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| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Slaughterhouse-five, Or, The Children's Crusade, a Duty-dance with Death Kurt Vonnegut, 1969 A fourth-generation German-American now living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod (and smoking too much), who, as an American infantry scout hors de combat, as a prisoner of war, witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, The Florence of the Elbe, a long time ago, and survived to tell the tale. This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from. Peace. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Cat's Cradle Kurt Vonnegut, 1998-09-08 “A free-wheeling vehicle . . . an unforgettable ride!”—The New York Times Cat’s Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet’s ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat’s Cradle is one of the twentieth century’s most important works—and Vonnegut at his very best. “[Vonnegut is] an unimitative and inimitable social satirist.”—Harper’s Magazine “Our finest black-humorist . . . We laugh in self-defense.”—Atlantic Monthly |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: The Writer's Crusade Tom Roston, 2021-11-09 The story of Kurt Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse-Five, an enduring masterpiece on trauma and memory Kurt Vonnegut was twenty years old when he enlisted in the United States Army. Less than two years later, he was captured by the Germans in the single deadliest US engagement of the war, the Battle of the Bulge. He was taken to a POW camp, then transferred to a work camp near Dresden, and held in a slaughterhouse called Schlachthof Fünf where he survived the horrific firebombing that killed thousands and destroyed the city. To the millions of fans of Vonnegut’s great novel Slaughterhouse-Five, these details are familiar. They’re told by the book’s author/narrator, and experienced by his enduring character Billy Pilgrim, a war veteran who “has come unstuck in time.” Writing during the tumultuous days of the Vietnam conflict, with the novel, Vonnegut had, after more than two decades of struggle, taken trauma and created a work of art, one that still resonates today. In The Writer’s Crusade, author Tom Roston examines the connection between Vonnegut’s life and Slaughterhouse-Five. Did Vonnegut suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Did Billy Pilgrim? Roston probes Vonnegut’s work, his personal history, and discarded drafts of the novel, as well as original interviews with the writer’s family, friends, scholars, psychologists, and other novelists including Karl Marlantes, Kevin Powers, and Tim O’Brien. The Writer’s Crusade is a literary and biographical journey that asks fundamental questions about trauma, creativity, and the power of storytelling. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Kurt Vonnegut Kurt Vonnegut, 2014-01-14 NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Newsweek/The Daily Beast • The Huffington Post • Kansas City Star • Time Out New York • Kirkus Reviews This extraordinary collection of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Kurt Vonnegut’s fiction. Written over a sixty-year period, these letters, the vast majority of them never before published, are funny, moving, and full of the same uncanny wisdom that has endeared his work to readers worldwide. Included in this comprehensive volume: the letter a twenty-two-year-old Vonnegut wrote home immediately upon being freed from a German POW camp, recounting the ghastly firebombing of Dresden that would be the subject of his masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five; wry dispatches from Vonnegut’s years as a struggling writer slowly finding an audience and then dealing with sudden international fame in middle age; righteously angry letters of protest to local school boards that tried to ban his work; intimate remembrances penned to high school classmates, fellow veterans, friends, and family; and letters of commiseration and encouragement to such contemporaries as Gail Godwin, Günter Grass, and Bernard Malamud. Vonnegut’s unmediated observations on science, art, and commerce prove to be just as inventive as any found in his novels—from a crackpot scheme for manufacturing “atomic” bow ties to a tongue-in-cheek proposal that publishers be allowed to trade authors like baseball players. (“Knopf, for example, might give John Updike’s contract to Simon and Schuster, and receive Joan Didion’s contract in return.”) Taken together, these letters add considerable depth to our understanding of this one-of-a-kind literary icon, in both his public and private lives. Each letter brims with the mordant humor and openhearted humanism upon which he built his legend. And virtually every page contains a quotable nugget that will make its way into the permanent Vonnegut lexicon. • On a job he had as a young man: “Hell is running an elevator throughout eternity in a building with only six floors.” • To a relative who calls him a “great literary figure”: “I am an American fad—of a slightly higher order than the hula hoop.” • To his daughter Nanny: “Most letters from a parent contain a parent’s own lost dreams disguised as good advice.” • To Norman Mailer: “I am cuter than you are.” Sometimes biting and ironical, sometimes achingly sweet, and always alive with the unique point of view that made him the true cultural heir to Mark Twain, these letters comprise the autobiography Kurt Vonnegut never wrote. Praise for Kurt Vonnegut: Letters “Splendidly assembled . . . familiar, funny, cranky . . . chronicling [Vonnegut’s] life in real time.”