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God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A Novel by…
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God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A Novel (original 1965; edition 1998)

by Kurt Vonnegut (Author)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
6,265541,540 (3.87)157
Eliot Rosewater is tortured by a fabulous inheritance he feels he does not deserve, so he devotes himself to drink, and to a life serving the dull, the ugly, the irrelevant and the useless. This is a novel about the pleasures, pains and perversions of people and money. It is the story of a millionaire's lunacy, the obsessions of a famous family and the collective madness of a nation.… (more)
Member:barksmagee
Title:God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A Novel
Authors:Kurt Vonnegut (Author)
Info:Dial Press Trade Paperback (1998), 288 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:****
Tags:None

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God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut (1965)

Recently added byDennisFrank, private library, mjmacdon, ConnorLH, pli1494, kalianne623, Jeniola, UMSFS, WNEUMY, soupedupprius
Legacy LibrariesWalker Percy
  1. 20
    The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh (hazzabamboo)
    hazzabamboo: Both are funny satires of America - Waugh is more vicious.
  2. 20
    Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (Anonymous user)
    Anonymous user: Elliot Rosewater, the main character of God Bless You, Mr Rosewater, appears in Slaughterhouse-Five. Also, they both feature books from fictional author Kilgore Trout.
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English (52)  Spanish (1)  Hungarian (1)  All languages (54)
Showing 1-5 of 52 (next | show all)
Re-read in 2024. Not one of my favorites. A satirical look at class, money, society, love, sanity and belonging (or not), this one had an overriding mood of melancholy that left me feeling empty. Maybe that was the author's goal. If so, he succeeded admirably. ( )
  AliceAnna | Mar 21, 2024 |
On a roll with good books this year. Maybe more reason to continue cracking through my backlog.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is a humorous-yet-depressing novel about greed and politics in America, starring the troubled main character Eliot Rosewater, who finds a way to love even the most "useless" of people, in an economical sense. Obviously, this is troubling to his Senator father, as well as an outsider who attempts to use his love for the people as justification to call him insane in the courts. Very direct in its message and heavy-handed in its themes as Vonnegut tends to be. Such an engaging read that I essentially finished it in a day.

God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater... ( )
  carr0tmunch | Dec 18, 2023 |
2023-10-15: I didn't get far and I'll come back to it but it wasn't the escape I needed from Awake.

2023-11-10: I think it's a recurring thing with Vonnegut that I dislike his books at the beginning and then love them further in. This book is genius. Elliot is the Buddha and Jesus and Lao Tzu all rolled up in a wrapper of compassion. He sees that the bullshit is bullshit where everyone else thinks it's gold. He cares about people just because they're people and because of that everyone thinks he's insane.

2023-11-19: I'm kind ambivalent about this one. The whole story was about how insane Elliot was because he treats people with kindness and respect. Even Elliot thinks he's insane. He certainly doesn't seem to see that he's right and it's the rest of the world that's broken. Elliot may be the only person that Elliot doesn't treat with compassion. ( )
  Awfki | Dec 2, 2023 |
My Vonnegut reread continues. This was one of my favorite books of his when I was a teen. It holds up remarkably well. What it said about the world then held true and magnified to a horrifying level. It is still one of my favorite and if you have never read it I would give it a shot. ( )
  cdaley | Nov 2, 2023 |
This satire about American money and where it comes from could have been written today and would be just as poignant. Elliot Rosewater realizes that he has been born near the "money river" and wants to be a man of the people. For that, everyone thinks he's crazy. ( )
  fuzzy_patters | Oct 25, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 52 (next | show all)
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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Vonnegut, Kurtprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Kapari, MarjattaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
"The Second World War was over - and there I was at high noon, crossing Times Square with a Purple Heart on." -- Eliot Rosewater, President, The Rosewater Foundation
Dedication
for Alvin Davis
the telepath
the hoodlums' friend
First words
A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees.
Quotations
He coined a new word for Sylvia's disease, "Samaritrophia," which he said meant, "hysterical indifference to the troubles of those less fortunate than oneself."
"It seems to me," said Trout, "that the main lesson Eliot learned is that people can use all the uncritical love they can get."
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Eliot Rosewater is tortured by a fabulous inheritance he feels he does not deserve, so he devotes himself to drink, and to a life serving the dull, the ugly, the irrelevant and the useless. This is a novel about the pleasures, pains and perversions of people and money. It is the story of a millionaire's lunacy, the obsessions of a famous family and the collective madness of a nation.

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