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...
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...
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...