Product Description

The author of Slaughterhouse Five presents a collection of essays and reminiscences, offering a self-portrait that assesses his own life and the current state of the world. Reprint. NYT.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #137851 in Books
• Published on: 1992-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780425134061
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
These 21 essays, combining personal recollections and political reiterations, lack a unifying theme; they are likely to disappoint even Vonnegut fans.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This is a stimulating if rambling book of essays that discusses everything from the ugliness of the 1988 presidential campaign to male bonding in the stories of Ernest Hemingway. Maybe because Vonnegut has never hung around political speechwriters, he is pessimistic about the future of life on Earth and frankly nostalgic for the days when we were free of the certain knowledge that we would make this planet uninhabitable. Yet on the positive side, he sees in this country a decrease in racism (which he concedes may be only temporary). Some of the ideas here will be familiar to Vonnegut readers, such as the unnecessary bombing of Dresden or the now outrageous fact that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, but all are offered in the hope of improving our chances at survival and often with disarming humor. Moralize, he tells young writers, but be sure to sound reader-friendly, like Cervantes rather than Cotton Mather. Recommended for most collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/91.
- Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Return of the Old Rambler, doing a replay on his 1981 autobiographical collage Palm Sunday, this time pasting together a memoir from speeches, forewords, articles, and so on written since 1981. Norman Mailer invented this format with Advertisements for Myself (1959) and no one, including Mailer, has done it as well since. Vonnegut adds plenty of humor to his new model but not much sinew. There's something truly self-defeating about parenthetical asides that leave each page of copy slack with interruptions. He includes vague forewords to Franklin Library editions of his more recent novels; writes of his brushes with Salman Rushdie (who, despite a friendship with Vonnegut, shot down one of his novels, with Vonnegut seriously thinking of adding another team to the hit list on Rushdie); comments on the firebombing of Dresden; recalls dead friends who appeared in Slaughterhouse-Five and dead fellow novelists Nelson Algren, Donald Barthelme, Hemingway, James Jones, Irwin Shaw, and others; and discusses his own incompetence as a speech-writer, his dislike of or inability to read his own works, and a suicide attempt that was foiled by a stomach pump. Vonnegut pictures himself as a depressive, though his less-than-faint hope for humanity is not as corroded as Mark Twain's during his later years. Vonnegut's most well-developed theme is in the title, as he weighs fates worse than death, including crucifixion (enslavement by the Reverend Jim Jones of the Guyana Kool-Aid horror doesn't measure up). His most memorable moments are about his first wife Jane and her death from cancer; his architect father, who never got a chance to show his stuff; and his deep feelings for fellow Dresden POW Bernard V. O'Hare. Vonnegut writes best about people, while his think pieces are sliced up with asides or dry-gulched by his alter ego. Patchy. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Brutally honest commentary
Here in this book we get Vonnegut's cynical but honest commentary on everything from talk show hosts to his own experiences with suicidal depression. Some of the chapter's are extremely pessimistic in their outlook, but hit home so well that they can leave you feeling quite down about the human race and it's apparent race headlong towards suicide. However, Kurt's dark sense of humor is here as always and even more prevalent than usual. You'll be laughing out loud at things that are really anything but funny. But that is the genius of Vonnegut, he can have you laughing and wryly amused while reading, but after done, his greater impressions stick in your head and leave you provoking thought. He is truly a gifted writer. Although not as fast-paced as his fiction, this book is a fine and interesting read. Most notable to many readers, surely, will be his perceptions and thoughts on his experiences in World War II and the effect it has since had on him. His religious observations are interestings as well, and funny, to wit: "In order not to appear a spiritual quadripelgic to those trying to get a hold on me, I sometimes say that I am a Unitarian Universalits (I breathe.)" This is certainly a must-read for any Vonnegut fan, but you will want to have devoured a significant amount of his fiction and know a little bit about the man before tackling it.

"De Mess We's In" (Amos and Andy)
To borrow a verb from Hawthorne, I was "purposed" here. Having eaten the garbage of the day's media reports, I picked up this book for the "cleansing" redux. Some bittersweet sorbet it was- here are some of the things that made me laugh.
Charleton Heston played Jesus with shaved armpits.
To describe our nation, he quotes Amos an' Andy, "De mess we's in"
Re: Thomas Jefferson's owning slaves- "It was as though he had an infected growth on the tip of his nose the size of a walnut and everyone thought that was OK."
When KV's father was dying he apologized for calling him 'Bozo.' Then about five minutes later he called him Bozo again.

Here are things that made my heart stop:
The average age of an American to die in Vietnam was 20. (My own son had just joined- against my wishes- the military, at 20.)
If Western Civilization were a person, we would be directing him to War Preparers Anonymous.

...

That's the kind of stuff you'll read in essays that are distressing and comforting and hilarious- if you know Vonnegut, you know what I'm saying. Personally, I like a bit more fiction, but as I said, I was purposed here, and I think you may be too.

Peek Into Vonnegut's Head
These essays give us a rare look in to the mind of a genius. He expounds on subjects ranging from mental illness, family relationships, death and war. Sounds depressing, but an optimism shows through. Vonnegut masterfully points out the adsurdity around us and shines the light of sanity on it. The essays are as relevant and mind opening today as they were when he wrote them over a decade ago. Although this is not the Veonnegut work I would recommend to someone unfamiliar with his work, anyone will benefit from reading it.