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| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: 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. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Rain Check Levi Andrew Noe, 2016-06-02 Beautifully rendered, the stories in 'Rain Check' could well be the footprints and photographs of our own lives if we'd have taken risks as daring as Noe's characters. Each misstep, triumph and regret rings true. Reading these stories is like being a lucky voyeur who happens upon an artist with brush in hand, nearing the finishing touch of their masterpiece. Nothing is more potent than prose that lifts off the page and lands, like a well-placed bullet or caress, on the heart, and that's precisely what Noe has done here. Len Kuntz, author of 'Dark Sunshine' and 'I'm Not Supposed to be Here and Neither Are You' The tiny, potent stories that make up this debut by Levi Andrew Noe both surprise and delight. There's wisdom in these pages, but also humor, tenderness, and magic. 'Rain Check' is a terrific read from a young author to watch. Kathy Fish, author of 'Wild Life', 'Rift' and 'Together We Can Bury It' |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: 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. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Breakfast of Champions Kurt Vonnegut, 1973 The author questions the condition of modern man in this novel, depicting a science fiction writer's struggle to find peace and sanity in the world. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Bluebeard Kurt Vonnegut, 2009-10-14 “Ranks with Vonnegut’s best and goes one step beyond . . . joyous, soaring fiction.”—The Atlanta Journal and Constitution Broad humor and bitter irony collide in this fictional autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, who, at age seventy-one, wants to be left alone on his Long Island estate with the secret he has locked inside his potato barn. But then a voluptuous young widow badgers Rabo into telling his life story—and Vonnegut in turn tells us the plain, heart-hammering truth about man’s careless fancy to create or destroy what he loves. Praise for Bluebeard “Vonnegut is at his edifying best.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer “The quicksilver mind of Vonnegut is at it again. . . . He displays all his talents—satire, irony, ridicule, slapstick, and even a shaggy dog story of epic proportions.”—The Cincinnati Post “[Kurt Vonnegut is] a voice you can trust to keep poking holes in the social fabric.”—San Francisco Chronicle “It has the qualities of classic Bosch and Slaughterhouse Vonnegut. . . . Bluebeard is uncommonly feisty.”—USA Today “Is Bluebeard good? Yes! . . . This is vintage Vonnegut—good wine from his best grapes.”—The Detroit News “A joyride . . . Vonnegut is more fascinated and puzzled than angered by the human stupidities and contradictions he discerns so keenly. So hop in his rumble seat. As you whiz along, what you observe may provide some new perspectives.”—Kansas City Star |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Bearing an Hourglass Piers Anthony, 2012-02-14 Like On a Pale Horse, this second, complete-in-itself novel of the Incarnations of Immortality is a richly imagined and always fascinating story. And again, Piers Anthony adds to his gripping plot a serious, though-provoking study of good and evil. When life seemed pointless to Norton, he accepted the position as the Incarnation of Time, even though it meant living backward from present to past. The other seemily all-powerful Incarnates of Immortality—Death, Fate, War, and Nature—made him welcome. Even Satan greeted him with gifts. But he soon discovered that the gifts were cunning traps. While he had been distracted, he had become enmeshed in a complex scheme of the Evil One to destroy all that was good. In the end, armed with only the Hourglass, Norton was forced to confront the immense power of Satan directly. And though Satan banished him to Hell, he was resolved to fight on. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Maxwell's Demon Steven Hall, 2021-04-06 The son of a famous writer is caught in a cat-and-mouse game with his late father’s protégé in this “heady postmodern thriller” (Publishers Weekly). Thomas Quinn is having a hard time. A failed novelist, he’s stuck writing short stories and audio scripts for other people’s characters. His wife, Imogen, is working on a remote island halfway around the world, and talking to her over the webcam isn’t the same. The bills are piling up, the dirty dishes are stacking in the sink, and the whole world seems to be hurtling towards entropic collapse. Then he gets a voicemail from his father, who has been dead for seven years. Thomas’s relationship with Stanley Quinn—a world-famous writer and erstwhile absent father—was always shaky, not least because Stanley always seemed to prefer his enigmatic assistant and protégé Andrew Black to his own son. Yet after Black published his first book, Cupid’s Engine, which went on to sell over a million copies, he disappeared completely. Now strange things are happening to Thomas, and he can’t help but wonder if Black is tugging at the seams of his world behind the