Venus on the Half-Shell, or Not quite Vonnegut

I have written here before about how much I have admired Kurt Vonnegut's writing.  I have read probably everything he wrote and, as it turns out, one book that he didn't write.  Anyone familiar with Vonnegut's writing will recognize Kilgore Trout, an character who appears in many of Vonnegut's novel who is, himself, a sci-fi author.  Trout however, writes schlocky, high-concept sci-fi and is mainly interesting as a mouth-piece for Vonnegut's own undeveloped ideas that he suspected would 

not make for good stories.  

In my college days I spent hours upon hours scouring second hand book and record stores, always with a list of deeply coveted pieces in mind.  Back in these days, I knew that someone had pseudonomously written a Kilgore Trout book, so this was one of the items I always sought.

Well, I found it and I read it, most likely 20 or more years ago.  I have moved this thing from state to state with me ever since.  I suppose I liked the novelty of it and I even supposed that it might have been worth something.  Maybe it is.

As I finally picked this up to reread this week, I quickly discovered why I remembered nothing about it except the cover and its provenance.  It is just terrible, and in a way that affected Vonnegutism can be.  The story is bad, the jokes are bad, and the idea is bad.  I considered including some passages to demonstrate this here, but even that seems too generous for this thing.  I don't want anyone to have the illusion that I am endorsing this book in any way.

I read about 75 pages of this thing before throwing in the towel.  

I will say that I like the cover and, as a dedicated postmodernist, I love the conceit of the book.

I really do like the idea of writing as Kilgore Trout.  I am not so besotted with Vonnegut to think that no one could do this.  I think that there are authors who could pull this off.  This guy (I do know who the real author is but don't want to put his name to this) just isn't the one to do it.  He did write a lot of other sci-fi, but not anything that I had ever read.  I won't say that this book would preclude me from reading any of his other work, but this is a pretty big hurdle to surpass.

So, if you see this book and are interested, I would advise buying it only as a curiosity and saving yourself the time to just go read Vonnegut instead.