God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

By: Kurt Vonnegut / Narrated By: Eric Michael Summerer

Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins

“We Are Here On Earth To Fart Around”—Kurt Vonnegut (YouTube 2004)!!!

How could I go wrong?

A dear friend highly recommended this; Audible had a sale on Short Audiobooks. I’d listened to, and loved, Hocus Pocus and Slaughterhouse-Five (Damn yoooouuu, James Franco!!!). And I’d been in a bit of a funk, feeling sorry for m’self, a tad exhausted with the task of putting one foot in front of the other, attempting to Act on Hope, trying NOT to Hope Lest I Get Disappointed at the same time.

So here comes God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater—where it’s all that I’m coming to learn about Vonnegut, the perfectly-phrased and oh so clear-eyed assessment of society and of man doing what man does best: MUCKING things up in atrocious ways (Here, Vonnegut takes on our American class system, where one has to be, obviously, well, INSANE to actually care about one’s fellow human being, those who have been squished down, knowing there will be no hand outstretched to help lift them up).

Eliot Rosewater is a war hero (WWII); Eliot Rosewater has been born into vast inherited wealth; Eliot Rosewater has flown the coop; Eliot Rosewater is extending that hand to lift up the squished; Eliot Rosewater is, undeniably—or so it seems—NUTS. He’s chucked it all and has returned to what he believes is his ancestral home of Rosewater, Indiana, and he’s settled himself into the volunteer firehouse, answers the red phone for fires, but mostly answers the black phone for ALL people in distress to call for assistance. With unsparing absolute caring, he administers love and sometimes tough love to all; plus? With some judicious amounts of money, he’s there for all as well. A suicide hotline? How much would it take for you to stay living for another week? A million bucks? No. A thousand bucks? No. A hundred bucks? Why, yes, I’m HERE for you.

And so he is.

But a kinda sorta plot is afoot by an avaricious young lawyer to kinda sorta conduct a hostile takeover of The Rosewater Foundation. The method? Eliot Rosewater is insane. And ooooh, with Eliot drinking himself silly in a volunteer firehouse, with his deplorable personal hygiene (It’s just not something important to him), with the Odd Duck things he says, with his estranged but much-loved wife rather going off her rocker with starting to feel just as Eliot feels and not knowing how to handle it? Well, there’s pLENty of On The Record lunacy to get Eliot chucked out and a new Rosewater thrown in, one who’s a bit of a bumpkin and who’s sorely in need of a bit of something to help him hold his head up in self-respect (An insurance salesman whose wife drinks her lunch and spends all her time spending to keep up with a rich best friend; whose father committed suicide, thus sentencing him to spending a good part of his own day contemplating a noose, a knife, maybe some rat poison…).

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is chockfull of scathing yet wry and craftily-worded observations that enlighten in a way that makes you understand: Gee, I’ve known this forever, but danged if I hadn’t just been desperately trying to keep my eyes firmly shut. Cuz, you see, with Vonnegut it’s either howl with laughter or sob into a pillow, stopping only to punch a wall. Me? With THAT caliber of writing? I was howling. And with the first appearance of Kilgore Trout and his inCREDible Words O’ Wisdom that truly get to the heart of the matter, that sum up the story, that sum up Life’s Most Basic Tragedy: Why can’t we just care for each other (But Trout phrases it differently, in a way that makes it all so baldly pathetic)? Just awesome. And with Eliot’s Epiphany and Decision Extraordinaire at the close of the story? Just BEAUTIFUL. WOW!

I’ve only one Eric Michael Summerer that I’ve listened to and reviewed, and in that particular review I’d thought he had the tones of an anchorman, bland, not too many inflections except for a bit of vocal juggling for character distinction. Here? Well, that sort of blandness to his voice works well, at least with Eliot and his increasing detachment from reality. I rather felt that Vonnegut’s emotional devastation after the bombing of Dresden came to the fore here again, his experiences in WWII, as Eliot completely sees a part of Indiana annihilated by explosions and mass bombing; as his mental health gets precarious; and as we see Eliot as a man who feels (And, indeed, was) responsible for the deaths of (In a stormed house where Nazis were holed up) two old men and one young boy whom he bayonetted… they were actually civilian firefighters trying to save the building, a trauma that induced catatonia and great Moral/Soul Injury. Summerer delivers bursts of ebullience that break through the detachment, the sometimes hysterical ecstasy. And he doesn’t do poorly with any of the other characters as well, especially with Eliot’s father, the Senator Rosewater who’s just coming to know bits and pieces of his son and his son’s experiences, all 20-years too late.

The reason the title blurb is a YouTube video is because I watched it, and I chuckled, and I laughed, and then I cried. Vonnegut had seen the WORST of Humanity during the War, and he’d watched as Humanity and Society limped along, sometimes rearing up to attack or humiliate other humans along the way. But in the end? P’raps he didn’t believe in Heaven; p’raps he’d alREAdy seen Hell. And so? He lived each moment of each day, dancing instead of walking, seeing a stuffed envelope as something once empty but now filled with Hope, with Promise, and ready to go along a Fantastical Journey. He loved the woman behind the counter who maybe didn’t even know she was bringing light and joy to Life with her choice of hair styles, and earrings, and nail polish, being daring, being free. Being wonderful.

We’re here to love each other; we’re here to enjoy the fact that we can breathe in yet another day; we’re here to make a difference, or not.

It’s laugh or cry with Vonnegut. I laugh, but now I’m dancing instead of walking…