did that with this novel. I am a big vonnegut fan and Have not read one of his books that dissapointed me yet. this one was no different in that category

This book is sheer genius. After reading it once, I was forced to stop, think, and read it again. Upon a closer examination, I realized that Eliot Rosewater personifies God in a Godless universe. Agree? Yes? No? Email me and we shall discuss.

A very heartening story about the life of somewhat regular people. That is, not extravagent. Although very eccentric, but that's what one expects from KV. The story is pretty strong, and very funny along the way. Not a good first-time read from Vonnegut.

Slaughterhouse Five often gets the credit, but this is the best Vonnegut book out there. There is a lot we can all learn from Kilgore Trout, and if a drunken Eliot Rosewater can figure it out - its sad that others out in this world can't.

For me this wasn't on the level of Breakfast of Champions, Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, etc but it was still very enjoyable and thoroughly Vonnegut.

It's a quick read, and worthy of an afternoon or two beneath a tree.

Ever faithful to puncturing holes in the American Dream and the way people live our lives, Vonnegut proves again that he can write pretty much anything. Though not as sharp or layered as Slaughterhouse-Five or Cat's Cradle or Mother Night, this book takes a critical look at money, and does it gleefully.

Kilgore Trout's novel -- 2br02b -- boldly ask the question "What the hell are people for?" Vonnegut offers an answer in this book. His protaganist Eliot Rosewater, struggles for meaning in a world obsessed by money, greed and prestige. (Sound familiar?) Yet Eliot is able to hold his course. I strongly recommend this book to reluctant cynics and others looking for a witty, well written novel about the nature of human beings.

This isn't one of Vonnegut's best, but like every other Vonnegut book I have read, it is extremely entertaining and fun to read. If you haven't read Vonnegut before you would do well to start with one of his better books and then come back to this one if you like his style.

a tale about a guy who's life is loosely based on a kind of jesus character. Vonnegut's genius is evident throughout and you wont mind laughing at the image of this guy sitting in a chair, pulling a foot long pubic hair out to the amazement of his father.

This book takes an interesting look as the simbiotic relationship between a town and its benefactor. I love the lessons learned and it makes you stop and think about the current structure of our society.

Just as most of Vonnegut's novels follow a single character through a series of semi-plausible episodes, so does 'God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater'. However, unlike the others, this story does not rely on science fiction. Rather, it focuses on one man's struggle to affirm his sense of self against great odds. Seems like an appropriate theme in a society increasingly concerned with style and ignorant of substance.

Eliot Rosewater, a millionaire-become-champion-of-the-little-people is accused of being insane and floats through his attempt at a good benevolent existence in an absurd world where insanity is shunned, but simple existence is automatic insanity.

After reading a vast assortment of Vonnegut's work I found this book unsatisfying in the extreme. Usually honest, often brutally so, Vonnegut works this book into a crecendo of cheesiness. What had potential to be a genuine classic like "Breakfast of Champions", "Dead Eye Dick" and "Slaughter House Five", became nothing more than a cheap commentary on the human race with a sappy 'love thy neighbour' quality. If I want to be scammed by an unimaginative ending I will go to Hollywood; movies are less time consuming.

As a huge vonnegut fan, I was very upset to find that this book had a badly developed plot, uninteresting characters, and an almost tragic lack of all the things that make a vonnegut novel great. There really wasn't even what I'd call a complete story, and I skipped a lot of pages out of boredom just to keep things moving. Not recommended for anyone except the rare person who thinks Vonnegut's good books are bad and wants to read a bad one for the sheer pleasure of it all.

Vintage KV. An excellent yarn that occasionally moves along a bit slowly and with somewhat of a predictable outcome.
Every town should have a Rosewater and yet we are most assured that for every Rosewater there is the plotting scheming lowlife lawyer in the weeds.
In the end, right triumphs over the system.
Def worth the price.

I have read a bunch of Vonnegut's books and I would rank it up there with cat's cradle and Sirens of Titan as my favorites. It does a good job putting into words the way we should all look at money in our lives. If you are a fan of Vonnegut's i am positive you will like this book.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is the worst book I've ever read by Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut's usual rapid-paced prose and intense dialogue is largely absent in this somewhat preachy novel about wealth and charity. Though there are a few interesting scenes which may save the story from total failure, both the plot and main characters remain underdeveloped throughout most of the book. This was the first (and hopefully will remain the only) Vonnegut book I have ever struggled to finish.

Even though "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" is well written, the story falls flat and also lacks the humor you'd come to expect from a Vonnegut novel. The message of the story is beyond cynical. The economic classes exist for a reason, and even though wealth being handed down to subsequent generations may seem unfair to most, it is the way of life and should be respected as such. This book carps on an issue that is just totally unfair to those who work hard for what they have, and they should most certainly have the right to pass it down to their sons and daughters. Doesn't posterity mean anything here? Maybe not. I do agree that the rich deserve to render a small amount of their wealth to the lower classes, but only through a fair taxation system.

In an ideal world we would have more Mr. Rosewaters, mad with philanthropy, giving away their wealth as if the money would never end. Unfortunately, that's not how it is. That being the case, all of us should not hate those who have just because they don't lavish the have nots.

I have never read anything by this author, and thought this sounded like an opportunity to try. Glad I didn't spend any more money on it-pretty ridiculous, verbose reading. Hard to wade through-made it to the third chapter before giving up.