‘Sirens of Titan’ is ‘wacked-out dream’

Have you ever had one of those dreams that makes absolutely no sense? \nIt starts at your great-grandmother’s house and you’re playing ping pong with your best friend from fifth grade and your high school boyfriend. Then, without warning, you land at the top of the St. Louis arch and you are having a heated discussion about scrambled eggs with your cat that died five years ago. You are rescued by a zombie, who bears a striking resemblance to your Aunt Martha. She is in the middle of a lecture about the dangers of forest fires when suddenly you are awakened by the buzzing of your alarm clock. \nYou roll over, wipe the sleep out of your eyes and wonder if perhaps you need a CT scan.\nI recently had an experience like this, only I was not dreaming. I was reading Kurt Vonnegut’s “The Sirens of Titan.” \nNow, before you go on a rampage and start accusing me of disliking the greatest Hoosier author of all time, beloved by every college student “just looking for answers,” let me say that I haven’t said I disliked the book. But like a whacked-out dream, I was kind of glad when I finished reading it.\nThe story follows one man, Malachi Constant, through the far reaches of the galaxy. He was once a wealthy corporate shark who was “recruited” to the Martian Army. The Earthling, Winston Niles Rumfoord, raised the army. He sent the troops to Earth on a suicide mission so that the Earthlings would rally together and form a new religion known as “The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.”\nConstant survives the mission, becomes angry that Rumfoord manipulated him, causes some trouble back on Earth and gets exiled to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. Rumfoord, in turn, finds out that another alien planet was manipulating the entire human race for thousands of years to obtain parts for a spaceship. He dies. And so does his dog.\nThat was the simplified version.\nIf you have ever tried to recount a dream to one of your friends and found yourself unable to coherently do so, I am sure that you can sympathize with me.\nI really enjoyed Vonnegut’s stream-of-consciousness style of writing and his comments on the human situation with his own brand of dark humor. However, this story was just too difficult to follow. I recommend Vonnegut’s “God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian.” \nI have had enough of his whimsical style for now, so I am going to move on to David Mitchell’s “Black Swan Green.” It is a novel about an English town at the end of the Cold War, and it seems much more promising.