Slaughterhouse-Five

A Man Without a Country

Conversations With Kurt Vonnegut

The Vonnegut Effect

Kurt Vonnegut's Crusade Or, How a Postmodern Harlequin Preached a New Kind of Humanism

Kurt Vonnegut: A Critical Companion

At Millennium's End: New Essays on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut

The Vonnegut Encyclopedia: An Authorized Compendium

Slaughterhouse-five (Bloom's Guides)

Welcome to the Monkey House

Timequake

Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction

Fates Worse Than Death

Hocus Pocus

Bartlett's Words to Live By: Advice and Inspiration for Everyday Life

Vonnegut Omnibus

World's Best Science Fiction: 1969

The Flying Sorcerers

America's Gulag

From Wikipedia
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American novelist known for works blending satire, black comedy, and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat's Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973). Vonnegut was a humanist; he served as Honorary President of the American Humanist Association, having replaced Isaac Asimov in what Vonnegut called "that totally functionless capacity". He was deeply influenced by early socialist labor leaders, especially Indiana natives Powers Hapgood and Eugene V. Debs, and he frequently quotes them in his work. He named characters after both Debs (Eugene Debs Hartke in Hocus Pocus) and Russian Communist leader Leon Trotsky (Leon Trotsky Trout in Galapagos). He was a lifetime member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and was featured in a print advertisement for them.
(more)

From the back cover of the book Kurt Vonnegut's Crusade Or, How a Postmodern Harlequin Preached a New Kind of Humanism from Todd F. Davis
Kurt Vonnegut’s desire to save the planet from environmental and military destruction, to enact change by telling stories that both critique and embrace humanity, sets him apart from many of the postmodern authors who rose to prominence during the 1960s and 1970s. This new look at Vonnegut’s oeuvre examines his insistence that writing is an "act of good citizenship or an attempt, at any rate, to be a good citizen." By exploring the moral and philosophical underpinnings of Vonnegut’s work, Todd F. Davis demonstrates that, over the course of his long career, Vonnegut has created a new kind of humanism that not only bridges the modern and postmodern, but also offers hope for the power and possibilities of story. Davis highlights the ways Vonnegut deconstructs and demystifies the "grand narratives" of American culture while offering provisional narratives—petites histoires—that may serve as tools for daily living. (more)

RIP Kurt Vonnegut: 1922 - 2007
My first Vonnegut was Breakfast of Champions. I'd never read anything like it. It was a novel that was so easy, everything just happening, one thing after another. The book almost read itself. That was his gift, I think: to tell you things that were hard to hear, without you even noticing it. Like a nurse who can slide a needle into your vein without making you wince.

Author Kurt Vonnegut dies aged 84
In Slaughterhouse-Five, a book some people see as science fiction, others as a war novel, but many regard as a masterpiece, when anyone dies, which happens often, the narrator utters three words: "So it goes".
The author of Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut, died today at the age of 84.
So it goes.
Slaughterhouse-Five revolved around a real event in Kurt Vonnegut's own life - the Allies' World War II fire-bombing of the German city of Dresden, where he was being held as a prisoner of war.
The New York Times called him "an indescribable writer whose books are like nothing else on earth".

Author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Dies

U.S. Writer Kurt Vonnegut Dead
at 84
A self-described religious skeptic and freethinking humanist, Vonnegut used protagonists such as Billy Pilgrim and Eliot Rosewater as transparent vehicles for his points of view. He also filled his novels with satirical commentary and even drawings that were only loosely connected to the plot. In "Slaughterhouse-Five," he drew a headstone with the epitaph: "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."
But much in his life was traumatic, and left him in pain. Despite his commercial success, Vonnegut battled depression throughout his life, and in 1984, he attempted suicide with pills and alcohol, joking later about how he botched the job. "I think he was a man who combined a wicked sense of humor and sort of steady moral compass, who was always sort of looking at the big picture of the things that were most important," said Joel Bleifuss, editor of In These Times, a liberal magazine based in Chicago that featured Vonnegut articles.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on IMDb

Biographical Details & Highlights

Timeline

Critical Bibliography

FAQ on Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Player Piano

Cat's Cradle

Welcome to the Monkey House

Slaughterhouse Five

Wampters, Foma & Granfaloons

Fates Worse than Death

Hooray For Our Team - Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut Judges Modern Society on NPR

Your Guess Is as Good as Mine

American Christmas Card 2004

The End is Near

I Love You, Madame Librarian

False Advertising

Biography on NNDB

Kurt Vonnegut on Philosophedia
Vonnegut, a fourth generation German-American, has said, “For at least four generations my family has been proudly skeptical of organized religion.” His father designed a Unitarian chapel, and Vonnegut is a nominal Unitarian.
Once described by Graham Greene as “one of the best living American writers,” Vonnegut writes wry, whimsical, and satirical works about organized religion and the horrors of contemporary life. His Slaughterhouse Five (1969) appealed to collegiates, although some have complained that he shows the lack of humanity which his works advocate. Pollution of the environment, dehumanization, mass death: All rate his disapproval as he evaluates this latter half of the century, despairing of the human condition. Martin Seymour-Smith, however, criticizes his work, saying its black pessimism, guiltily convoluted irony, and black humor tend to rob his work of lucidity. Others have objected to such of Vonnegut’s statements as, “Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.”

Vonnegut on Technology & Cheesy Little Religions
Excerpt from 1973's Robert Scholes Interview

Meeting My Maker: A Visit with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., by Kilgore Trout

Christian Century Interview

Playboy Interview

Vonnegut and Clancy on Technology

Mississippi Mud: God Help You, Mr. Rosewater

Breakfast with Kurt Vonnegut

Harvard Crimson Interview

God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut: The Writer on His Eightieth Birthday

Audio Interview with
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Comedy Central Interview

Paris Review Interview

The Infinite Mind interview with Kurt Vonnegut live from Second Life

Charlie Rose - Tom Wolfe / Kurt Vonnegut / Michael Johnson

Kurt Vonnegut Part 1

Kurt Vonnegut Part 2

Kurt Vonnegut Part 3

Kurt Vonnegut Part 4

Kurt Vonnegut Part 5

Kurt Vonnegut Part 6

Kurt Vonnegut Part 7

Kurt Vonnegut Part 8