Books by Kurt Vonnegut
Breakfast of Champions; or, Goodbye Blue Monday! by In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut's most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 B7 1973Publication Date: 1973
Mother Night by
"Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer . . . a zany but moral mad scientist."--Time Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all. "A great artist."--Cincinnati Enquirer "A shaking up in the kaleidoscope of laughter . . . Reading Vonnegut is addictive!"--Commonweal
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 M6 2009Publication Date: 1961
Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (audiobook) by
Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes 'unstuck in time' after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden. Slaughterhouse-Five is not only Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is also as important as any written since 1945. Like Catch-22, it fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it unique poignancy -- and humor.
Call Number: COMPACT DISC 20160Publication Date: 1969
Kurt Vonnegut: Novels and Stories 1963-1973 by
Like Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was a Midwestern everyman steeped in the rhythms of American speech whose anger at the way things are was matched only by his love for the best that we can be. His cunningly relaxed delivery was so original, so finely calibrated, and so profound an articulation of the Sixties' spirit that many critics overlooked the moral seriousness behind the standup-comic craftsmanship. Capturing Vonnegut in pyrotechnic mid-career, this first volume of a projected three-volume edition gathers four of his most acclaimed novels. Cat's Cradle (1963) is a comedy of the end of the world (it ends with ice). God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) is the tale of a so-called fool, his money, and the lawyer who contrives to part them (it ends with fire). Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Vonnegut's breakout book and one of the iconic masterpieces of twentieth-century American literature, is the tale of Billy Pilgrim, who, being unstuck in time, is doomed to continually relive both the firebombing of Dresden and his abduction by space aliens. And, in a text enhanced by the author's spirited line drawings, Breakfast of Champions (1973) describes the fateful meeting of "two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men," one of whom disastrously believes that everyone else is a robot. The volume is rounded out with three brilliant short stories and revealing autobiographical accounts of the bombing of Dresden. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 A6 2011Publication Date: 2011
Hocus Pocus by
Hocus Pocus is the fictional autobiography of a West Point graduate who was in charge of the humiliating evacuation of U.S. personnel from the Saigon rooftops at the close of the Vietnam War. Returning home from the war, he unknowingly fathered an illegitimate son. In 2001, the son begins a search for his father and catches up with him just in time to see him arrested for masterminding the prison break of 10,000 convicts. Using his famous brand of satire and wit, Vonnegut captures twenty-first century America as only he could foresee it. In Hocus Pocus, listeners will find a fresh novel, as fascinating and brilliantly offbeat as anything he's written.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 H6 1990Publication Date: 1990
Galapagos by
"A madcap genealogical adventure . . . Vonnegut is a postmodern Mark Twain."--The New York Times Book Review Galápagos takes the reader back one million years, to A.D. 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galápagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, and totally different human race. In this inimitable novel, America' s master satirist looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry-and all that is worth saving. Praise for Galápagos "The best Vonnegut novel yet!"--John Irving "Beautiful . . . provocative, arresting reading."--USA Today "A satire in the classic tradition . . . a dark vision, a heartfelt warning."--The Detroit Free Press "Interesting, engaging, sad and yet very funny . . . Vonnegut is still in top form. If he has no prescription for alleviating the pain of the human condition, at least he is a first-rate diagnostician."--Susan Isaacs, Newsday "Dark . . . original and funny."--People "A triumph of style, originality and warped yet consistent logic . . . a condensation, an evolution of Vonnegut's entire career, including all the issues and questions he has pursued relentlessly for four decades."--The Philadelphia Inquirer "Wild details, wry humor, outrageous characters . . . Galápagos is a comic lament, a sadly ironic vison."--St. Louis Post-Dispatch "A work of high comedy, sadness and imagination."--The Denver Post "Wacky wit and irreverent imagination . . . and the full range of technical innovations have made [Vonnegut] America's preeminent experimental novelist."--The Minneapolis Star and Tribune
