Vonnegut's first novel imagines an America run by machines and managed by engineers, where most ordinary work has been automated away. Paul Proteus, a gifted manager at a major plant, grows uneasy with a society that sorts people by test scores and leaves many without purpose. He is drawn toward a growing group of rebels. The book is a satirical warning about technology, status and the loss of meaningful work, and its concerns have only become more familiar with time.
Quotes
Anita had the mechanics of marriage down pat, even to the subtlest conventions. If her approach was disturbingly rational, systematic, she was thorough enough to turn out a credible counterfeit of warmth.
It was an appalling thought, to be so well-integrated into the machinery of society and history as to be able to move in only one plane, and along one line.
You know, in a way I wish I hadn't met you two. It's much more convenient to think of the opposition as a nice homogeneous, dead-wrong mass. Now I've got to muddy my thinking with exceptions.
These displaced people need something, and the clergy can't give it to them—or it's impossible for them to take what the clergy offers. The clergy says it's enough, and so does the Bible. The people say it isn't enough, and I suspect they're right.