In a fine essay published by The New Yorker, Salman Rushdie offers his thoughts on Slaughterhouse-Five. Comparisons to Catch-22 and War and Peace are mixed with reflections on Vonnegut's exploration of free will and the cheerfulness at the core of Vonnegut's work. The...
Kurt Vonnegut Remembered, recently published by The University of Alabama Press, is a must-read for Vonnegut fans as it traces the author’s life through a series of essays and recollections from those who knew him best. The list of contributors ranges from well-known media figures like Geraldo Rivera and...
Need something to do this summer? Why not tackle the Vonnegut canon? In 2013 Wilson Taylor and Matthew Gannon, two friends and writers with a passion for literature, criticism, and Kurt Vonnegut, launched their Summer of Vonnegut, a critical conversation in which the two writers...
It's been fifty years since Delacorte Press first published Kurt Vonnegut's masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five, on March 31, 1969. The novel's popularity and influence continue to this day, and though Vonnegut, in the book's long introduction, described it as "a failure, and it had to be,...
The celebration of the 50th anniversary of Slaughterhouse-Five continues with news of two recent group readings of Vonnegut’s classic novel. First, from the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library (KVML), an interview with Chris LaFave, curator of KVML, and Debra Des Vignes, founder of the Indiana...
In Sanity Plea: Schizophrenia in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut (1989, University of Alabama Press), Lawrence R. Broer writes: "A striking paradox of Slaughterhouse-Five is that it presents us with Vonnegut's most completely demoralized protagonist while making what is to this point the most affirmative...
In 2019 The Daily Vonnegut will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five, "a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from. Peace." Over the next twelve months we'll...
Though Kurt Vonnegut identified as a secular humanist, he often described himself as a "Christ-loving atheist," and readers can find a wealth of reflections on Christ and Christianity within Vonnegut's work. Among The Daily Vonnegut's favorites: From Fates Worse Than Death: "The first story of mine that...
On November 11, 1922, a peephole opened quite suddenly in Indianapolis. Light and sound poured in, and the wisp of undifferentiated nothingness we now know as Kurt Vonnegut came into the world. Happy Birthday, Kurt! Wheelhouse Theater Company continues its lively revival of Vonnegut's Happy Birthday,...
In December 1970, Kurt Vonnegut wrote to his friend, fellow novelist Jose Donoso, “…The adventure of having a play produced was harrowing…But I had to begin my theatrical career with something—and now I have in fact begun. I’ve written six novels. Now I want to...