After a brief hiatus, The Daily Vonnegut will return this Sunday with new trivia and some Vonnegut video. Until then, here's a quote from Vonnegut friend (and former student), novelist John Irving, from a 1986 interview in The Paris Review. "I tell you, Kurt Vonnegut would be...
Even casual fans of Kurt Vonnegut’s work recognize him as a writer engaged with the issues of his time. Vonnegut’s range of interests was vast: the waste and futility of war, the dangers of excessive automation, the conflict between scientific progress and human welfare, gun...
The Daily Vonnegut mourns the recent passing of the great American novelist Philip Roth. Vonnegut's Jailbird and Roth's The Ghost Writer were both Main Selections of the Book of the Month Club in September 1979--a marvelous month to be a reader. This week's question is about...
With another school shooting in the news last week, it's worth revisiting some of Kurt Vonengut's writing about guns. In Fates Worst than Death, Vonnegut writes: "When Charlton Heston (a movie actor who once played Jesus with shaved armpits) tells me in TV commercials about all...
One of Kurt Vonnegut’s most enduring phrases is foma, harmless untruths that can make life easier. Yet Vonnegut also explored the opposite—harmful untruths, lies people believe which create havoc for individuals and society. Professor Kevin Brown, in an essay titled “No All Untruths are Harmless: Minor...
In a 2017 interview with The Daily Vonnegut, Professor Lawrence Broer discussed his 2011 book Vonnegut & Hemingway - Writers at War. In the following excerpt, not included in last year's interview, Broer discusses the evolution of Vonnegut's most famous character, Kilgore Trout: Q: How does the role of Vonnegut’s...
In 2016, Zachary Perdieu, co-Vice President of the Kurt Vonnegut Society, delivered a paper at the American Literature Association’s annual conference titled “’That was I. That was me.’ The Many Vonneguts and Their Relationship with Fiction.” In the following interview, Perdieu shares his thoughts on...
Zachary Perdieu is co-Vice President of the Kurt Vonnegut essay. In the following essay, he shares how Vonnegut's work helped shape his future academic career. What I Pretended to Be Ask any friend of mine to provide a few details about me, and my affinity for...
Vonnegut & Hemingway: Writers at War – An Interview with Lawrence R. Broer While a surface reading of each man’s fiction might find little connection between Kurt Vonnegut and Ernest Hemingway beyond the trauma of war, as Lawrence R. Broer shows in Vonnegut & Hemingway:...
What would Kurt Vonnegut think of Donald Trump? Vonnegut scholar Marc Leeds shares his thoughts in an essay from Literary Hub. http://lithub.com/what-would-kurt-vonnegut-think-of-donald-trump/ For more from Marc Leeds, check out this interview with The Daily Vonnegut: Marc Leeds - The Vonnegut Encyclopedia ...