A review by books_n_bananas
Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut
2.0
After reading this book, I don't think I am at all surprised that this is one of the least talked about Vonnegut novels out there. Does it reflect Vonnegut's writing style? Yes, but sloppily.
Galapagos reads like Kurt was having a bad few days and just wanted to write a bizarre story just to put on paper and then it just happened to get published.
Is it meaningful? Yes, of course, but it is nowhere near as impactful as the majority of his other novels.
Galapagos--to me, at least-- is about human growth and development. It's about the efforts we spend our whole lives to learn, grow, and evolve into something better or new. He seems to address the magnitude of some of these developments, but more prominently, the overall futility. In a future where humans are more dolphin-like than human, and live until their 30's with unintelligent brains, what does it matter if you worry about learning languages, or teaching children, or drop a bomb on a city? At the same time, he displays that it's random traits and things we learn or develop that make us evolve into something new and stick with further generations.
Just as Darwin's explanation of the Galapagos islands displays the timeline of evolution, the development of new species, etc., humans are going through the same changes, or at least, theoretically, could be. And yet, there will always still be weird cultural meaningless romantic trends that will always exist, such as the blue-footed boobies' mating dance and lack of fear of anything that could kill them. Mind-bogglingly unexplainable.
At the end of the day, I don't think this novel displays Vonnegut's brilliance. It just didn't. I think it's thought-provoking (of course, it's still Vonnegut...) But it just doesn't live up to his prior works.
A good read for anyone completely boggled by the thought of evolution and how it sits in with modern day humanity..
Galapagos reads like Kurt was having a bad few days and just wanted to write a bizarre story just to put on paper and then it just happened to get published.
Is it meaningful? Yes, of course, but it is nowhere near as impactful as the majority of his other novels.
Galapagos--to me, at least-- is about human growth and development. It's about the efforts we spend our whole lives to learn, grow, and evolve into something better or new. He seems to address the magnitude of some of these developments, but more prominently, the overall futility. In a future where humans are more dolphin-like than human, and live until their 30's with unintelligent brains, what does it matter if you worry about learning languages, or teaching children, or drop a bomb on a city? At the same time, he displays that it's random traits and things we learn or develop that make us evolve into something new and stick with further generations.
Just as Darwin's explanation of the Galapagos islands displays the timeline of evolution, the development of new species, etc., humans are going through the same changes, or at least, theoretically, could be. And yet, there will always still be weird cultural meaningless romantic trends that will always exist, such as the blue-footed boobies' mating dance and lack of fear of anything that could kill them. Mind-bogglingly unexplainable.
At the end of the day, I don't think this novel displays Vonnegut's brilliance. It just didn't. I think it's thought-provoking (of course, it's still Vonnegut...) But it just doesn't live up to his prior works.
A good read for anyone completely boggled by the thought of evolution and how it sits in with modern day humanity..