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pizzakarin
Posted 2015-06-19 2:10 PM (#10825 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: RE: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge		Quote Reply



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Location: Austin, Tx		I just finished Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut for my 1952 book and found it unenjoyable. It read more like an extended parable than a novel because it hammered home its lessons so forcefully. I didn't find any of the humor that others seemed to have found. Maybe it's because I found it hard to place myself in that world. Besides there being only a single female character in the entire book, the male characters were not ones I could empathize with. Paul Proteus, the protagonist, lacked any agency and instead went with the current of wherever he was. The previously mentioned currents were single-minded two-dimensional characters of various agendas and they swept up everything in their path without consideration. While that may have been part of Vonnegut's point, it made for dull reading (or, in my case, listening).

Next up for 1953, Childhood's End.

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