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 G3 1999Publication Date: 1985
Armageddon in Retrospect by
View our feature on Kurt Vonnegut's Armageddon in Retrospect. Published on the first anniversary of Kurt Vonnegut's death in April 2007, Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of twelve new and unpublished writings on war and peace. Written with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humor, the pieces range from a visceral nonfiction recollection of the destruction of Dresden during World War II-a piece that is as timely today as it was then-to a painfully funny story about three privates and their fantasies of the perfect first meal upon returning home from war; to a darker and more poignant story about the impossibility of shielding our children from the temptations of violence. This is a volume that says as much about the times in which we live as it does about the genius of the man who wrote it. Also included here is Vonnegut's last speech, as well as an assortment of his drawings, and an introduction by the author's son, Mark Vonnegut.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 A85 2008Publication Date: 2008
Bagombo Snuff Box by
Before the Golden Age of magazines drew to a close half a century ago -- soon to be beaten at the entertainment game by the new little boxes with moving images that were finding their way into the homes of more and more Americans -- a young PR man at General Electric sold his first short story to one of the doomed publications. By the time he'd sold his third, he decided to quit GE and join the likes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Faulkner. and try to make a living at fifteen hundred dollars a pop. With four major magazines running five stories each week and smaller ones scouting as well, it was a seller's market, and Kurt Vonnegut was delighted -- and comfortable -- being published regularly by The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Argosy, and others.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 B34 1999ISBN: 0399145052Publication Date: 1999
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by
In 1998, Kurt Vonnegut was sent to the afterlife by National Public Radio to conduct a series of (fictionalised) interviews. This adventure takes the form of a series of transcripts from these encounters - brief pieces which were originally read on WNYC, Manhattan's public radio station, but have now been revised and rewritten. What begins as a series of 90-second radio interviews evolves into a provocative collection of musings about who and what people live for, featuring a fantastical cast of characters including Shakespeare, Mary Shelley and Isaac Newton.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 G58 2010Publication Date: 2010
Jailbird by
"[Kurt Vonnegut] has never been more satirically on-target. . . . Nothing is spared."--People Jailbird takes us into a fractured and comic, pure Vonnegut world of high crimes and misdemeanors in government--and in the heart. This wry tale follows bumbling bureaucrat Walter F. Starbuck from Harvard to the Nixon White House to the penitentiary as Watergate's least known co-conspirator. But the humor turns dark when Vonnegut shines his spotlight on the cold hearts and calculated greed of the mighty, giving a razor-sharp edge to an unforgettable portrait of power and politics in our times. Praise for Jailbird "[Vonnegut] is our strongest writer . . . the most stubbornly imaginative."--John Irving "A gem . . . a mature, imaginative novel--possibly the best he has written . . . Jailbird is a guided tour de force of America. Take it!"--Playboy "A profoundly humane comedy . . . Jailbird definitely mounts up on angelic wings--in its speed, in its sparkle, and in its high-flying intent."--Chicago Tribune Book World "Joyously inventive . . . gleams with the loony magic Vonnegut alone can achieve."--Cosmopolitan "Vonnegut is our great apocalyptic writer, the closest thing we've had to a prophet since . . . Lenny Bruce."--Chicago Sun-Times "Vonnegut at his impressive best. . . . His imaginative leaps alone . . . are worth the price of admission. . . . His far-reaching metaphysical and cultural concerns . . . are ultimately serious and worth our contemplation."--The Washington Post
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 J3 2011Publication Date: 1979
Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction by
