God Bless You, Mr Rosewater

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The author was going through a painful divorce at the time he wrote this, which makes the love letters and the poetry included in the novel even more poignant: The more Mushari rifled the firm's confidential files relative to the Rosewater Foundation, the more excited he became. Especially thrilling to him was that part of the charter which called for the immediate expulsion of any officer adjudged insane. It was common gossip in the office that the very first president of the Foundation, Eliot Rosewater, the Senator's son, was a lunatic. This characterization was a somewhat playful one, but as Mushari knew, playfulness was impossible to explain in a court of law. Eliot was spoken of by Mushari's co-workers variously as "The Nut,""The Saint,""The Holy Roller,""John the Baptist," and so on.

A full decade after his death, the editors of an omnibus of his work discovered five short stories from the early '50s (i.e., before any of his most famous work) that had never been published and put them in the book, first posting one online for free as a tease. After the war, he attended University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology and also worked as a police reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago. He left Chicago to work in Schenectady, New York in public relations for General Electric. He attributed his unadorned writing style to his reporting work. Being mildly autistic, I learned things a lot differently than other kids - sometimes with none of it, especially math, sinking in!The Rosewater does not have a dedicated parking lot. There is street parking on Woodlawn with no dedicated disabled parking spaces on the street.To get into the bookstore, there are 3 steps with a railing on a grassy slope leading from the sidewalk to the lawn and 6 steps with a railing from the lawn to the main level of the store. Inside, there are 6 steps with no railing from the first level to the second level, which houses the children's room, restroom, romance and mystery sections.

The author is considered from a religious point of view an atheist, but I prefer the term ‘humanist’ – the same I use in my own census poll – because he still cares about human beings and believes we have a future as a species, despite massive evidence to the contrary.

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Artistic License – Physics: Deliberately invoked; as Vonnegut points out in the preface, Neutron Bombs do a lot more damage than is suggested in the story, where a neutron bomb is dropped on Midland City and kills all its inhabitants, but leaves buildings intact. Sigh. If only the story of a man with more money than God was more relevant in the world today. Oh wait--if only the story of a man with more money than God was less relevant in the world today. If only. This is the story about one such man, Eliot Rosewater, going insane (having a crisis of conscience?) Any lawyer would call it a misguided outburst of saintliness. I played piano differently (but I thundered downward on the keys, instead of flexibly moving my fingers Into them). Almighty Janitor: Mary Kathleen O'Looney is a bag lady who secretly runs the world's largest corporation.