Kurt Vonnegut and the Centrifugal Force of Fate

Kurt Vonnegut and the Centrifugal Force of Fate PDF Author: Gary McMahon
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Get Book Here

Book Description
He was a Merlin among Men of Letters. Open any Kurt Vonnegut book and the words come to life in rapport with the reader like broomsticks enthralled by a book of spells. How did he do it? Through early drafts of projects like Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse 5 and Harrison Bergeron, sensationally different from the published stories, Gary McMahon peers over the shoulder of a man without a country and an American institution. We get to see the original manuscripts and spend time with the complete works, from Player Piano to Armageddon in Retrospect, including a rare comparison of Vonnegut's journalism with peers like Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe.

Kurt Vonnegut and the Centrifugal Force of Fate

Kurt Vonnegut and the Centrifugal Force of Fate PDF Author: Gary McMahon
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Get Book Here

Book Description
He was a Merlin among Men of Letters. Open any Kurt Vonnegut book and the words come to life in rapport with the reader like broomsticks enthralled by a book of spells. How did he do it? Through early drafts of projects like Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse 5 and Harrison Bergeron, sensationally different from the published stories, Gary McMahon peers over the shoulder of a man without a country and an American institution. We get to see the original manuscripts and spend time with the complete works, from Player Piano to Armageddon in Retrospect, including a rare comparison of Vonnegut's journalism with peers like Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe.

Behaving Decently

Behaving Decently PDF Author: Wayne Laufert
Publisher: Humanist Press
ISBN: 0931779871
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
Kurt Vonnegut and humanism go hand in hand. In Behaving Decently: Kurt Vonnegut’s Humanism, Wayne Laufert examines how Vonnegut revealed his moral philosophy through the themes and characters in his work and through his public comments. Topic by topic, Vonnegut’s written and spoken views are explored, from his first novel, Player Piano (1952), through his antiwar masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), to the collections of his fiction and nonfiction that appear up till today, long after his death in 2007. His speeches, essays, interviews, and journalism, which support and expand upon the sentiments in his novels, receive proper consideration in this conversational overview of Vonnegut’s life and career. Religion, war, politics, science, art—these subjects and more are seen through Vonnegut’s perspective and are placed within a larger humanistic outlook. His most famous creation, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, gets his own chapter too. Vonnegut called himself a “Christ-worshiping agnostic,” a term that Behaving Decently analyzes in the context of his upbringing as a freethinker, his wartime experience, his time in the corporate world, and other factors that formed his values. Those values are perhaps best expressed by his character Eliot Rosewater, the damaged, super-rich philanthropist: “God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” Vonnegut’s real and imagined selves were incorporated into Kurt Vonnegut the author, the public speaker, the interview subject, and even the character that appears in some of his books. After all, he wrote, “I myself am a work of fiction.” That funny, wise, sometimes depressed persona was humanistic. Behaving Decently shows the reader how Kurt Vonnegut reminded us to take small steps along hopeful paths to kindness and community and dignity and art—and farting around.

Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context [4 volumes]

Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context [4 volumes] PDF Author: Linda De Roche
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440853592
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1563

Get Book Here

Book Description
This four-volume reference work surveys American literature from the early 20th century to the present day, featuring a diverse range of American works and authors and an expansive selection of primary source materials. Bringing useful and engaging material into the classroom, this four-volume set covers more than a century of American literary history—from 1900 to the present. Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context profiles authors and their works and provides overviews of literary movements and genres through which readers will understand the historical, cultural, and political contexts that have shaped American writing. Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context provides wide coverage of authors, works, genres, and movements that are emblematic of the diversity of modern America. Not only are major literary movements represented, such as the Beats, but this work also highlights the emergence and development of modern Native American literature, African American literature, and other representative groups that showcase the diversity of American letters. A rich selection of primary documents and background material provides indispensable information for student research.

Lucky Mud & Other Foma

Lucky Mud & Other Foma PDF Author: Christina Jarvis
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1644212269
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Pop Goes the Decade

Pop Goes the Decade PDF Author: Martin Kich
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440862850
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Get Book Here

Book Description
Analyzing complex social and political issues through their manifestations in popular culture, this book provides readers a strong foundational knowledge of the 1960s as a decade. 1969 went out in a way that could never have been imagined in 1960. While the president at the end of the decade had been vice president at the start, the intervening years permanently changed American culture. Pop Goes the Decade: The Sixties explores the cultural and social framework of the 1960s, addressing film, television, sports, technology, media/advertising, fashion, art, and more. Entries are presented in encyclopedic fashion, organized into such categories as controversies in pop culture, game changers, technology, and the decade's legacy. A timeline highlights significant cultural moments, while an introduction and a conclusion place those moments within the contexts of preceding and subsequent decades. Attention to the decade's most prominent influencers allows readers to understand the movements with which these figures are associated, and discussion of controversies and social change enables readers to gain a stronger understanding of evolving American social values.

Fates Worse Than Death

Fates Worse Than Death PDF Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780099998907
Category : Novelists, American
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Get Book Here

Book Description
FATES WORSE THAN DEATH is Kurt Vonnegut's second volume of autobiographical writings, subtitled "A College of the 1980's", covering such diverse subjects as death in the family, suicidal depression, the future of the planet, Ronald Reagan, Salman Rushdie and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Fates Worse Than Death

Fates Worse Than Death PDF Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780099583622
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
FATES WORSE THAN DEATH is Kurt Vonnegut's second volume of autobio-graphical writings, subtitled "A College of the 1980's", covering such diverse subjects as death in the family, suicidal depression, the future of the planet, Ronal Reagan, Salman Rushdie and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Timequake

Timequake PDF Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780425164341
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book from the acclaimed author of Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, and Cat's Cradle. At 2:27pm on February 13th of the year 2001, the Universe suffered a crisis in self-confidence. Should it go on expanding indefinitely? What was the point? There's been a timequake. And everyone—even you—must live the decade between February 17, 1991 and February 17, 2001 over again. The trick is that we all have to do exactly the same things as we did the first time—minute by minute, hour by hour, year by year, betting on the wrong horse again, marrying the wrong person again. Why? You'll have to ask the old science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout. This was all his idea.

The Sirens of Titan

The Sirens of Titan PDF Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Publisher: Dial Press
ISBN: 0307423379
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Get Book Here

Book Description
“[Kurt Vonnegut’s] best book . . . He dares not only ask the ultimate question about the meaning of life, but to answer it.”—Esquire Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read The Sirens of Titan is an outrageous romp through space, time, and morality. The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course there’ s a catch to the invitation–and a prophetic vision about the purpose of human life that only Vonnegut has the courage to tell. “Reading Vonnegut is addictive!”—Commonweal

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr PDF Author: Charles W. Bridges
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 158

Get Book Here

Book Description