"Relentlessly fun to read."--Dave Eggers * A collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and funny portrait of life in post-World War II America--a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. Here are tales both cautionary and hopeful, each brimming with Vonnegut's trademark humor and profound humanism. A family learns the downside of confiding their deepest secrets into a magical invention. A man finds himself in a Kafkaesque world of trouble after he runs afoul of the shady underworld boss who calls the shots in an upstate New York town. A quack psychiatrist turned "murder counselor" concocts a novel new outlet for his paranoid patients. While these stories reflect the anxieties of the postwar era that Vonnegut was so adept at capturing--and provide insight into the development of his early style--collectively, they have a timeless quality that makes them just as relevant today as when they were written. It's impossible to imagine any of these pieces flowing from the pen of another writer; each in its own way is unmistakably, quintessentially Vonnegut. Featuring a foreword by author and longtime Vonnegut confidant Sidney Offit and illustrated with Vonnegut's characteristically insouciant line drawings, Look at the Birdie is an unexpected gift for readers who thought his unique voice had been stilled forever--and serves as a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius. Includes these never-before-published stories: "Confido" "FUBAR" "Shout About It from the Housetops" "Ed Luby's Key Club" "A Song for Selma" "Hall of Mirrors" "The Nice Little People" "Hello, Red" "Little Drops of Water" "The Petrified Ants" "The Honor of a Newsboy" "Look at the Birdie" "King and Queen of the Universe" "The Good Explainer" "[Look at the Birdie] brings us the late writer's young voice as he skewers--sometimes gently, always lethally--post World War II America."--The Boston Globe
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 L66 2010Publication Date: 2009
Timequake by
A New York Times Notable Book from the acclaimed author of Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, and Cat's Cradle. At 2-27pm on February 13th of the year 2001, the Universe suffered a crisis in self-confidence. Should it go on expanding indefinitely? What was the point? There's been a timequake. And everyone-even you-must live the decade between February 17, 1991 and February 17, 2001 over again. The trick is that we all have to do exactly the same things as we did the first time-minute by minute, hour by hour, year by year, betting on the wrong horse again, marrying the wrong person again. Why? You'll have to ask the old science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout. This was all his idea.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 T56 1998Publication Date: 1997
While Mortals Sleep by
Foreword by Dave Eggers Smart, whimsical, and often scathing, the fiction of Kurt Vonnegut influenced a generation of American writers--including Dave Eggers, author of this volume's Foreword. In these previously unpublished gems, Vonnegut's originality infuses a unique landscape of factories, trailers, and bars--and characters who pit their dreams and fears against a cruel and sometimes comically indifferent world. Here are stories of men and machines, art and artifice, and how ideals of fortune, fame, and love take curious twists in ordinary lives. An ambitious builder of roads, commanding an army of bulldozers, graders, and asphalt spreaders, fritters away his free time with miniature trains--until the women in his life crash his fantasy land. Trapped in a stenography pool, a young dreamer receives a call from a robber on the run, who presents her with a strange proposition. A crusty newspaperman is forced onto a committee to judge Christmas displays--a job that leads him to a suspiciously ostentatious ex-con and then a miracle. A hog farmer's widow receives cryptic, unsolicited letters from a man in Schenectady about "the indefinable sweet aches of the spirit." But what will she find when she goes to meet him in the flesh? These beautifully rendered works are a testament to Vonnegut's unique blend of observation and imagination. Like a present left behind by a departed loved one, While Mortals Sleep bestows upon us a shimmering Kurt Vonnegut gift: a poignant reflection of our world as it is and as it could be.
Call Number: Bestseller Collection ; FICTIONPublication Date: 2011
Palm Sunday by
"[Kurt Vonnegut] is either the funniest serious writer around or the most serious funny writer."--Los Angeles Times Book Review In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth. "Vonnegut is at the top of his form, and it is wonderful."--Newsday
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 Z88 2006Publication Date: 1981
Books by other postmodernists
Inherent Vice by
Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon- private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog It's been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. Easy for her to say. It's the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that "love" is another of those words going around at the moment, like "trip" or "groovy," except that this one usually leads to trouble. Despite which he soon finds himself drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dentists. In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there . . . or . . . if you were there, then you . . . or, wait, is it . . .
