Friday Fiction: Kurt Vonnegut

--by Hanje Richards

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century. Among his works are Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Breakfast of Champions (1973), which blend satire, black comedy, and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.

Vonnegut's first short story, "Report on the Barnhouse Effect” appeared in the February 11, 1950 edition of Collier's (it has since been reprinted in his short story collection, Welcome to the Monkey House). His first novel was the dystopian novel Player Piano (1952), in which human workers have been largely replaced by machines. He continued to write short stories before his second novel, The Sirens of Titan, was published in 1959. Through the 1960s, the form of his work changed, from relatively orthodox to the acclaimed, semi-autobiographical Slaughterhouse-Five, given a more experimental structure by using time travel as a plot device.

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Kurt Vonnegut has been a literary hero of mine since 1973 when I found a copy of Breakfast of Champions on my employer’s bookshelf. I deveoured it and went on to read most of his earlier work. My politics and religious beliefs were very similar to those of Mr. Vonnegut, and I found his writing the perfect combination of smart, snarky and silly.

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Armageddon in Retrospect: And Other New and Unpublished Writings on War and Peace - A collection of twelve new and unpublished writings on war and peace. Imbued with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humor, the pieces range from a visceral nonfiction recollection of the destruction of Dresden during World War II — an essay that is as timely today as it was then —to a painfully funny short story about three Army privates and their fantasies of the perfect first meal upon returning home from war, to a darker, more poignant story about the impossibility of shielding our children from the temptations of violence.

Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction - The 23 stories in this collection were published in magazines like the Post during the 'fifties and are collected here for the first time. The topics covered include space travel, which describes the first manned orbit of Earth; finding the American Dream, about a new home full of the latest accessories; and an attempt to impress an old girlfriend. Poking fun at pretentious individuals is featured in both "A Present for Big Saint Nick," where Christmas has been turned into a forced admiration society, and "The Powder Blue Dragon," in which the purchase of a fancy sports car is believed to be the key to a fantasy life.

Bluebeard: A Novel - Vonnegut rounds up several familiar themes and character types for his 13th novel: genocide, the surreality of the modern world, fluid interplay of the past and present, and the less-than-heroic figure taking center stage to tell his story. Here he elevates to narrator a minor character from Breakfast of Champions, wounded World War II veteran and abstract painter Rabo Karabekian. At the urging of enchantress-as-bully Circe Berman, Karabekian writes his "hoax autobiography." Vonnegut uses the tale to satirize art movements and the art-as-investment mindset and to explore the shifting shape of reality.

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Breakfast of Champions, or, Goodbye Blue Monday - Aging writer Kilgore Trout finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. The result is murderously funny satire as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.

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.Deadeye Dick - Funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors — a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb — Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe... and who we say we are.

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Hocus Pocus - Set in the year 2001, but jumping over the last half of the 20th century, Hocus Pocus takes on an absurdist's perspective of human history. Protagonist Eugene Debs Hartke, West Point graduate, Vietnam vet, college professor, educator of the disabled and the illiterate, is awaiting trial for a crime initially unspecified. Until this time, Hartke has diligently and good-naturedly participated in whatever was expected of him, including involvement in the evacuation of American personnel from Saigon. At one point, however, he calculates the remarkable fact that he has killed exactly as many people as he has had sex with, a coincidence that causes him to doubt his atheism. The narrative is composed of short takes in which Hartke's thoughts skip between the inconsequential and the profound, giving Vonnegut occasion to interject interesting tidbits of information, scientific and historical and otherwise. The cumulative power of the novel is considerable, revealing Vonnegut at his fanciful and playful best.

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Jailbird: A Novel - 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.

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Man Without A Country - 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, this collection is intimate, tender, and brimming with the scope of Kurt Vonnegut’s passions.

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Player Piano - Vonnegut's first novel (originally published in 1952) spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a super computer and run completely by machines. His rebellion is a wildly funny, darkly satirical look at modern society.

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Sirens of Titan - The richest and most depraved man on Earth takes a wild space journey to distant worlds, learning about the purpose of human life along the way.

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Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death - Vonnegut's absurdist 1969 classic which is part sci-fi and partially based on Vonnegut's experience as a American prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany during the firebombing of 1945 that killed thousands of civilians. Billy travels in time and space, stopping here and there throughout his life, including his long visit to the planet Tralfamador, where he is mated with a porn star. Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.

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Timequake - 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.

Welcome to the Monkey House: A Collection of Short Works - A collection of Kurt Vonnuegut’s shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.