scenes. Absurdly brilliant, wildly entertaining, and utterly mind-bending, Maxwell’s Demon triumphantly excavates the ways we construct meaning in a world where chaotic collapse looms closer every day. Praise for Maxwell’s Demon Named a Most Anticipated Book by the Guardian “A wonderfully imaginative, splendidly baroque novel that is a combination of the baffling, teasing, and tantalizing. Part fantasy, part mystery, it is altogether delightful and filled with surprises—in a word, exceptional. No, make that two words; the second is fantastic.” —Booklist (starred review) “[A] phantasmagoric novel with shades of Stephen King’s The Dark Half. . . . There’s really nothing like this book—long contemplations of philosophy, personality, religion, and history are all woven into something of a mystery in which no one is truly reliable. With influences that recall Fight Club and Motherless Brooklyn, Hall manages to put a whole world on the page that shifts and changes as weirdly and wildly as the ones in the novel’s fictional books. The modern novel’s version of a Möbius strip, written with verve and a vast appreciation for the power of language.” —Kirkus Reviews “A postmodern literary thriller about a difficult second novel. . . . Anyone who has a taste for postmodern hijinks—fans of Thomas Pynchon or Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves—will be drawn to the menace and profusion, the game-like brilliance and black hilarity of Maxwell’s Demon.” —Australian |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: 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. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Kurt Vonnegut Drawings Nanette Vonnegut, 2014-05-13 Those who know Kurt Vonnegut as one of America's most beloved and influential writers will be surprised and delighted to discover that he was also a gifted graphic artist. This book brings together the finest examples of his funny, strange, and moving drawings in an inexpensive, beautifully produced gift volume for every Vonnegut fan. Kurt Vonnegut's daughter Nanette introduces this volume of his never before published drawings with an intimate remembrance of her father. Vonnegut always drew, and many of his novels contain sketches. Breakfast of Champions (1973) included many felt-tip pen drawings, and he had a show in 1983 of his drawings at New York's Margo Feiden Gallery, but really got going in the early 1990s when he became acquainted with the screenprinter Joe Petro III, who became his partner in making his colorful drawings available as silkscreens. With a touch of cubism, mixed with a Paul Klee gift for caricature, a Calder-like ability to balance color and line, and more than a touch of sixties psychedelic sensibility, Vonnegut's aesthetic is as idiosyncratic and defiant of tradition as his books. While writing came to be more onerous in his later years, making art became his joyful primary activity, and he made drawings up until his death in 2007. This volume, and a planned touring exhibition of the drawings, will introduce Vonnegut's legion of fans to an entirely new side of his irrepressible creative personality. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Kurt Vonnegut’s "Slaughterhouse-Five" as Historiographic Metafiction Markus Schneider, 2008-11-05 Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,3, University of Bamberg (Professur für Amerikanistik), course: American Historiographic Metafiction, language: English, abstract: The representation of history depends mainly on the perspective, attitude and cultural background of the beholder; which at the same time marks the major flaw of historiography. One topic or event will never be identically described by two historians, even if they are given the very same materials and sources to work with. As a consequence, historiography can only try to create an image, as true and original as possible, but is never able to depict everything that happened as it actually was in its full scope. So there were and always will be fictional elements and interpretations in the reports and writings about past events. This assumption leads us to historiographic metafiction, a style of writing that emerged during the postmodern era. If there is fiction in scholarly historiography, where is the difference between that and a novel that deals with history? This term paper will try to give an answer to that question and examine features and characteristics of historiographic metafiction, which eventually will be applied to Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. In postmodern literature and, of course, especially in historiographic metafiction, authors tried to find new ways of telling stories and particularly representing history. I will take a closer look at the narrative frame and especially the concept of time Vonnegut used in the novel. But how is history represented in Slaughterhouse-Five? This will be the second part of the analysis that will attempt to find answers why Vonnegut wrote the novel the way he did. The third part will deal with intertextual elements in the novel. All citations from the novel and the pages indicated in brackets are taken from the edition cited below. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Metafiction Patricia Waugh, 1984-01-01 |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: 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. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Sanity Plea Lawrence R. Broer, 1994-08-30 In this revised edition of a volume originally published in 1989, Lawrence Broer extends his comprehensive critique of the body of writing by Kurt Vonnegut. Broer offers a broad psychoanalytic study of Vonnegut’s works from Player Piano to Hocus Pocus, taking a decisively new approach to the work of one of America’s most important, yet often misinterpreted writers. A compelling and original analysis, Sanity Plea, explores how Vonnegut incorporates his personal experiences into an art that is not defeatist, but rather creatively therapeutic and life-affirming. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: The Final Solution Michael Chabon, 2013-09-17 In The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, prose magician Michael Chabon conjured the golden age of comic books, interwining history, legend and story-telling verve. In The Final Solution, he has condensed his boundless vision to create a short, suspenseful tale of compassion and wit that re-imagines the classic 19th-century detective story. In deep retirement in the English countryside, an 89-year old man, vaguely recollected by the locals as a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his bookkeeping than his fellow man. Into his life wanders Linus Steinman, nine years old and mute, who has escaped from Nazi Germany with his sole companion: an African grey parrot. What is the meaning of the mysterious strings of German numbers the bird spews out—a top-secret SS code? The keys to a series of Swiss bank accounts? Or do they hold a significance at once more prosaic and far more sinister? Though the solution to this last case may be beyond even the reach of the once famed sleuth, the true story of the boy and his parrot is subtly revealed to the reader in a wrenching resolution to this brilliant homage. The Final Solution is a work from a master story-teller at the height of his powers. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: The Self-Begetting Novel Steven G Kellman, 2013-12-31 |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Love, Kurt Kurt Vonnegut, 2020-12-01 A never-before-seen collection of deeply personal love letters from Kurt Vonnegut to his first wife, Jane, compiled and edited by their daughter “A glimpse into the mind of a writer finding his voice.”—The Washington Post “If ever I do write anything of length—good or bad—it will be written with you in mind.” Kurt Vonnegut’s eldest daughter, Edith, was cleaning out her mother’s attic when she stumbled upon a dusty, aged box. Inside, she discovered an unexpected treasure: more than two hundred love letters written by Kurt to Jane, spanning the early years of their relationship. The letters begin in 1941, after the former schoolmates reunited at age nineteen, sparked a passionate summer romance, and promised to keep in touch when they headed off to their respective colleges. And they did, through Jane’s conscientious studying and Kurt’s struggle to pass chemistry. The letters continue after Kurt dropped out and enlisted in the army in 1943, while Jane in turn graduated and worked for the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C. They also detail Kurt’s deployment to Europe in 1944, where he was taken prisoner of war and declared missing in action, and his eventual safe return home and the couple’s marriage in 1945. Full of the humor and wit that we have come to associate with Kurt Vonnegut, the letters also reveal little-known private corners of his mind. Passionate and tender, they form an illuminating portrait of a young soldier’s life in World War II as he attempts to come to grips with love and mortality. And they bring to light the origins of Vonnegut the writer, when Jane was the only person who believed in and supported him supported him, the young couple having no idea how celebrated he would become. A beautiful full-color collection of handwritten letters, notes, sketches, and comics, interspersed with Edith’s insights and family memories, Love, Kurt is an intimate record of a young man growing into himself, a fascinating account of a writer finding his voice, and a moving testament to the life-altering experience of falling in love. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Contemporary American Trauma Narratives Alan Gibbs, 2014-06-16 This book looks at the way writers present the effects of trauma in their work. It explores narrative devices, such as OCymetafictionOCO, as well as events in contemporary America, including 9/11, the Iraq War, and reactions to the Bush administration. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: 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 |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: A Poetics of Postmodernism Linda Hutcheon, 2003-09-02 First published in 1988. Postmodernism is a word much used and misused in a variety of disciplines, including literature, visual arts, film, architecture, literary theory, history, and philosophy. A Poetics of Postmodernism is neither a defense nor a denunciation of the postmodern. It continues the project of Hutcheon's Narcissistic Narrative and A Theory of Parody in studying formal self-consciousness in art, but adds to this both a historical and ideological dimension. Modelled on postmodern architecture, postmodernism is the name given here to current cultural practices characterized by major paradoxes of form and of ideology. The poetics of postmodernism offered here is drawn from these contradictions, as seen in the intersecting concerns of both contemporary theory and cultural practice. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Venus Plus X Theodore Sturgeon, 2013-04-30 From Hugo and Nebula winner Theodore Sturgeon comes a seeming utopia: a world with only one gender and no poverty, pollution, or war—but at what cost? Charlie Johns has been snatched from his home on Earth and delivered to the strange future world of Ledom. Here, violence is a vague and improbable notion. Technology has triumphed over hunger, overpopulation, pollution, and even time and space. But there is a change Charlie finds even more shocking: Gender is a thing of the past. Gone are the tensions between male and female. Gone is the human preoccupation with sex. As Charlie explores Ledom and its people, he finds his engrained human precepts are profane in this new world. But then why are his hosts so eager for his approval? Something isn’t right about Ledom’s ideal existence. And when cracks begin to appear in its flawless facade, Charlie must unearth the city’s terrible secrets . . . before it’s too late. Theodore Sturgeon’s visionary tale is literary science fiction at its most brazen and inventive. A scathing critique of American puritanism that unabashedly explores questions of sexuality and gender, it remains as relevant, insightful, provocative, and troubling as when it first appeared in print. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Theodore Sturgeon including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the University of Kansas’s Kenneth Spencer Research Library and the author’s estate, among other sources. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Kurt VonNegut's Slaughterhouse-Five As Historiographic Metafiction Markus Schneider, 2011-11 Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,3, University of Bamberg (Professur für Amerikanistik), course: American Historiographic Metafiction, 10 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The representation of history depends mainly on the perspective, attitude and cultural background of the beholder; which at the same time marks the major flaw of historiography. One topic or event will never be identically described by two historians, even if they are given the very same materials and sources to work with. As a consequence, historiography can only try to create an image, as true and original as possible, but is never able to depict everything that happened as it actually was in its full scope. So there were and always will be fictional elements and interpretations in the reports and writings about past events. This assumption leads us to historiographic metafiction, a style of writing that emerged during the postmodern era. If there is fiction in scholarly historiography, where is the difference between that and a novel that deals with history? This term paper will try to give an answer to that question and examine features and characteristics of historiographic metafiction, which eventually will be applied to Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. In postmodern literature and, of course, especially in historiographic metafiction, authors tried to find new ways of telling stories and particularly representing history. I will take a closer look at the narrative frame and especially the concept of time Vonnegut used in the novel. But how is history represented in Slaughterhouse-Five? This will be the second part of the analysis that will attempt to find answers why Vonnegut wrote the novel the way he did. The third part will deal with intertextual elements in the novel. All citations from the novel and the pages indicated in brackets are taken from the edition cited below. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: The Metafictional Muse Larry McCaffery, 1982-10-15 McCaffery interprets the works of three major writers of radically experimental fiction: Robert Coover; Donald Barthelme; and Willam H. Gass. The term “metafiction” here refers to a strain in American writing where the self-concious approach to the art of fiction-making is a commentary on the nature of meaning itself. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Venus on the Half-Shell Philip Jose Farmer, 2013-12-10 Simon Wagstaff narrowly escapes the Deluge that destroys Earth when he happens upon an abandoned spaceship. A man without a planet, he gains immortality from an elixir drunk during an interlude with a cat-like alien queen. Now Simon must chart a 3,000-year course to the most distant corners of the multiverse, to seek out the answers to the questions no one can seem to answer. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Europeana Patrik Ourednik, 2024-06-25 Tracing the Great War through the Millennium Bug, 1999 through 1900, Dadaism through Scientology through Sierra Leonean bicycle riding and back, award-winning Czech author Patrik Ourednik explores the horror and absurdity of the twentieth century in an explosive deconstruction of historical memory. Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century opens on the beaches of Normandy in 1944, comparing the heights of different forces’ soldiers and considering how tall, long, or good at fertilizing fields the men’s bodies will be. Probing the depths of humanity and inhumanity, this is an account of history as it has never been told: “engaging, even frightening.” At once recreating and uncreating the twentieth century, Ourednik explores the connections across the decades between the disparate figures, events, and politics we thought we knew. Patrik Ourednik’s Europeana merits the author’s reputation as a giant of post-1989 Czech literature. Now translated into 33 languages, the book is a masterwork of cubism, a polymorphic monologue of statistics and movements and fine print and discoveries that evokes the deadpan absurdity of Kafka and the gallows humor of Hašek. Ourednik has created a mesmerizing, maddening account of the past, and his interrogation of “truth” and objectivity resonates now more than ever. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: The Historian Eugene K. Garber, 1995 Winner of the William Goyen Prize for Fiction Eugene Garber's masterpiece of the imagination takes readers on a rich fictional odyssey that is a meditation on the American character and experience. Moving back and forth in time, populated by memorable characters that include Henry Adams, Isadora Duncan, and Lincoln Steffans, the story follows the historian's quest to find the American woman, whose vitality has been all but written out of history by puritan consciousness. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: 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. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Céline and His Vision Erika Ostrovsky, 1967-01-01 |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: 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. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: The Anti-Hero in the American Novel D. Simmons, 2014-11-18 The Anti-Hero in the American Novel rereads major texts of the 1960s to offer an innovative re-evaluation of a set of canonical novels that moves beyond entrenched post-modern and post-structural interpretations towards an appraisal which emphasizes the specifically humanist and idealist elements of these works. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Metafiction Patricia Waugh, 2013-10-08 First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Understanding Kurt Vonnegut William Rodney Allen, 1991 LITERARY STUDIES: FROM C 1900 -. This is a critical companion to Vonnegut's early novels. Understanding Kurt Vonnegut is a critical analysis of Vonnegut's fiction as a point of entrance for students and general readers alike. In close readings of Vonnegut's novels, William Rodney Allen examines the distinctive stylistic, thematic, and formally innovative elements that earned Vonnegut (1922-2007) a mass following, especially among young readers, as well as critical respect among scholars. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: 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. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Fabulation and Metafiction Robert Scholes, 1979 |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Mustard Gas and Roses Lilly Library (Indiana University, Bloomington), Kurt Vonnegut, Seth Bowers, Seth Dunk, David Pavkovich, Sarah Taylor, Breon Mitchell, Jonathan R. Eller, Rebecca Campbell Cape, Michael Taylor, 2007 |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., 2009 Presents a collection of critical essays about Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Twentieth-Century American Fiction on Screen R. Barton Palmer, 2007-02-22 The essays in this collection analyse major film adaptations of twentieth-century American fiction, from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon to Toni Morrison's Beloved. During the century, films based on American literature came to play a central role in the history of the American cinema. Combining cinematic and literary approaches, this volume explores the adaptation process from conception through production and reception. The contributors explore the ways political and historical contexts have shaped the transfer from book to screen, and the new perspectives that films bring to literary works. In particular, they examine how the twentieth-century literary modes of realism, modernism, and postmodernism have influenced the forms of modern cinema. Written in a lively and accessible style, the book includes production stills and full filmographies. Together with its companion volume on nineteenth-century fiction, the volume offers a comprehensive account of the rich tradition of American literature on screen. