God Bless You, Mr Rosewater

I loved this novel. Loved it. L-O-V-E-D I-T.

So it's the story of Eliot Rosewater, who due to his bloodline is in charge of the Rosewater Charitable Trust. Eliot decides that the trust isn't actually helping people, and leaves his high society life in New York City as a trust administrator to go to Rosewater, Indiana, and actually help people. Everyone thinks that he has gone insane, and a distant relative with the help of a skeezy lawyer tries to take over the Rosewater Trust and all of it's assets.

This book made me laugh. And then laugh some more.

It also made me think. About the time I started reading God Bless You Mr Rosewater, I participated in the Freddy Mac help the homeless walk. Afterwards (and hell, during) the walk, my friends and I laughed about how we were helping the homeless walk...yes, each step was a metaphorical nail in a board to build a house for the homeless, not a literal nail in a board, but a metaphorical one. We weren't really building houses, we were walking so that we could raise money to help those who help. Well, I didn't actually raise any money. My company paid the registration fee. So technically, the only reason that I was there was so my company could pay Freddy Mac who would probably pay a charity who might eventually help the homeless, with everyone including myself, taking a cut of either the money or publicity. Ironically enough, the day of the Help the Homeless Walk was probably the least helpful for DC's homeless - I'm sure all of those associated with homeless charities were out in full force at the walk and not helping the homeless at all that day.

Eliot decides to cut out all of those middle men and actually just help those in need. Plain and simple. Everyone thinks he's insane. Hysterical.

In this modern day world of ours, people tend to build walls around themselves to protect themselves from caring too much. It's a sad strange fact of life. I'm just as guilty as the next person... I will gladly wake up at 7:30 am on a Saturday morning in November and truck down to the national Mall slightly hungover to walk for the homeless, but I will never just give my spare change to someone on the street that I might pass every single day, day in and day out. I wonder what the world would be like if everyone just started to care instead of caring about the few who do really care.

Like all good Vonnegut novels, this one features the external conflict between good and evil and exposes the moral weaknesses of human nature. The book doesn't contain a shred of the science fiction-ey tangent that Vonnegut can have, which I'm pretty sure is one of the reasons why I liked it so much.