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3566.Y55 I54 2009Publication Date: 2009
Frolic of His Own by
"With the publication of the Recognitions in 1955, William Gaddis was hailed as the American heir to James Joyce. His two subsequent novels, J R (winner of the National Book Award) and Carpenter's Gothic, have secured his position among America's foremost contemporary writers. Now A Frolic of His Own, his long-anticipated fourth novel, adds more luster to his reputation, as he takes on life in our litigious times." ""Justice? - You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law." So begins this mercilessly funny, devastatingly accurate tale of lives caught up in the toils of the law. Oscar Crease, middle-aged college instructor, savant, and playwright, is suing a Hollywood producer for pirating his play Once at Antietam, based on his grandfather's experiences in the Civil War, and turning it into a gory blockbuster called The Blood in the Red White and Blue." "Oscar's suit, and a host of others - which involve a dog trapped in an outdoor sculpture, wrongful death during a river baptism, a church versus a soft drink company, and even Oscar himself after he is run over by his own car - engulf all who surround him, from his freewheeling girlfriend to his well-to-do stepsister and her ill-fated husband (a partner in the white-shoe firm of Swyne & Dour), to his draconian, nonagenarian father, Federal Judge Thomas Crease, who has just wielded the long arm of the law to expel God (and Satan) from his courtroom. And down the tortuous path of depositions and decrees, suits and countersuits, the most lofty ideas of our culture - questions about the value of art, literature, and originality - will be wrung dry in the meticulous, often surreal logic and language of the law, leaving no party unscathed." "Gaddis has created a whirlwind of a novel, which brilliantly reproduces the Tower of Babel in which we conduct our lives. In A Frolic of His Own we hear voices as they speak at and around one another: lawyers, family members, judges, rogues, hucksters, and desperate men (and women) looking for a buck. Above all these is Oscar's voice - the outraged cry of the new anachronism, the self-proclaimed "last civilized man" rendered frail before the behemoth of the law, the servant and warrior of the soul of our century: money."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3557.A28 F76 1994Publication Date: 1994
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by
A masterpiece ahead of its time, a prescient rendering of a dark future, and the inspiration for the blockbuster film Blade Runner By 2021, the World War has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remain covet any living creature, and for people who can't afford one, companies built incredibly realistic simulacra: horses, birds, cats, sheep. They've even built humans. Immigrants to Mars receive androids so sophisticated they are indistinguishable from true men or women. Fearful of the havoc these artificial humans can wreak, the government bans them from Earth. Driven into hiding, unauthorized androids live among human beings, undetected. Rick Deckard, an officially sanctioned bounty hunter, is commissioned to find rogue androids and "retire" them. But when cornered, androids fight back--with lethal force. Praise for Philip K. Dick "The most consistently brilliant science fiction writer in the world."--John Brunner "A kind of pulp-fiction Kafka, a prophet."--The New York Times "[Philip K. Dick] sees all the sparkling--and terrifying--possibilities . . . that other authors shy away from."--Rolling Stone
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3554.I3 D6 1996Publication Date: 1968
Great Expectations by
This book begins when a young boy, Pip, learns he has come into great expectations. What these expectations actually are, or the change from the total disparity between Pip's ideas of 'expectations' and what is real to Pip's learning to feel, is the narrative of this plagiarized Bildungsroman. Thus Great Expectations is both the story of a young boy's introduction to the world and a profound examination of moral values. Written at a time when Acker's relationship with society is in question, texts given by the society--Dickens, Proust, Flaubert, Reage, Victoria Holt, Keats--appear both as they were written and in a new and interrogative light. The whole culture is brought into question. Out of the agony of the author's total disenchantment, or plagiarism, appears beauty: given text is laid on given text; language is no longer used to control but to be; the reader touches language rather than is controlled by it; meaning changes to tapestry. This book is totally sensuous. This book is "the most completely unified work of art Acker has yet produced. One that by its formal concentration and its unified shape at every depth of reading fulfills the sort of demands that Sterne or Canetti makes of the novelist." - Alain Robbe-Grillet
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3551.C44 G7 1982BPublication Date: 1982
The Floating Opera and the End of the Road by
The Floating Opera and The End Of The Road are John Barth's first two novels. Their relationship to each other is evident not only in their ribald subject matter but in the eccentric characters and bitterly humorous tone of the narratives. Both concern strange, consuming love triangles and the destructive effect of an overactive intellect on the emotions. Separately they give two very different views of a universal human drama. Together they illustrate the beginnings of an illustrious career.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3552.A75 F52 1988Publication Date: 1956 and 1958