—Kurt Andersen, The New York Times Book Review “[This collection is] by turns hilarious, heartbreaking and mundane. . . . Vonnegut himself is a near-perfect example of the same flawed, wonderful humanity that he loved and despaired over his entire life.”—NPR “Congenial, whimsical and often insightful missives . . . one of [Vonnegut’s] very best.”—Newsday “These letters display all the hallmarks of Vonnegut’s fiction—smart, hilarious and heartbreaking.”—The New York Times Book Review |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian Kurt Vonnegut, 1999 This fictional adventure takes the form of a series of interviews' - brief pieces originally read on WNYC, Manhattan's public radio station but now revised and rewritten. As a 'reporter on the afterlife' Vonnegut trips down 'the blue tunnel to the pearly gates' and imagines an afterworld peopled, for the most part, with characters of great dignity and wit who managed to make their unique contributions by simply being who they are. Subjects include Issac Newton, James Earl Ray, Mary Shelley, John Brown, William Shakespeare, and some twenty-five others.' |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: A Man Without a Country Kurt Vonnegut, 2017-06-20 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “For all those who have lived with Vonnegut in their imaginations . . . this is what he is like in person.”–USA Today In a volume that is penetrating, introspective, incisive, and laugh-out-loud funny, one of the great men of letters of this age–or any age–holds forth on life, art, sex, politics, and the state of America’s soul. From his coming of age in America, to his formative war experiences, to his life as an artist, this is Vonnegut doing what he does best: Being himself. Whimsically illustrated by the author, A Man Without a Country is intimate, tender, and brimming with the scope of Kurt Vonnegut’s passions. Praise for A Man Without a Country “[This] may be as close as Vonnegut ever comes to a memoir.”–Los Angeles Times “Like [that of] his literary ancestor Mark Twain, [Kurt Vonnegut’s] crankiness is good-humored and sharp-witted. . . . [Reading A Man Without a Country is] like sitting down on the couch for a long chat with an old friend.”–The New York Times Book Review “Filled with [Vonnegut’s] usual contradictory mix of joy and sorrow, hope and despair, humor and gravity.”–Chicago Tribune “Fans will linger on every word . . . as once again [Vonnegut] captures the complexity of the human condition with stunning calligraphic simplicity.”–The Australian “Thank God, Kurt Vonnegut has broken his promise that he will never write another book. In this wondrous assemblage of mini-memoirs, we discover his family’s legacy and his obstinate, unfashionable humanism.”–Studs Terkel |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Like Shaking Hands with God Kurt Vonnegut, Lee Stringer, 2011-01-04 Like Shaking Hands with God details a collaborative journey on the art of writing undertaken by two distinguished writers separated by age, race, upbringing, and education, but sharing common goals and aspirations. Rarely have two writers spoken so candidly about the intersection where the lives they live meet the art they practice. That these two writers happen to be Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer makes this a historic and joyous occasion. The setting was a bookstore in New York City, the date Thursday, October 1, 1998. Before a crowd of several hundred, Vonnegut and Stringer took up the challenge of writing books that would make a difference and the concomitant challenge of living from day to day. As Vonnegut said afterward, It was a magical evening. A book for anyone interested in why the simple act of writing things down can be more important than the amount of memory in our computers. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: The Yellow Birds Kevin Powers, 2012-09-06 WINNER OF THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER and BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Extraordinary . . . a must-read' Guardian 'A masterpiece . . . a classic' The Times 'A stunning achievement' Sunday Times 'Remarkable . . . every line is a defiant assertion of the power of beauty to revivify' Hilary Mantel 'Harrowing, inexplicably beautiful, and utterly, urgently necessary' Ann Patchett Everywhere John looks, he sees Murph. He flinches when cars drive past. His fingers clasp around the rifle he hasn't held for months. Wide-eyed strangers praise him as a hero, but he can feel himself disappearing. Back home after a year in Iraq, memories swarm around him: bodies burning in the crisp morning air. Sunlight falling through branches; bullets kicking up dust; ripples on a pond wavering like plucked strings. The promise he made, to a young man's mother, that her son would be brought home safely. Written with profound emotional insight, especially into the effects of a hidden war on families at home, THE YELLOW BIRDS is one of the most haunting, true and powerful novels of our time. A NEW YORK TIMES, INDEPENDENT, TIMES, TLS, EVENING STANDARD, SUNDAY EXPRESS, GUARDIAN, SCOTSMAN, SUNDAY HERALD, IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Pity the Reader Kurt Vonnegut, Suzanne McConnell, 2019-11-05 “A rich, generous book about writing and reading and Kurt Vonnegut as writer, teacher, and friend . . . Every page brings pleasure and insight.”