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Historiographic Metafiction in Modern American and Canadian Literature Bernd Engler, Kurt Müller, 1994 |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Kurt Vonnegut Kevin Alexander Boon, 2013-08-01 Kurt Vonnegut was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright and also published five works of non-fiction. His careers spans 50 years. This book features an in-depth look the life of the author as well as a close examination of the most widely-read of his works. Plot summary, excerpts, character analysis, and themes for each work covered are revealed. Critical analysis from differing points of view of the work is also presented. With this informational book, students learn how to identify themes, analyze how elements in the text interact and how to identify the informational context behind fictional treatment of words. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: Ruins in the Literary and Cultural Imagination Efterpi Mitsi, Anna Despotopoulou, Stamatina Dimakopoulou, Emmanouil Aretoulakis, 2019-11-28 This book focuses on literal and metaphorical ruins, as they are appropriated and imagined in different forms of writing. Examining British and American literature and culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the book begins in the era of industrial modernity with studies of Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Henry James and Daphne Du Maurier. It then moves on to the significance of ruins in the twentieth century, against the backdrop of conflict, waste and destruction, analyzing authors such as Beckett and Pinter, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Leonard Cohen. The collection concludes with current debates on ruins, through discussions of Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht, as well as reflections on the refugee crisis that take the ruin beyond the text, offering new perspectives on its diverse legacies and conceptual resources. |
| metafiction in slaughterhouse five: The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodern Fiction Bran Nicol, 2009-10-08 A lucid exploration of the key features of postmodernism and the most important authors from Beckett to DeLillo. |
Metafiction - Wikipedia
Metafiction is a form of fiction that emphasizes its own narrative structure in a way that inherently reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self …
Metafiction: Definition and Examples - ProWritingAid
Nov 3, 2023 · Metafiction is a word used to refer to stories that are aware of themselves as stories. The characters may know they are in a fictional story, or the author may use …
Metafiction - Literary Theory and Criticism
Oct 7, 2022 · One derivative is metafiction, a term used to describe fictional works (typically but not exclusively prose fiction) that are self-consciously aware of their own fictionality and are …
Metafiction Guide: Understanding Metafiction in Literature
Jun 7, 2021 · The main purpose of metafiction is to highlight the dichotomy between the real world and the fictional world of a novel. Metafiction can be used to parody literary genre conventions, …
Metafiction: Definition and Examples - TCK Publishing
Discover what metafiction is, and see some of the best examples of metafiction in literature to understand how it works.
Metafiction | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature
Metafiction is a style of prose narrative in which attention is directed to the process of fictive composition. The most obvious example of a metafictive work is a novel about a novelist …
Metafiction or the Self-Conscious Narrative - Owlcation
Oct 24, 2011 · Metafiction is a narrative technique in which the author self-consciously calls attention to the work as fiction through various devices. This article includes an explanation of …
Metafiction - Wikipedia
Metafiction is a form of fiction that emphasizes its own narrative structure in a way that inherently reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self …
Metafiction: Definition and Examples - ProWritingAid
Nov 3, 2023 · Metafiction is a word used to refer to stories that are aware of themselves as stories. The characters may know they are in a fictional story, or the author may use …
Metafiction - Literary Theory and Criticism
Oct 7, 2022 · One derivative is metafiction, a term used to describe fictional works (typically but not exclusively prose fiction) that are self-consciously aware of their own fictionality and are …
Metafiction Guide: Understanding Metafiction in Literature
Jun 7, 2021 · The main purpose of metafiction is to highlight the dichotomy between the real world and the fictional world of a novel. Metafiction can be used to parody literary genre conventions, …
Metafiction: Definition and Examples - TCK Publishing
Discover what metafiction is, and see some of the best examples of metafiction in literature to understand how it works.
Metafiction | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature
Metafiction is a style of prose narrative in which attention is directed to the process of fictive composition. The most obvious example of a metafictive work is a novel about a novelist …
Metafiction or the Self-Conscious Narrative - Owlcation
Oct 24, 2011 · Metafiction is a narrative technique in which the author self-consciously calls attention to the work as fiction through various devices. This article includes an explanation of …
