Voice: 7/9. Kurt Vonnegut’s voice is frisky as well as acerbic. His arrangement of either humorous or profound punch lines within the plot is fabulous and remarkable.

Nevertheless, sometimes I felt there existed loose plot, far-fetched elaboration, and filler-like balderdash.

Plot: 8/9. I felt scenes a little disoriented, incoherent and tedious, especially in the latter half of the book where Kurt Vonnegut delineated lives around Fred Rosewater, despite their indispensability of enriching the general worldview. Still, although lacking any suspense, this book stands out and echoes with me, a reader who came across it approximately 60 years later after its publication, because of its skillful humour and humanitarian attitude.

A lawyer called Norman Mushari wanted to prove Eliot Rosewater’s insanity, help his relative—Fred Rosewater—claim the family foundation, and gain lucrative remuneration out of it. So he collected information from Eliot’s wife Sylvia who couldn’t stand Eliot’s lifestyle of distributing his wealth to people in need without self-interest. Therefore, she insisted in proposing a divorce after her mental breakdown. Eliot’s father, Senator Lister Ames Rosewater, felt sorry for his daughter-in-law and thus fulminated against his son over the phone.

Fred Rosewater was a distant relative of Rosewater who lived by promoting insurance. His wife, Caroline, loved hanging out with a wealthy housewife who favoured Caroline so much that she always gave Caroline expensive gifts. At their usual dinner, they were astonished that a manly and hard-working fisherman had gone into bankruptcy.

Fred Rosewater accidentally bumped into his deceased father’s file on his honourable family lineage, and joyfully invited his wife to read along with him. However, subsequent pages were sabotaged by nasty termites. In despair, Fred was determined to commit suicide. At that moment, Mushari visited him to inform him of the existence of large inheritance that might belong to him, provided that Fred sued to verify Eliot’s insanity.

Senator Rosewater disappointedly apprised his son of the case in person and demanded Eliot’s attendance at court with proper decorum. In conformity with Eliot’s advice, he asked Kilgore Trout for a decent apology for his son’s absurdities and felt unexpectedly satisfied with Trout’s explanations that Eliot’s seemingly lunatic behavior was actually a social experiment to demonstrate that people could care for others even if they were lazy, useless, disgusting and ungrateful.

In the end, Eliot wrote a check to Fred in the hope of reaching a compromise. To further his ideology, gratify his father’s wish of progeny, and safeguard his rights, Eliot asserted that any child whose mothers claimed Eliot was their biological father could inherit a portion of the foundation without even a blood test.

Character: 7/9. Admittedly, though I felt annoyed that the perspective switched from time to time to describe lives of minor characters, they were zany, distinctive, lively and realistic.

Plus, I anticipate more quips and repartees between Senator and his son, or freaky cases between idiosyncratic Eliot and his clients. Such dialogues absolutely rendered great relish.

World: 7/9. It is hard not to admire Kurt Vonnegut’s acumen on the society and humanity.

Core: 9/9. As long as structural injustice such as birthright inequality still pervades in the world, ideologies like socialism will never die out.

So in order to justify this kind of view and persuade readers of the necessity of kindness, Kurt Vonnegut postulated a wealthy crank who devoted himself in ameliorating the lives of the poor—most of them became useless owing to technological development—while emphasizing the cruelty of capitalism around him with a jovial yet thoughtful touch. What a marvellous science-fiction satire it is!