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Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
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Galapagos (original 1985; edition 1985)

by Kurt Vonnegut

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7,677811,166 (3.8)120
Galapagos takes the listener back one million years. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, totally different human race. Kurt Vonnegut, America's master satirist, looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry--and all that is worth saving.… (more)
Member:Micah
Title:Galapagos
Authors:Kurt Vonnegut
Info:Dial Press Trade Paperback (1999), Paperback, 336 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:*****
Tags:Fiction

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Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut (1985)

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» See also 120 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 81 (next | show all)
Really enjoyed reading this as a break from reading The Beak of the Finch. Even though this was written over 30 years ago, the topics are very relevant. What are we doing to ourselves, each other and our planet. The repetitive complaining about the human brain was a bit repetitive. I would still recommend this book to almost anyone. It is a fast read and Vonnegut is a delightful way to spend a few hours. ( )
  RuthInman123 | Mar 12, 2024 |
This book was not for me at this time. The author has an interesting storytelling method, revealing a bit more about the plot and characters bit by bit as we move from one character to the next. I'm not sure how to describe it, but the clock moves forward very slowly. Like an old typewriter, you get to the end of one moment, hit carriage return, begin again on that same moment with a different character. I read far enough to know that the author had no intention of ever letting us like any of the people in the story. I can see where this would appeal to different types of readers, it just didn't appeal to me.
  MrsLee | Oct 7, 2023 |
I wanted to like this book, but it just moved soooo sloooow. I made it about a third of the way through, and they are still in the damn hotel! Most of it is just forshadowing, either of what will happen to these specific people or of what will happen to the human race a million years in the future. ( )
  blueskygreentrees | Jul 30, 2023 |
This is a funny, satyrical book not unlike Slaughterhouse-Five. I really liked it. Those two are the only two Vonnegut books I've read so far and hopefully the rest of them are equally good.

Like in Slaughterhouse-Five, the narrator here is omniscient, but instead of being the author's voice or a meta-comment on his own experience, here he chooses -brilliantly- a ghost, that of his alter-ego Kilgore Trout's son. He's not an important character, just a disembodied voice that tells the main story, but his own story is where Vonnegut's warmth comes through. He, too, (Leon Trout, that is) has been scarred by a war.

But the book itself is a play on Darwin's evolutionary theory, using it (and the Galapagos islands) as a backdrop against which to tell a surreal story about a group of people surviving a plague that makes the rest of the world infertile, by shipwrecking in the Galapagos, and how, over 1 million years of evolution later, their big mammal brains have evolved so that they're little more than animals now. No tools, no philosophy, no worrying about the future. Just fishing with their fins and sleek bodies.

What in a lesser writer would have sounded stupid, or a mean critique of manking, or preposterous, plays to Vonnegut's strengths. He fills his characters with humanity -that is, failures- and each phrase is beatiful to read and say aloud. The story jumps back and forth as the narrator fancies, very much like in Slaughterhouse-five, only the excuse here for that technique is not Billy Pilgrim being unstuck in time, but rather that a million years is a long time for a ghost to dwell on humanity's foibles, and so we give him a little leeway to shape the story however he wants to.

The book is brilliant, and I didn't give it a five because I felt it lacked a stronger conclusion or another anchor to the story. The very nature of the back and forth technique takes some of the energy out of the end of the story, but that's what gives the overall experience a very solid feel, without ups and downs in plot.
Likewise, the characters are well-crafted, but not especially likable or interesting. Only the narrator, whose voice grows in strength and weight as the story rolls out, ends up being our own small conscience in our big brains. ( )
  marsgeverson | Jan 12, 2023 |
Strange book, quirky and unexpected. I’m glad I read it but I’m not rushing to read his other books. ( )
  lustucken | Nov 22, 2022 |
Showing 1-5 of 81 (next | show all)
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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Vonnegut, Kurtprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Davis, JonathanNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Marsh, JamesCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Wolff, Lutz-W.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart.

Anne Frank (1929-1945)
Dedication
In memory of Hillis L. Howie (1903-1982),
amateur naturalist -
A good man who
took me and my best friend Ben Hitz
and some other boys
out to the American Wild West
from Indianapolis, Indiana,
in the summer of 1938

Mr Howie introduced us to real Indians
and had us sleep out-of-doors every night
and bury our dung,
and taught us how to ride horses,
and told us the names of many plants and animals,
and what they needed to do
in order to stay alive
and reproduce themselves.

One night Mr Howie scared us half to death
on purpose,
screaming like a wildcat near our camp.
A real wildcat screamed back.
First words
The thing was:
One million years ago, back in A.D. 1986, Guayaquil was the chief seaport of the little South American democracy of Ecuador, whose capital was Quito, high in the Andes Mountains.
Quotations
Mary had also taught that the human brain was the most admirable survival device yet produced by evolution. But now her own big brain was urging her to take the polyethylene garment bag from around a red evening dress in her closet in Guayaquil, and to wrap it around her head, thus depriving her cells of oxygen.
"I'll tell you what the human soul is, Mary," he whispered, his eyes closed. "Animals don't have one. It's the part of you that knows when your brain isn't working right. I always knew, Mary. There wasn't anything I could do about it, but I always knew."
As for the meaning of the courtship dance of the blue-footed boobies: The birds are huge molecules with bright blue feet and have no choice in the matter. By their very nature, they have to dance exactly like that.
Human beings used to be molecules which could do many, many different sorts of dances, or decline to dance at all - as they pleased. My mother could do the waltz, the tango, the rumba, the Charleston, the Lindy Hop, the jitterbug, the Watusi, and the twist. Father refused to do any dances, as was his privilege.
If I may insert a personal note at this point: When I was alive, I often received advice from my own big brain which, in terms of my own survival, or the survival of the human race, for that matter, can be charitably described as questionable. Example: It had me join the United States Marines and go fight in Vietnam.
Thanks a lot, big brain.
From the violence people were doing to themselves and each other, and to all other living things, for that matter, a visitor from another planet might have assumed that the environment had gone haywire, and that the people were in such a frenzy because Nature was about to kill them all.
But the planet a million years ago was as moist and nourishing as it is today—and unique, in that respect, in the entire Milky Way. All that had changed was people’s opinion of the place.
To the credit of humanity as it used to be: More and more people were saying that their brains were irresponsible, unreliable, hideously dangerous, wholly unrealistic—were simply no damn good.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
ISBN 0385333870 is for Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut
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Galapagos takes the listener back one million years. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, totally different human race. Kurt Vonnegut, America's master satirist, looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry--and all that is worth saving.

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