Vintage Vonne-goodness

It’s a rare gift, but one Vonnegut Jr. puts to use in almost all of his novels I’ve read thus far: to start by telling the reader how the story will unfold – most likely it’s the impending doom scenario – and still managing to keep your attention glued to the page, all the way to the very end.

Vonnegut did not write like a ‘serious’ writer nowadays would, or even back in the day. The tone in Galápagos, like so often in his stories, is wildly ironic, the style dry and witty. With sardonic pleasure one character after another is plucked away and will, in one of the novel’s many recurring phrases, ”enter the blue tunnel into the Afterlife” and yet it never gets stale. He rolls out the facts of the storyline, cracks a few jokes in between, wanders off with one or two hilarious, seemingly relevant (or irrelevant, but only at first glance!) anecdotes, usually culminating in some little gem of insight – life in one breezy sentence – and then moves on. Press repeat. It’s a refreshingly simple formula.

I’m awed by Vonnegut’s ability to write to so airily, yet come off so wise, as if he’s gone through a myriad lives already. By how comes off as compassionate as it comes off aloof simultaneously. How it is acerbic satire without resorting to flailing cynicism. How its language appears both fresh yet dated. It’s the contrast the stuff of life is made off: this whole wonky ordeal we call ‘human life’ is pointless, so let’s just be nice to each other while we’re at it, shall we?

Galápagos is, simply put, great fun. It's at times comical and erudite. While not his greatest novel, it deserves accolades for its ambitious million-year timeline and bonkers unraveling plot, as well as an unforgettable cast of a few evolutionary lottery winners, but mostly unfortunate losers, ‘mostly’ being 99.9% of the world population. So it goes. From first page to last, the book is – dare I make this cringeworthy pun? – vintage Vonne-goodness.