This book is about money. What can money do for you and what it can do TO you. It is a good stark look at poverty and the helpless. What if you just gave them money, would it improve their condition, or make it worse? Eliot Rosewater is now the president of the Rosewater Foundation. A foundation that controls $87 million. An incident during World War II changes him forever and he decides to give his money to whoever asks for some. He also becomes obsessed with volunteer firefighters. Eventually everyone thinks he is crazy. There is an attempt to take away his money by another member of the Rosewater clan. Eliot's father is then forced to defend his son's "crazy" actions. "Your devotion to volunteer fire departments is very sane, too, Eliot, for they are, when the alarm goes off, almost the only examples of enthusiastic unselfishness to be seen in this land. They rush to the rescue of any human being, and count not the cost. The most contemptible man in town, should his contemptible house catch fire, will see his enemies put the fire out. And, as he pokes through the ashes for the remains of his contemptible posessions, he will be comforted and pities by no less than the Fire Chief." Trout spread his hands. "There we have people treasuring people as people. It's extremely rare. So from this we must learn."This book spends a great deal of time speaking about money."E pluribus unum is surely an ironic motto to inscribe on the currency of this Utopia gone bust, for every grotesquely rich American represents property, priviledges, and pleasures that have been denies the many. An even more instructive motto, in the light of history made by the Noah Rosewaters, might be: Grab much too much, or you'll get nothing at all.""You gave up everything a man is supposed to want, just to help the little people, and the little people know it. God bless you, Mr. Rosewater."There is a good commentary on how to teach people to make money."...people don't share things in this country. I think it's a heartless government that will let one baby be born owning a big piece of the country, the way I was born, and let another baby be born without owning anything. The least a government could do, it seems to me, is to divide things up fairly among the babies. Life is hard enough, without people having to worry themselves sick about _money_, too. There's plenty for everybody in this country, if we'll only _share_ more." "And just what do you think that would do to incentive?" "You mean fright about not getting enough to eat, about not being able to pay the doctor, about not being able to give your family nice clothes, a safe, cheerful, comfortable place to live, a decent education, and a few good times? You mean shame about not knowing where the Money River is?" "The _what_?" "The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it -- and so were most of the mediocre people we grew up with, went to private schools with, sailed and played tennis with. We can slurp from that mighty river to our hearts' content. And we even take slurping lessons, so we can slurp more efficiently." "Slurping lessons?" "From lawyers! From tax consultants! From customers' men! We're born close enough to the river to drown ourselves and the next ten generations in wealth, simply using dippers and buckets. But we still hire the experts to teach us the use of aqueducts, dams, reservoirs, siphons, bucket brigades, and the Archimedes' screw. And our teachers in turn become rich, and their children become buyers of lessons in slurping." ( )

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is the story of (as you might imagine) Mr. Rosewater. Actually two different Mr. Rosewaters. One, Eliot Rosewater, comes from a huge amount of money and has the non-responsibility of distributing large chunks of that money as president of the Rosewater Foundation. The other, his distant cousin Fred Rosewater, is a struggling insurance agent in Rhode Island who will inherit the Rosewater fortune if his lawyer can prove that Eliot is insane. And to his family, particularly his father, the Senator, Eliot does seem pretty insane. He left his big house and his fancy life in the city to live back in the town of Rosewater, Indiana. He is obsessed with volunteer firemen. He drinks constantly, sleeps in a dingy one-room apartment, and answers every phone call, any time of day or night, with "This is the Rosewater Foundation. How can we help you?" And then he does whatever he can to help the person on the other end of the phone. Eliot Rosewater probably is a little crazy. But in the nicest, most sane way possible. Just like Vonnegut, whose books manage to be cynical and naive and funny and heartbreaking all at once.

[full review here: http://spacebeer.blogspot.com/2008/12...] ( )

This was a witty tale of an unambitious wealthy man who starts his own welfare program to help other unambitious people without wealth. Humorous and sometimes thought provoking, this book is classic Vonnegut, although I thought the ending was a bit too neat.

One of my favorite passages:

All serious diseases had been conquered. So death was voluntary, and the government, to encourage volunteers for death, set up a purple-roofed Ethical Suicide Parlor at every major intersection, right next door to an orange-roofed Howard Johnson's. There were pretty hostesses in the parlor, and Barca-Loungers, and Muzak, and a choice of fourteen painless ways to die. The suicide parlors were busy places, because so many people felt silly and pointless, and because it was supposed to be an unselfish, patriotic thing to do, to die. The suicides also got free last meals next door.

And so on. Trout had a wonderful imagination.

One of the characters asked a death stewardess if he would go to Heaven, and she told him that of course he would. He asked if he would see God, and she said, "Certainly, honey."

And he said, "I sure hope so. I want to ask Him something I never was able to find out down here."

"What's that?" she said, strapping him in.

"What the hell are people for? ( )

It's always tempting to fall into the trap of saying that Vonnegut's books tend to be, as a whole, repetitive and reductive. And while many of them feel very similar to others -- and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater certainly fits that mold -- they all succeed by virtue of addressing subtly different aspects of the despicable human nature we're all heir to.

In this book, we're invited to see the horrid results of wealth, greed, and litigation, through the eyes of two Mr. Rosewaters, both of whom are guilty only of doing as best as they can given their mindsets and circumstances. One man overcomes his lineage, one seems destined to succumb to it.

After a fascinating satirical meditation on the nature of mental illness, it ends with a surprising last-page twist that somehow manages to feel too rushed to be valid and too appropriate to be disputed at the same time.

It's classic Vonnegut through and through, which is a good or bad thing depending on what you think of him. Me, I thought it was a brisk, charming, and disarming read.

Not my favorite vonnegut book, but a good one to see his development as a writer. ( )