   Thursday's Books: Kurt Vonnegut, `Timequake', Jonathan Cape,
pounds 15. 99  Kurt Vonnegut, `Timequake', Jonathan Cape, pounds
15.99  This is the plot. Get this - there is no plot! Kurt
Vonnegut has served up, as the supposed final course in the long
feast of his writing career, a delectable millefeuille of irony.
Timequake explores what happens (or more precisely, what doesn't
happen) to Vonnegut when, in 2001, a "timequake" hits. The
universe has a decade of self-doubt, shrinking back to 1991 and
forcing everybody to relive the last 10 years of their lives
exactly as they had before, but without free will. The same
mistakes. The same corny jokes. The same doses of clap.
Periodically, we see Vonnegut grappling with a book he's
destined never to finish called (you guessed) Timequake. Maybe
there are crumbs of plotting here and there. In 2001 (second
time around), free-will kicks in and flummoxes Americans all
over again by forcing them to think for themselves. Vonnegut's
fictional alter ego, sci-fi writer