—Gail Godwin, New York Times bestselling author Here is an entirely new side of Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut as a teacher of writing. Of course he’s given us glimpses before, with aphorisms and short essays and articles and in his speeches. But never before has an entire book been devoted to Kurt Vonnegut the teacher. Here is pretty much everything Vonnegut ever said or wrote having to do with the writing art and craft, altogether a healing, a nourishing expedition. His former student, Suzanne McConnell, has outfitted us for the journey, and in these 37 chapters covers the waterfront of how one American writer brought himself to the pinnacle of the writing art, and we can all benefit as a result. Kurt Vonnegut was one of the few grandmasters of American literature, whose novels continue to influence new generations about the ways in which our imaginations can help us to live. Few aspects of his contribution have not been plumbed—fourteen novels, collections of his speeches, his essays, his letters, his plays—so this fresh view of him is a bonanza for writers and readers and Vonnegut fans everywhere. “Part homage, part memoir, and a 100% guide to making art with words, Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style is a simply mesmerizing book, and I cannot recommend it highly enough!”—Andre Dubus III, #1 New York Times bestselling author “The blend of memory, fact, keen observation, spellbinding descriptiveness and zany characters that populated Vonnegut’s work is on full display here.”—James McBride, National Book Award-winning author |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Unstuck in Time Gregory D. Sumner, 2011-11-08 In Unstuck in Time, Gregory Sumner guides us, with insight and passion, through a biography of fifteen of Kurt Vonnegut’s best known works, his fourteen novels starting with Player Piano (1952) all the way to an epilogue on his last book, A Man Without a Country (2005), to illustrate the quintessential American writer’s profound engagement with the American Dream in its various forms. Sumner gives us a poignant portrait of Vonnegut and his resistance to celebrating the traditional values associated with the American Dream: grandiose ambition, unbridled material success, rugged individualism, and winners over losers. Instead of a celebration of these values, we read and share Vonnegut’s outrage, his brokenhearted empathy for those who struggle under the ethos of survival-of-the-fittest in the frontier mentality—something he once memorably described as an impossibly tough-minded experiment in loneliness. Heroic and tragic, Vonnegut’s novels reflect the pain of his own life’s experiences, relieved by small acts of kindness, friendship, and love that exemplify another way of living, another sort of human utopia, an alternative American Dream, and the reason we always return to his books. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: The Handicapper General Kurt Vonnegut, 1993 |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Jailbird Kurt Vonnegut, 2010-07-28 “[Kurt Vonnegut] has never been more satirically on-target. . . . Nothing is spared.”—People Jailbird takes us into a fractured and comic, pure Vonnegut world of high crimes and misdemeanors in government—and in the heart. This wry tale follows bumbling bureaucrat Walter F. Starbuck from Harvard to the Nixon White House to the penitentiary as Watergate’s least known co-conspirator. But the humor turns dark when Vonnegut shines his spotlight on the cold hearts and calculated greed of the mighty, giving a razor-sharp edge to an unforgettable portrait of power and politics in our times. Praise for Jailbird “[Vonnegut] is our strongest writer . . . the most stubbornly imaginative.”—John Irving “A gem . . . a mature, imaginative novel—possibly the best he has written . . . Jailbird is a guided tour de force of America. Take it!”—Playboy “A profoundly humane comedy . . . Jailbird definitely mounts up on angelic wings—in its speed, in its sparkle, and in its high-flying intent.”—Chicago Tribune Book World “Joyously inventive . . . gleams with the loony magic Vonnegut alone can achieve.”—Cosmopolitan “Vonnegut is our great apocalyptic writer, the closest thing we’ve had to a prophet since . . . Lenny Bruce.”—Chicago Sun-Times “Vonnegut at his impressive best. . . . His imaginative leaps alone . . . are worth the price of admission. . . . His far-reaching metaphysical and cultural concerns . . . are ultimately serious and worth our contemplation.”—The Washington Post |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Hocus Pocus Kurt Vonnegut, 2011-08-31 'Although it is set in the near future, Hocus Pocus is the most topical, realistic Vonnegut novel to date, and shows the struggle of an artist a little impatient with allegory and more than a little impatient with his own country' - New York Times Book Review Some get all the luck – but not Eugene Debs Hartke. Ex-Vietnam vet, ex-college professor, and now a TB-stricken inmate at Tarkington State Reformatory, his life has been warped by one ludicrous farce after another. Here, on scraps of paper pilfered from the prison library, he recounts his own story for posterity, revealing the hypocrisy and injustices of a world that just doesn’t want him to thrive. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Kindness Goes Unpunished Craig Johnson, 2020 First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, 2007. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Lucky Mud & Other Foma Christina Jarvis, 2022-11-22 A fascinating deep dive into Kurt Vonnegut’s oeuvre and legacy, illuminating his unique perspective on environmental stewardship and our shared connections as humans, Earthlings, and stardust. Vonnegut’s major apocalyptic trio—Cat’s Cradle, Slapstick, and Galápagos—prompt broad global, national, and species-level thinking about environmental issues through dramatic and fantastic scenarios. This book, Lucky Mud and Other Foma, tells the story of the origins and legacy of what Kurt Vonnegut understood as “planetary citizenship” and explores key roots, influences, literary techniques, and artistic expressions of his interest in environmental activism through his writing. Vonnegut saw writing itself as an act of good citizenship, as a way of “poisoning” the minds of young people “with humanity . . . to encourage them to make a better world.” Often that literary activism meant addressing real social and environmental problems—polluted water, soil, and air; racial and economic injustice; isolating and dehumanizing technologies; and lives and landscapes desolated by war. Vonnegut’s remedies took many forms, from the redemptive power of the arts to artificial extended families to vital communities and engaged democracies. Reminding us of our shared connections as humans, as Earthlings, as stardust, Lucky Mud helps fans, scholars, and book lovers of all kinds experience how Vonnegut’s writings purposely challenge readers to think, create, and love. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut, 1999-01-12 Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five is “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time). Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.” An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim O’Brien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegut’s words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as “the kind of writer who made people—young people especially—want to write.” George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be “the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.” More than fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut’s portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" as an Anti-War Novel Jasmin Wolfram, Mareike Hachemer, 2014-01-29 Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Department of English and Linguistics), course: Slaughterhouse Five, language: English, abstract: The novel “Slaughterhouse-Five“, written by Kurt Vonnegut in 1969, is about Billy Pilgrim, a man, who has “become unstuck in time”, which means that he travels through different periods of his life. The novel starts with an autobiographical part, which is about Kurt Vonnegut’s life after the Second World War. In the following parts Vonnegut writes about Billy Pilgrim. The reader learns that as a young adult Billy Pilgrim is a soldier in the Second World War just like Kurt Vonnegut was. He survives this war with the help of other soldiers and later on he settles as a bourgeois civilian with his wife Valencia Merble and his two children. Kurt Vonnegut tells the reader that in the time of the Second World War Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time, and has been kidnapped by aliens from a planet called Tralfamadore. The reader gets to know Billy Pilgrim's life story as well as his personality. As a round character Billy is shown in different situations with all his emotions and thoughts. Vonnegut describes traumatic events in Billy’s childhood and also emotionally important events in his grown-up life, like his 18th wedding anniversary. After the awful situations Billy witnessed in the Second World War, for instance the Dresden bombing, and an airplane crash he survives, Billy says he was kidnapped by a flying saucer. This could be a sign of Billy Pilgrim suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which will be examined in the following text. Although the novel contains sad and cruel topics, the tone of the novel is generally sarcastic and unemotional. Billy Pilgrim's life and the literary style of “Slaughterhouse-Five“ inevitably lead to the question: In How Far Does Kurt Vonnegut's Depiction of the Protagonists in “Slaughterhouse-Five” Contribute to the Novel Being an Anti-War Novel? Since Vonnegut's publishers call Slaughterhouse-Five “one of the world's great anti-war books” and Vonnegut himself promised his friend Mary O'Hare to write an anti-war novel, these statements will be examined in this essay. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: The Sirens of Titan Kurt Vonnegut, 1964 |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: The anti-hero Billy Pilgrim and his double role in the novel "Slaughter-House Five" by Kurt Vonnegut Alessandra Pennesi, 2020-06-29 Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2, University of Bamberg, language: English, abstract: In this essay the author analyzes Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughter-House Five. The essay will examine both its form and content and analyzes how these components are willingly put in a contradictory relationship and how Vonnegut unexpectedly relies on ironic devices in order to describe the horrible conditions of the American soldiers in Germany. After that, the author argues how the character of Billy Pilgrim, with his anti-heroic aptitude, serves as a means of criticism to the indifference and the rampant materialism getting hold of the American society and how Billy purports an unconventional (and for some aspects controversial) life philosophy that still wants to bring about a deeper reflection on the responsibility of the individual in the process of social change. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Posthumanism in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut Andrew Hicks, 2023-05 Posthumanism in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut: Matter That Complains So draws on New Materialist, Eco-Critical and Systems Theory methodologies to highlight posthumanist themes in six of Vonnegut's most famous novels, challenging the prevailing critical consensus that he was a humanist writer. