Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut (1952)

The key with this one is to imagine oneself back in 1952, when satire of this kind was relatively new, that is the kind that has science fiction-ish overtones. And the essential thing, it seems to me, is to look at Vonnegut's conceptualisation of what went wrong, and the panache with which he handles it. This I think would have seemed an incredibly fresh and audacious novel back then, predating by quite a bit all of the dark post-modern dystopian satire that was to give its imprimatur to the 60s and 70s. Obviously, without the benefit of all that hindsight, and as a pioneer in the field, this one has some 'backward' elements: the talk of and within love relationships has an uncomfortably Mad Men feel to it, a sultry 50s retrograde snuff. But there's no doubting the beginnings of Vonnegut's unique verve, which came to such powerful fruition a decade or so later. There is an undercut to that also, though: the feel of this first attempt is that it is an addressing of frustration and fear in the face of hyper-mechanization, where this element gets way too much of the airtime. The USA is supposed, by the early 50s, to have got itself through the Second World War, and then flopped into an internal revolution on the basis of what it had learned of efficiency in production therefrom. The means of production taken over by government and centralized, and as well almost fully automated, so as to provide the populace with lulling and quiescence-inducing torpor of material wealth. The civil war fought over it is never deeply explained - but the target is clear and prescient: the suburban materialism and industrial automation that Vonnegut saw approaching, hand in hand. The fact that such a conflict is not very believable, and sociologically speaking likely to be much more a result of peaceful change, is not examined - these things are not really the ones that we fight wars over. Also the fact that there was no consideration given to what people would do once their jobs were cast into the bin is an odd one. Just automation, that's it. Vonnegut's concept of what people needed in terms of being valued and making a contribution is a strange mixture. On the one hand he gets completely that there is a need to feel part of making things happen, on the other his far too retarded concept of that is that "men need to work with their hands". It's like he's looked at some of the story, had some fantastic ideas about that, but not thought laterally enough to see how other elements might impinge on his concept. A really interesting prediction of an America that came to be, and yet didn't, this one's vigour and elan saves it.

Commonplace Book

'...She had watched that wood in all seasons. Sometimes it had appeared to her in leafless winter like an army with spears watching upon the hill over against the sea; when stiff with frost it was a giant foreland, upon whose forehead had frozen the foam of the ocean. In summer Pan drove stallions through it, shaking multitudinous bells. In autumn it was an army bivouacked in blood. To-day it was beaten, slain, broken; the light of the babe eyes of spring had been quenched upon its face...'

from Gillespie by J. MacDougall Hay (Chapter 15)

Commonplace Book

'But if Beauty is Truth (which, incidentally, it is not), certainly the results of beauty culture are a lie, and should therefore be recognized as ugly. To all those who can afford the best advice, false youth, when attained, imparts an identical appearance: the same corn-gold hair, the same angular, fashion-plate eyes, raised upward at the corner, the same straight nose and lips carved into a double curve, the same strained mouth, slightly open like the mouth of a Roman Mask of Tragedy, that the knife of the plastic surgeon dictates. They have the same figures, the same hands and finger-nails, more or less the same dresses, and the same impersonal, cosmopolitan accent, with, rising and falling smoothly within it, the concealed sound of an American elevator. They do not look young, except by convention, but, instead, they all look the same age: almost, indeed, the same person. . .'

from Charles and Charlemagne, a piece in Dumb-Animal by Osbert Sitwell

Commonplace Book

'...the wicked man, no one will ever know why, is inevitably recorded by a better artist than the righteous man. Perhaps, Robert suggested, this might be because the profligate never considers expense or his heirs, and therefore pays the best artist of his time to paint his portrait: whereas the good man, ever mindful of future generations, at the time saves money on their behalf by commissioning a fifth-rate artist, recommended by a country neighbour, instead of a first-rate one, to execute his likeness, and through this act of thrift fines them an enormous fortune in subsequent years. It could not be too much stressed that in buying or ordering contemporary works there is nothing that pays in the end like "wanton extravagance."'

from The Love-Bird, a piece in Dumb-Animal by Osbert Sitwell

Commonplace Book

'...As the sea without droned the antiphon, and the homeless wind upon the hill cried the antistrophe, he thought it was a wilding elphin thing he loved who was one with the witch-wind upon the waste, and with the changeling brumous sea.'

from Gillespie by J. MacDougall Hay (Chapter 3)

The Unlucky Family by Mrs. Henry de la Pasture (1907)

The author's earlier two children's books, right back at the beginning of her career, don't quite prepare you for this. The determinedness of the comedy and the lightness of touch are marked. It's the story of a fairly typical middle class family, the Chubbs, of late Victorian or Edwardian values, with bumbling but dear parents, a nervous aunt, and eleven children. They inherit the fortune of Mrs Chubb's barely-known cousin unexpectedly, and find themselves in a country house, Finch Hall, with all the resources they could want, and a growing list of obligations. They must entertain the local notables, they feel they ought to provide garden parties (for the well-to-do) sandwiched with fetes (for the hoi-polloi), and so on. A tutor is engaged for their eldest sons, who is revealed as a camply nervous type, who 'takes a liking' to James, one of the footmen - surely a very early outing for such almost-directness. All of these enhanced horizons seem attended with minor disasters, and in a brilliantly slapstick way quite often. People get drenched, rolled, dirtied, injured, offended; a mixup means the poor people at the fete get the teeny sandwiches intended for the nice, whilst the nice are astonished and somewhat miffed by the enormous meal of rustic fare which confronts them. The children are all named by a personality characteristic, in addition to their Christian name - Greedy George, Clumsy Caroline, Sharp Little Emily, Dreamy Dorothea, and so forth. The nature of their mishaps tends to follow these epithets, and invariably they are sent to bed for their troubles, having stolen food not meant for them, broken something priceless, answered back, or whatever. Essentially it's a delightful comedy of haplessness, where if anything can go wrong, it does. It would make a truly brilliant Christmas special for the BBC, especially as it's now out of copyright, and filming wouldn't be conspicuously expensive, I feel. The through-thread of the second half is the search for the Finch family treasure, which search intensifies in the last chapter. They don't find it, but Pasture hints in the last sentence that the search is likely to go on, in a way that suggests she had planned a sequel. Sadly it never came, in print at least. Perhaps it (or its start, or notes for it) is among her papers, but where are they? 

Commonplace Book

'"Strange business," said Lasher. "This crusading spirit of the managers and engineers, the idea of designing and manufacturing and distributing being sort of a holy war: all that folklore was cooked up by public relations and advertising men hired by managers and engineers to make big business popular in the old days, which it certainly wasn't in the beginning. Now, the engineers and managers believe with all their hearts the glorious things their forebears hired people to say about them. Yesterday's snow job becomes today's sermon."' 

from Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut (Chapter 9)