Timequake

Last night I picked up a few books at the library since I'm headed south for vacation this Friday. I couldn't resist borrowing the last work by one of my favorite all-time authors Kurt Vonnegut. I also couldn't resist diving into it right away. Timequake is a story told from both Vonnegut's own non-fiction perspective where he waxes nostalgic about various times of his life, and the perspective of his well known fictional alter-ego Kilgore Trout. The idea is that a "timequake" occurs in February 2001 that forces everyone back to 1991 where they are required to live those 10 years over again, unable to change a thing about how they live it. A replay, if you will, where none of the variables change until February 2001 comes around again and your free will resumes. Since the book met with luke warm reviews when it was released in 1998, I wasn't sure what I was getting into. Then I read the following:

The African-American jazz pianist Fats Waller had a sentence he used to shout when his playing was absolutely brilliant and hilarious. This was it: "Somebody shoot me while I'm happy!" That there are such devices as firearms, as easy to operate as cigarette lighters and as cheap as toasters, capable at anybody's whim of killing Father or Fats or Abraham Lincoln or John Lennon or Martin Luther King, Jr., or a woman pushing a baby carriage, should be proof enough for anybody that, to quote the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, "being alive is a crock of shit."

Talk about a hook! Go ahead, Mr. Vonnegut, I'm all ears.