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: The Art of War Pete Katz, 2021-10-19 The Art of War is an entertaining and visually stunning graphic adaptation of the oldest military treatise in the world and a masterpiece of Chinese literature. Hailed as the oldest philosophical discussion on military strategy, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War has been adapted as a graphic novel by award-winning illustrator Pete Katz. In this collectible thread-bound edition, the narrative focuses on a teacher instructing a pupil on the main points of Sun Tzu’s treatise, with vibrant battle scenes interspersed throughout. Issues such as planning, tactics, manoeuvring, and spying are illustrated with full-color scenes, so that readers may gain a greater understanding of principles from the fifth century BC that continue to influence generals, politicians and business leaders to this day. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Welcome to the Monkey House Kurt Vonnegut, 2014 A collection of twenty-five short works by the American author written between 1950 and 1968 and originally printed in a wide range of publications including The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, and Ladies' Home Journal. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Palm Sunday Kurt Vonnegut, 2010-11-23 FROM THE ONE-OF-A-KIND IMAGINATION THAT BROUGHT US SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5 AND CAT'S CRADLE 'Kurt Vonnegut is either the funniest serious writer around or the most serious funny writer' Los Angeles Times Book Review An 'autobiographical collage' of speeches, stories and essays, in Palm Sunday, Kurt Vonnegut writes beguilingly about everything from country music to George Bush, his favourite comedians to his mother's midnight mania, and bittersweet tributes to a dead best friend and a dead marriage. Resonating with his singular voice, this is a self-portrait in writing that showcases why Kurt Vonnegut is as genius an essayist and commentator on American society as he is a novelist. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: While Mortals Sleep Kurt Vonnegut, 2011 While Mortals Sleep is a smart, clear-eyed collection of stories from one of the most original writers in American fiction. Set in trailers, bars and factories, Vonnegut conjures up a world where men and machines, art and artifice, fame and fortune become curiously twisted and characters pit their dreams and fears against a cruel and comically indifferent world. Written early in his career, and never published before, these tightly plotted stories are infused with Vonnegut's distinctive blend of observation, imagination and scabrous humour. This collection features an introduction by Dave Eggers. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: And So It Goes Charles J. Shields, 2012-10-16 From the author of Mockingbird—the first authoritative biography of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., a writer who forever altered American literature In 2006, Charles Shields reached out to Kurt Vonnegut in a letter asking for his endorsement for a planned biography. The first response was no (A most respectful demurring by me for the excellent writer Charles J. Shields, who offered to be my biographer). Unwilling to take no for an answer, propelled by a passion for his subject, and already deep into his research, Shields wrote again and this time, to his delight, the answer came back: O.K. For the next year—a year that ended up being Vonnegut's last—Shields had unprecedented access to Vonnegut and his letters. While millions know Vonnegut as a counterculture guru, antiwar activist, and satirist of American culture, few outside his closest friends and family knew the full arc of his extraordinary life. And So It Goes changes that, painting the portrait of a man who made friends easily but always felt lonely, sold millions of books but never felt appreciated, and described himself as a humanist but fought with humanity at large. As a former public relations man, Vonnegut crafted his image carefully—the avuncular, curly-haired humorist—though he admitted, I myself am a work of fiction. The extremely wide and overwhelmingly positive review coverage for And So It Goes has been nothing less than extraordinary and confirm it as the definitive biography of Kurt Vonnegut. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: The Depiction of War in the Novels "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "A Farewell to Arms" Uwe Mehlbaum, 2009-12 Essay from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Bayreuth (Lehrstuhl fur Amerikanistik), course: PS Representations of War in American Culture, language: English, abstract: The two novels A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway and Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut have a lot in common at first sight. Both are books about wars in Europe written by American authors, and although the protagonists in both novels experience things that are partly very similar to their authors' experiences, none of the novels is an autobiography, e.g. Hemingway's story ends about two months before he went to Europe (Cooper, 33). Both of the novels deal not only with war stories but roam around other genres, be it a science fiction story in Vonnegut's case or a love story in Hemingway's. Both authors had direct and severe experiences with war. Despite of all similarities we also find very big differences in the depiction of war and the way the two authors cope with their shocking experiences. Both of the authors use a very own and subjective depiction of war in their novels and we find big differences in the way they describe war. This essay will take a closer look on how the two novels depict war in different ways and the messages that we can draw from their works. