Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

by Peter J. Reed

Kurt Vonnegut Jr a major writer for the 70s 00this book is the first volume in a series of critical appreciations called writers for the 70s. by Peter J. Reed- Literary criticism- the world of Kurt Vonnegut-

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Essays

214 pages, Hardcover

First published September 12, 1972

Reviews

[Yard Gnome · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first scholarly work on Kurt Vonnegut, my mother found a copy in my dad's things after he passed away, first printing in Canada in 1972.

It's a fascinating read, it's hard to think of a world where Kurt hadn't quite written Breakfast of Champions yet, and Slaughterhouse-Five read like the final volume in a long epic.

Peter Reed's study on Kurt is fascinating, he passed away recently, godspeed scholar.

[Hank Hoeft · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. started writing novels--as opposed to short stories--he wrote six between 1952 and 1969 . The first five all circled around--and were affected by--the single most profound experience of Vonnegut's life: the survival of the fire-bombing of Dresden in World War II. The German city was bombed first by the British Royal Air Force at night, and then by the U.S. Army Air Force the following day. The heat from the incendiary bombs was so great it created a firestorm--a conflagration that became self-sustaining when the heat created a gale-force updraft that sucked fresh air and fuel into the city-wide blaze. Vonnegut was an American prisoner of war being held captive in Dresden, and it is almost miraculous that he survived--by taking refuge in a freezer room in a slaughter house at the address known as Slaughterhouse-Five. Of course, Slaughterhouse-Five was the title, and Dresden's fate was the subject of Vonnegut's fifth novel, the one that finally addressed the trauma he experienced in the spring of 1945 but took almost twenty-five years to deal with in his writing.

Peter J. Reed's analysis of Vonnegut's novels, first published in 1972 (three years after the publication of Slaughterhouse-Five, only examines these first half-dozen novels. It is altogether fitting that he should limit his analysis to this first sextet, for two reasons. First, Vonnegut himself announced after the publication of Slaughterhouse-Five that he was retiring as a novelist (in this he was exceedingly premature--he would go on to publish eight more), so in 1972, one year before Vonnegut published novel #7, it looked like the first six would be Vonnegut's entire output of novels. Second, while these six novels could in no way be considered a "series," they are nonetheless tied together by shared characters and themes, which are finally brought to a head in the book that finally deals with the trauma of Dresden. So the six books could be considered of a piece, which is what Peter Reed does.

I consider myself something of a Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. fan, but I have only read four of his first six novels (The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Cat's Cradle--the first Vonnegut novel I ever read, when I saw it on my ninth grade English teacher's bookshelf in his classroom and he told me it was "a funny book about the end of the world"--and Slaughterhouse-Five). But even though I read 75 percent of Vonnegut's output from the 1950's and '60's, I have to admit I missed the links that loosely tie all his first cycle of novels together. (I can only plead youthful inexperience--I read them in my high school and early college years.) So I am indebted to Peter Reed for pointing out all the common threads that run through Vonnegut's first novels.