The Soft Machine by
In Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs revealed his genius. In The Soft Machine he begins an adventure that will take us even further into the dark recesses of his imagination, a region where nothing is sacred, nothing taboo. Continuing his ferocious verbal assault on hatred, hype, poverty, war, bureaucracy, and addiction in all its forms, Burroughs gives us a surreal space odyssey through the wounded galaxies in a book only he could create.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3552.U75 S6 1992Publication Date: 1961
Pale Fire by
An ingeniously constructed parody of detective fiction and learned commentary, Pale Fire offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures, at the center of which is a 999-line poem written by the literary genius John Shade just before his death. Surrounding the poem is a foreword and commentary by the demented scholar Charles Kinbote, who interweaves adoring literary analysis with the fantastical tale of an assassin from the land of Zembla in pursuit of a deposed king. Brilliantly constructed and wildly inventive, this darkly witty novel of suspense, literary one-upmanship, and political intrigue achieves that rarest of things in literature-perfect tragicomic balance. With an introduction by Richard Rorty.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3527.A15 P3Publication Date: 1962
The New York Trilogy by
First published in 1985-1986, "The New York Trilogy "("City of Glass, Ghosts," and "The Locked Room") brought immediate international attention to its author, Paul Auster, and elevated him to near-celebrity status, particularly in France. This trilogy and his many works since then (including "In the Country of Last Words," "Leviathan," "Mr. Vertigo," "Moon Palace," and others) have been translated into numerous languages and have brought him further world attention. Auster's trilogy broke ground in its mix of serious fictional techniques and detective and mystery genres. Geoffrey O'Brien of "The Village Voice "wrote: ""The New York Trilogy "are novels of desire: the desire to write a detective novel, to read one, to -inhabit it. . . . By turning the mystery novel inside out, Auster may have -initiated a whole new round of storytelling." This new edition will delight readers and collectors of Auster's work.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3551.U77 N49 1994Publication Date: 1987
Catch-22 by
This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller's masterpiece with a new introduction; critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos; and much more. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read. Now a Hulu limited series starring Christopher Abbott, George Clooney, Kyle Chandler, and Hugh Laurie. Fifty years after its original publication, Catch-22 remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the funniest--and most celebrated--books of all time. In recent years it has been named to "best novels" lists by Time, Newsweek, the Modern Library, and the London Observer. Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy--it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he's assigned, he'll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved. This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller's masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller's personal archive; and much more. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3558.E476 C3 2011Publication Date: 1961
Zero K by
New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book The wisest, richest, funniest, and most moving novel in years from Don DeLillo, one of the great American novelists of our time--an ode to language, at the heart of our humanity, a meditation on death, and an embrace of life. Jeffrey Lockhart's father, Ross, is a billionaire in his sixties, with a younger wife, Artis Martineau, whose health is failing. Ross is the primary investor in a remote and secret compound where death is exquisitely controlled and bodies are preserved until a future time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to a life of transcendent promise. Jeff joins Ross and Artis at the compound to say "an uncertain farewell" to her as she surrenders her body. "We are born without choosing to be. Should we have to die in the same manner? Isn't it a human glory to refuse to accept a certain fate?" These are the questions that haunt the novel and its memorable characters, and it is Ross Lockhart, most particularly, who feels a deep need to enter another dimension and awake to a new world. For his son, this is indefensible. Jeff, the book's narrator, is committed to living, to experiencing "the mingled astonishments of our time, here, on earth." Don DeLillo's seductive, spectacularly observed and brilliant new novel weighs the darkness of the world--terrorism, floods, fires, famine, plague--against the beauty and humanity of everyday life; love, awe, "the intimate touch of earth and sun." Zero K is glorious.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3554.E4425 Z35 2016Publication Date: 2016
Books about Kurt Vonnegut and his works
Critical Insights: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut by
This book provides readers with a collection of essays and in-depth discussions of Kurt Vonnegut's novel, "Slaughterhouse-Five". A chronology of Vonnegut's life, a complete list of Vonnegut's works and their original dates of publication, a general bibliography, a detailed paragraph on the volume's editor, notes on the individual chapter authors, and a subject index are also provided.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 S638 2011Publication Date: 2011
At Millennium's End: New Essays on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut by