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Constructing Slaughterhouse-Five Marc Regler, 2007-07 Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,3 (B), University of Stuttgart (American Studies), course: Postmodern Fiction, 13 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Constructing Slaughterhouse-Five is a close reading of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. It puts a special focus on the aspects of time and temporal structure in relation to the novel form and its narrative structure in relation to the protagonist Billy Pilgrim's personal trauma, his war experience and his time travelling in relation to the alternative model of time of the Tralfamadorians. Thus, it concentrates on the postmodernist criticism of an uncritical believe in linear time, teleology and progression as also represented in the form of linear narratives. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 Tim Hamilton, 2009-07-21 As could only occur with Bradbury's full cooperation in this authorized adaptation, Hamilton has created a striking work of art that uniquely captures Montag's awakening to the evil of government-controlled thought and the inestimable value of philosophy, theology, and literature. --from publisher description. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Revolutionary Road Richard Yates, 2010-12-23 One of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century, Richard Yate's universally acclaimed debut novel is a masterful portrait of East Coast life in 1950s suburbia. This is the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple whose empty suburban life is held together by the dream that greatness is only just round the corner. With heart-breaking compassion and clarity, Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their hopes and ideals, betraying in the end not only each other, but their own best selves. 'As brilliantly nuanced as Updike's Rabbit sequence, and as sad as anything by Fitzgerald' Nick Hornby, Guardian |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Armageddon in Retrospect Kurt Vonnegut, 2008-09-04 First published on the anniversary of Kurt Vonnegut's death, Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of twelve new writings - a fitting tribute to the author, and an essential contribution to the discussion of war, peace and humanity's tendency towards violence. Imbued with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humour, the pieces range from a visceral non-fiction recollection of the destruction of Dresden - to a painfully funny short story about three soldiers and their fantasies of the perfect meal. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: The Last Station Nicole Alexander, 2023-03-14 'Unputdownable ... epitomising the great Australian novel.' Anita Heiss 'A warm and uniquely Australian story.' Herald Sun In nineteenth-century New South Wales, the name Dalhunty stood for prosperity and prestige. The family's vast station was home to more than 80 people, and each year their premium wool was shipped down the bustling Darling River to be sold in South Australia. Yet, just decades later, Dalhunty Station is on the brink of ruin . . . In the summer of 1909, eccentric Benjamin Dalhunty and his son Julian anxiously await the arrival of the Lady Matilda, the first paddle-steamer to navigate the river in more than two years. It will transport their very last wool clip to market. Twenty-year-old Julian wants more from life than the crumbling station, but as the eldest son his future has been set since birth. Until the day his mother invites a streetwise young man from Sydney into their home . . . Ethan Harris's arrival shines a light on a family at breaking point. But he also unwittingly offers Julian an escape, as the young men embark on a perilous journey down the Darling and west into untamed lands. The Last Station is a captivating story of heritage, heartbreak and hope, set during the dying days of the riverboat trade along the Darling River. 'An enthralling, gritty adventure... Bursting with pathos, humour and folklore.' Michael Burge author of Tank Water 'A captivating story... Evocative, engrossing and entertaining.' Alison Booth author of The Painting |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: The Big Trip Up Yonder Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., 2016-07-16 The Big Trip Up Yonder by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Illustrated by Kossin. The Ford family, headed by 172-year-old Harold (Gramps), lives in a three-room apartment on the 76th floor of Building 257 of Alden Village, New York City, Connecticut. Gramps' grandson Louis, his wife Emerald, and 20 other descendants are crowded into the space, perpetually jockeying for Gramps' favor. Gramps gets the best food and the only private bedroom, and controls everyone's life by constantly revising his will to disinherit anyone who earns his displeasure. An offhand remark by Lou prompts Gramps to disinherit him and exile Lou and Em to the worst sleeping space in the apartment, near the bathroom. Lou then catches his great-grandnephew, newly wed Mortimer, diluting Gramps' anti-gerasone in the bathroom. Fearing Gramps' reaction to such a scheme, he tries to empty the bottle and refill it with the full-strength medicine, but accidentally breaks the bottle and is caught by Gramps, who only tells him to clean up the mess. The next morning, the family finds Gramps' bed empty and a note informing them that he is gone and that he bequeaths his estate to all his descendants to hold in common, share and share alike. