The Great Writers series explores the lives of some of the most talked about literary figures of the past half-century. One of the twentieth century's most preeminent novelists, Vonnegut satirically explores the wrongs of humanity, most notably in Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle. Ages 14+
The satirical novelist, Kurt Vonnegut, is the author of such popular works as Cat's Cradle, SlaughterhouseFive, and Timequake.
Added by: arcadius | Karma: 2802.10 | Fiction literature | 4 August 2010
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As a "reporter on the afterlife," Kurt Vonnegut bravely allows himself to be strapped to a gurney by his friend Jack Kevorkian and dispatched-round-trip-to the Pearly Gates. Revised and rewritten for this slim volume, Vonnegut's "interviews" range from the gossamer-slight to the deliciously barbed. Among the dead people he is privileged to talk to are Salvatore Biagini, a retired construction worker who died of a heart attack while rescuing his schnauzer from a pit bull; John Brown, still smoldering 140 years after his death by hanging; William Shakespeare, who spouts quotations and ...
Added by: arcadius | Karma: 2802.10 | Fiction literature | 3 August 2010
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Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
First novel by Kurt Vonnegut, published in 1952 and reissued in 1954 as Utopia 14. This anti-utopian novel employs the standard science-fiction formula of a futuristic world run by machines and of one man's futile rebellion against that world. The novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a super computer and run completely by machines. His rebellion is a wildly funny, darkly satirical look at modern society.
One of the 20th century's preeminent novelists, Kurt Vonnegut satirically explored the wrongs of humanity, most notably in "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle". This addition to the "Bloom's Modern Critical Views" series is enhanced by a chronology, bibliography, notes on the contributors, and an introductory essay by noted literary scholar Harold Bloom
Captured by Germans after the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, soldier Kurt Vonnegut and other prisoners of war were taken to Dresden, Germany, where they were confined in a cement shed used for butchering livestock and called "Schlachthof-funf" or "Slaughterhouse-Five." Several weeks later, American and British planes firebombed Dresden, killing 135,000 civilians and leveling the city. Amazingly, the prisoners survived, by taking cover in an underground meat locker. Vonnegut spent two decades coming to grips with the experience, producing this classic American novel as his ultimate response to the ordeal.