Collected essays by noted scholars covering the breadth and influence of Kurt Vonnegut's literature.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 Z535 2001Publication Date: 2001
Vonnegut and Hemingway: Writers at War by
In this original comparative study of Kurt Vonnegut and Ernest Hemingway, Lawrence R. Broer maps the striking intersections of biography and artistry in works by both writers, and he compares the ways in which they blend life and art. Broer views Hemingway as the �secret sharer� of Vonnegut�s literary imagination and argues that the two writers�while traditionally considered as adversaries because of Vonnegut�s rejection of Hemingway�s emblematic hypermasculinism�inevitably address similar deterministic wounds in their fiction: childhood traumas, family insanity, deforming wartime experiences, and depression. Rooting his discussion in these psychological commonalities between Vonnegut and Hemingway, Broer traces their personal and artistic paths by pairing sets of works and protagonists in ways that show the two writers not only addressing similar concerns, but developing a response that in the end establishes an underlying kinship when it comes to the fate of the American hero of the twentieth century. Broer sees Vonnegut and Hemingway as fundamentally at war�with themselves, with one another�s artistic visions, and with the idea of war itself. Against this onslaught, he asserts, they wrote as a mode of therapy and achieved literary greatness through combative opposition to the shadows that loomed so large around them.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 Z555 2011Publication Date: 2011
Kurt Vonnegut's Crusade, or, How a Postmodern Harlequin Preached a New Kind of Humanism by
Explores the moral and philosophical underpinnings of Vonnegut's work.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 Z65 2006Publication Date: 2006
Kurt Vonnegut's America by
Written by Vonnegut's friend and chief advocate in the academy, this title offers a definitive look at the writer's and nation's mutual influence. Kurt Vonnegut's death on April 11, 2007, marked the passing of a major force in American life and letters. Jerome Klinkowitz, one of the earliest and most prolific authorities on Vonnegut, examines the long dialogue between the author and American culture - a conversation that produced fourteen novels and hundreds of short stories and essays. Spanning Vonnegut's half-century literary career, ""Kurt Vonnegut's America"" integrates discussion of the fiction, essays, and lectures with personal exchanges and biographical sketches to map the complex symbiotic relationship between Vonnegut's work and the cultural context from which it emerged - and which it in turn helped shape. Following an introduction characterizing Vonnegut as Klinkowitz came to know him over the course of their friendship, this study traces Vonnegut's career, decade by decade, drawing connections between the nation's preoccupations, the author's biography, and his literary productions. Vonnegut's 1950s saw him starting out as a short story writer, using his training in anthropology and experience in journalism and public relations to offer comic insights on middle-class behaviors. In the 1960s the author produced a series of darkly humorous novels rooted in the sense of apocalypse he'd experienced as a prisoner of war during the destruction of Dresden, Germany. Vonnegut's rising fame made him a public figure by 1970, with his novels and increasingly prominent essays serving as commentaries on the trends and patterns of these changing times. By the 1980s Vonnegut was sufficiently comfortable with his celebrity status to offer broader perspectives in his work, including his take on human evolution and artistic development. The 1990s found Vonnegut writing the strongest fiction and commentary of his career, melding them into a masterpiece, Timequake, the virtual autobiography of a novel. ""Kurt Vonnegut's America"" charts the impact of Vonnegut on American society and of that society on Vonnegut over more than a half-century to illustrate how each informed the other. Among his artistic peers, Vonnegut was uniquely gifted at anticipating and articulating the changing course of American culture. Far from being ""A Man without a Country"", as his last book was titled, Vonnegut achieved greatness by passing his own test - opening the eyes of his audience to help them better understand their roles and possibilities in the common culture they both shared and crafted.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 Z743 2009Publication Date: 2009
The Vonnegut Effect by
Kurt Vonnegut is one of the few American writers since Mark Twain to have won and sustained a great popular acceptance while boldly introducing new themes and forms on the literary cutting edge. This is the Vonnegut effect that Jerome Klinkowitz finds unique among postmodern authors. forces in American life that have made Vonnegut's works possible - some would say necessary. Born in 1922 and still writing trenchantly more than 80 years later, Vonnegut shares with readers a world that includes the Great Depression, during which his family lost their economic support; the Second World War, in which he was captured at the Battle of the Bulge and experienced the firebombing of Dresden; the corporate surge of postwar America, which he abetted as a publicist for General Electric's Research Laboratory, where Progress Is Our Most Important Product; the entrepreneurship of the 1950s, which he participated in when he ran a Saab automobile dealership and operated a short-story business, selling to the era's family magazines; and the counter-cultural revolt of the 1960s, during which his fiction first gained prominence. Vonnegut also takes us through the growth in recent decades of America's sway in art, which his fiction celebrates, and geopolitics, which his novels question. Klinkowitz offers The Vonnegut Effect as a thorough treatment of the author's fiction - a canon covering more than a half century and compromising 20 books. Considering both Vonnegut's methods and the cultural needs they have served, Klinkowitz explains how those works came to be written and concludes with an assessment of the author's place in the tradition of American fiction.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 Z746 2004Publication Date: 2004
