Summer reading, part 2

The title of Kurt Vonnegut's 1965 God Bless You Mr. Rosewater: or Pearls Before Swine sheds little light into the novel's context.

The protagonist 'Mr. Rosewater' actually refers to two individuals, similar in disposition, who are related by blood but strangers.

The first, Eliot, a middle-aged man in the throes of alcoholism, faces separation from his distant and oddly afflicted wife, disappoinment from his conservative, misunderstanding, yet loving father; and a legal inquiry into his sanity by a scheming lawyer who wants a slice of the family fortune for himself.

Fred Rosewater is the cousin from the less fortunate Rhode Island chapter of the family. Fred is an insurance agent who is "poor and boring" according to him and his socially climbing wife.


The Illinois Rosewaters are a wealthy family, Vonnegut establishes. Eliot's madness, or extreme eccentricity, seems to result from a tragedy during his service in World War 2, in which he accidentally killed three civilian firemen (we also know that Eliot is obsessed with volunteer fire departments in the present).

As a war veteran and only child born into money, Eliot falters through life as first an arts collector and philanthropist, but slowly loses his grip on reality through a series of public disgraces.

Eliot endeavors to spend much of the family fortune helping a town in the family's namesake Rosewater County, populated by people widely regarded as disreputable.

The townspeople regard Eliot as a saint of sorts who provides them with counseling and money when they need it. He own wife moves back to Europe to live as a socialite, but then goes crazy herself for reasons which her psychiatrist can't understand.

While all of this is going on, the family lawyer Musharref convinces cousin Fred to sue Eliot for his share of the estate based on the fact that he's crazy and unfit to run the foundation.

Eliot admits to a total psychotic break near the very end. He finally loses his mind on the way to finalize divorce from his wife (who is certainly not an awful person in this context, she truly cares about him).

He "wakes up" in the narrative one year later, remembering almost nothing about the lost time.

Mr. Rosewater is certainly not my favorite book, from my favorite author. I alternated between total disinterest and mild fascination at Vonnegut's unyielding devotion towards mocking simply everything.

Maybe I just can't stand how itchingly familiar the idiosyncratic Rosewater's debated 'insanity' is.

Like many Vonnegut books of this period, the characters are seedy opportunists, rich establishment hacks, and the occasional misunderstood hero. This may or may not be Eliot here. It's sometimes difficult to discover the character's motivation, as Vonnegut relies mostly on non-omniscient narrative. It's not that his characters aren't compelling or that his grasp of history is not relevant. They are, and it is.

If you know any Vonnegut, you realize that all of this is backstory. The true meaning often lies in the last few chapters.

The point, comprehensively, is that none of it matters, that none of society's graces or failures change anything in life. The reader must understand that Vonnegut is truly the master of ultimate cynicism.

However, redemption waits.

Eliot is not an enlightened person because he gives his life and fortune to the poor and unwanted.

Rather,he struggles as a man not only disillusioned with what he believes to be a disdainful and pompous, idiotic upper class (this would be too obvious).

As Vonnegut would say in Deadeye Dick, a person's life story ends at some point, and "all that remains to be experienced is the epilogue". Eliot's story ended when he killed the firemen in the war.

Eliot wants to define what makes him human, for better or worse. He doesn't shy away from the truth of his mental state, the way people see him or his family, or the unhealthy illusions the residents of "his town" have about him and themselves.

Lastly, the author usually includes one moment of pure clarity (actually at the beginning):

"Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created."

God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut, war survivor, and self-proclaimed humanist.