Player Piano
by Kurt Vonnegut (1952)
2022 reads, 6/20:
“What distinguishes man from the rest of animals is his ability to do artificial things,” said Paul. “To his greater glory, I say. And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.”
Player Piano chronicles the life of Paul Proteus, an upper-class engineer in a version of America after the third world war. While citizens were out fighting the war, engineers created automated machines and artificial intelligence to do all the daily jobs left behind, displacing the workers when they returned. The workers didn’t have many options when they returned, and many of them wanted to get their lives back, best symbolized when the character Ed Finnerty is seen manually playing a player piano, a piano which can automatically play itself.
I think this book gets a bad rap, but I get why. Being Vonnegut’s first published novel, it is often written off as ‘lengthy’ or ‘bloated,’ and the sarcasm/satire not as polished as his later novels. But it would be unfair to judge this book just because it wasn't full-on 'Vonnegut'; it was really great, especially the ending. It did seem to drag on in a few parts, especially during the Meadows segment, but for every part that seemed out of place, there was a passage later on that brought it all together. Some other notable highlights include Finnerty’s brashness, the barber’s monologue about war, and anything to do with the Ghost Shirt society, especially in the latter half of the book.