Vonnegut in Fact: The Public Spokesmanship of Personal Fiction by
This title presents insights into Vonnegut's extensive nonfiction as a key to understanding innovation in his novels. ""Vonnegut in Fact"" offers a thorough assessment of the artistry of Kurt Vonnegut, known not only as the best-selling author of ""Slaughterhouse-Five"", ""Timequake"", and a dozen other novels, but also as the most widely recognized public spokesperson among writers since Mark Twain. Jerome Klinkowitz traces the emergence of Vonnegut's nonfiction since the 1960s, when commentary and feature journalism replaced the rapidly dying short story market. Offering close readings and criticism of Vonnegut's three major works of nonfiction, his many uncollected pieces, and his unique manner of public speaking, Klinkowitz explains how Vonnegut's personal visions developed into a style of great public responsibility that mirrored the growth of his fiction. Klinkowitz views his subject as a gentle manipulator of popular forms and an extremely personable figure. What might seem radically innovative and even iconoclastic in his fiction becomes comfortably avuncular and familiarly American when followed to its roots in his public spokesmanship.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 Z748 2009Publication Date: 2009
And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, a Life by
From the author ofMockingbird--the first authoritative biography of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., a writer who forever altered American literature In 2006, Charles Shields reached out to Kurt Vonnegut in a letter asking for his endorsement for a planned biography. The first response was no ("A most respectful demurring by me for the excellent writer Charles J. Shields, who offered to be my biographer"). Unwilling to take no for an answer, propelled by a passion for his subject, and already deep into his research, Shields wrote again and this time, to his delight, the answer came back: "O.K." For the next year--a year that ended up being Vonnegut's last--Shields had unprecedented access to Vonnegut and his letters. While millions know Vonnegut as a counterculture guru, antiwar activist, and satirist of American culture, few outside his closest friends and family knew the full arc of his extraordinary life.And So It Goes changes that, painting the portrait of a man who made friends easily but always felt lonely, sold millions of books but never felt appreciated, and described himself as a humanist but fought with humanity at large. As a former public relations man, Vonnegut crafted his image carefully--the avuncular, curly-haired humorist--though he admitted, "I myself am a work of fiction." The extremely wide and overwhelmingly positive review coverage forAnd So It Goes has been nothing less than extraordinary and confirm it as the definitive biography of Kurt Vonnegut.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 Z855 2012Publication Date: 2012
Reading, Learning, Teaching Kurt Vonnegut by
Our English classrooms are often only as vibrant as the literature that we teach. This book explores the writing of contemporary American author, Kurt Vonnegut, who offers readers and students engaging fiction and nonfiction works that confront the reader and the world. Here, teachers will find an introduction to the life and works of Vonnegut and an opportunity to explore how to bring his works into the classroom as a part of the reading and writing curriculum. This volume attempts to confront what we teach and how we teach as English teachers through the vivid texts Vonnegut offers his readers.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 Z864 2006Publication Date: 2006
Love As Always, Kurt by
A loving, intimate memoir from a lifelong friend of Kurt Vonnegut, including photos and never-before-published correspondence When Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. ducked into his classroom at the Iowa Writer's Workshop in September of 1965, his jokes drew only weak laughter and a few rolled eyes. But workshop student Loree Rackstraw was quietly impressed by this "great bear of a man" and his down-to-earth sensibilities about writing. That fall, an impossible romance began between the then-unknown author and his student--a brief affair that matured into a joyful, lifelong friendship. Rackstraw distills four decades of memories and Vonnegut's letters to her into an affectionate memoir that crackles with the creative energy of one of America's most beloved writers. Rackstraw's unique perspective on Vonnegut's life and how it shaped his famous works portrays a deeply humane man who looked for the humor and absurdity in life in order to survive. And then there are Vonnegut's own letters: Whether energetic about new projects or frustrated with the "game" of writing and selling "a gazoolian copies," Vonnegut writes with the playful imagination and generous, accessible brilliance that have always been his trademarks.
Call Number: General Collection ; PS3572.O5 Z798 2009Publication Date: 2009