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell, 2021-03-03 If there is no word for freedom, how can anyone be free? |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut, 2009-08-11 A special fiftieth anniversary edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time), featuring a new introduction by Kevin Powers, author of the National Book Award finalist The Yellow Birds Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.” An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim O’Brien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegut’s words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as “the kind of writer who made people—young people especially—want to write.” George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be “the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.” More than fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut’s portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: The High Window Raymond Chandler, 1982 |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut, Ryan North, 2020-09-23 With Kurt Vonnegut’s seminal anti-war story, Slaughterhouse-Five, Eisner Award-winning writer Ryan North (Unbeatable Squirrel Girl) and Eisner Award-nominated artist Albert Monteys (Universe!) translate a literary classic into comic book form in the tradition of A Wrinkle in Time and Fight Club 2. Billy Pilgrim has read Kilgore Trout and opened a successful optometry business. Billy Pilgrim has built a loving family and witnessed the firebombing of Dresden. Billy Pilgrim has traveled to the planet Tralfamadore and met Kurt Vonnegut. Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Slaughterhouse-Five is at once a farcical look at the horror and tragedy of war where children are placed on the frontlines and die (so it goes), and a moving examination of what it means to be a fallible human. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Great States! (eBook) Cindy Barden, 1995-03-01 Treat your students to an exciting hot air balloon ride across the USA. There's lots to see and do as each state is visited (the District of Columbia, too), its history and geography explored, and fascinating facts explained. There are map activities, places and physical features to identify, and topics for further investigation. There are parks, lakes, mountains and swamps to discover as well as the thousands of plants and animals that share our land and water. This product has been selected by a national panel of classroom teachers as a winner of Learning Magazine's Teachers' Choice Award. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Quicklet On Slaughterhouse-Five By Kurt Vonnegut Jennifer Gigantino, 2011-12-07 Quicklets: Learn More. Read Less. While Slaughterhouse-Five may be found in the fiction section of the library, the major events of its plot are based primarily on the true events of World War II as experienced by its author. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was really present and tucked away in a meat locker with a hundred other Allied prisoners and four German guards when the city of Dresden was bombed in early 1945, killing 135,000 citizens. He was captured by German forces during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, while serving as a battalion scout in the 106th Infantry division. The Germans transferred him and hundreds of other Allied POWs to the Czechloslovakian border by boxcar, then to a work camp in Dresden. There, he lived in an old slaughterhouse known as Slaughterhouse-Five. Today, Slaughterhouse-Five is standing and intact, and visitors can take guided tours. Additionally, as stated in Chapter One, many major and minor characters are based on people Vonnegut knew during the real-life war. As the narrator says, one guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I've changed all the names. Though many critics loved Slaughterhouse-Five upon its publication and beyond -- nominating it for two major science-fiction literary awards and placing it on countless greatest-American-novel lists -- it has been criticized for being obscene due to its violent and sexual content as well as its nihilistic outlook. Despite this, it stayed on the best-seller list for more than half the year of its publication and is still popular amongst students and literary types. |
| kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five ebook: Study Guide to Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Intelligent Education, 2020-02-15 A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, an instant success across all popular media. As an anti-war novel of the 1960s, Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse-Five as a double story: the main character suffers from the traumatic effects of war; the author struggles with the effects of war on both the character and the author. Moreover, his writing shows his belief that art is no longer a finished product, but it is an ongoing process. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of Vonnegut’s classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons it has stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains: - Introductions to the Author and the Work - Character Summaries - Plot Guides - Section and Chapter Overviews - Test Essay and Study Q&As The Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research. |
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