On October 1, 2020, Readings from Kurt Vonnegut: WordPlay by David Hoppe will be performed by The Phoenix Theater as a fundraiser for the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis. For tickets, visit the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library website. The play’s creator, David Hoppe, shared his...
If there’s a Disney World for hard-core Vonnegut fans, it just might be at the Lilly Library at Indiana University, home of the Kurt Vonnegut Manuscript archives, a collection of papers, letters, drafts, and other treasures donated by Vonnegut to the Library. Isabel H. Planton, Public...
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...
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...
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...
[caption id="attachment_2092" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Kurt Vonnegut Jr. As a Visual Artist installation. 14 Mar.-19 Jul, Free Library of Philadelphia Parkway Central Library Art & Literature Department, Philadelphia.[/caption] Readers of Kurt Vonnegut’s classic 1973 novel Breakfast of Champions know that Vonnegut liked to draw. Vonnegut’s illustrations included...
Ever wish you could become unstuck in time and wind up back in Iowa City during the 1960’s and enroll in one of Kurt Vonnegut’s classes at the Iowa Writers Workshop? If so, writer Suzanne McConnell is here to offer the next best thing. A...
Kurt Vonnegut: Political but not Partisan- An Interview with Philip D. Bunn From his first published story (“Report on the Barnhouse Effect”) in which the narrator addresses an unnamed committee to the scathing indictments of the Bush Administration in A Man Without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut...
Kurt Vonnegut’s Humanism: An Interview with Wayne Laufert, author of Behaving Decently: Kurt Vonnegut’s Humanism In his late career book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation...
For Kurt Vonnegut, writing was an act of good citizenship, his way of “poisoning the minds of young people” with humanity. In Lucky Mud & Other Foma: A Field Guide to Kurt Vonnegut’s Environmentalism and Planetary Citizenship (Seven Stories Press), Christina Jarvis explores how Vonnegut...
Over the past few years a renewed focus on the issue of race in America has entered the public conversation. In 2021, writer S.G. Ellerhoff taught a class at the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library (KVML) on Vonnegut and race as part of KVML’s annual...
And All Music is Sacred – An Interview with Richard Auldon Clark In A Man Without A Country, Kurt Vonnegut writes that music “makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it.” During his last fifteen years, Vonnegut shared his passion...