Regular marked price: $14.00Discount Price: $11.20
Cost Savings: $2.80 (20%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780385333474
ISBN number: 0385333471
Label: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Manufacturer: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: September 08, 1998
Publishing house: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Release Date: September 08, 1998
Sale Popularity Level: 17373
Studio: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
A rich man attempts a noble experiment with human nature. The result is an etched-in-acid portrayal of universal greed, hypocrisy, and follies of the flesh.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
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.
Rated by buyers -
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 endeavor 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.
Rated by buyers 
-
Vonnegut is one of those genius writers that you can't help but love. "Slaughterhouse 5" was my very 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.
Rated by buyers -
This is the fifth Vonnegut novel I've read in about as many months. I enjoyed "Timequake" and loved "Slaughterhouse Five" and "Bluebeard." But the last two I've read just weren't as good. I read "Cat's Cradle" and thought overall it was weird, not in the wacky fun-loving way of a Willy Wonka, more like the creepy way of that guy who sits in a van outside playgrounds. But then I had a head cold so maybe I wasn't prepared to appreciate the subtleties. As for "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" I just found it to be completely unpleasant and perhaps in this case it was because the novel was telling me things I knew but didn't really want to hear about. The truth hurts.
The book deals with the Rosewater family, in particular two branches of the family. One group is based out of Indiana, but they don't really live there. The father is a senator who visits the county named for his ancestors a couple times a year, which is not unlike most politicians, some of whom (a certain senator representing New York) have even less connection with the territories they represent. Thanks to shrewd dealings in the Civil War by his ancestors, the senator has plenty of money. To keep the government he ostensibly works for from touching the fortune, the senator's lawyers drew up a foundation. The senator's son Eliot comes to be the head of this foundation and he (gasp!) actually tries to use the money to help people! He moves to Rosewater County, where he dedicates himself to helping people by giving them money, medicine, and an ear to talk to while also fighting fires as a lieutenant of the Volunteer Fire Department. In the process of all this good, Eliot drives himself and his wife crazy.
Meanwhile, a greedy young lawyer locates the other branch of the Rosewater family in Rhode Island. In particular, he finds Fred Rosewater, a miserable life insurance salesman with a wife who hangs out with a rich lesbian to lap up some of the golden crumbs. The lawyer concocts a grand scheme to declare Eliot insane so he can get the foundation's money and snap up a few golden crumbs of his own.
What makes this book so depressing is that the only admirable human in the book is also the one accused of being insane. And while he is performing a lot of charitable deeds for the people of Rosewater County, he does it more out of guilt than anything and sees most of the people he helps as a nuisance. The poor people of Rosewater County and Rhode Island are all described as lazy, stupid, and useless. The rich people are also lazy, stupid, and useless, but at least they have the money to dress and smell nice.
So I think you can see what I mean about this being a real downer to read. While I understand much of what the author is saying is true--a lot of people are lazy, stupid, and useless, including Yours Truly--it's not exactly the kind of message I want to hear. As I said, the truth hurts. Maybe if you're secure enough to think you aren't lazy, stupid, and useless then you'll enjoy the book far more than I did.
That is all.
Rated by buyers -
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 very 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.
Find other books like this one:
