( V ) Books

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 708 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.

Don't let the ease of reading fool you--Vonnegut's isn't a conventional, or simple, novel. He writes, "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters..." Slaughterhouse-Five (taken from the name of the building where the POWs were held) is not only Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is as important as any written since 1945. Like Catch- 22, it fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique poignancy--and humor.

Cat's Cradle

Kurt Vonnegut

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 375 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The master of Cat's Cradle 4 out of 5 stars.
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The cat's cradle is an extraordinary tale about the extent of human limitations when incompatibilities exist between the goals of science and humanity. Vonnegut created another masterpiece that describes the dangers of human science when mixed with their desires and lewdness.

John, the narrator, is writing a book about the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and in the process of his research discovers the life of Felix Hoenikker, the Nobel prize-winning physicist and one of the creators of the atomic bomb.

Similar to walking through a hilarious human maze, we are taken to San Lorenzo; a town were Hoenikker's two sons and daughter live and ignorantly use their father's last invention causing another world wide human disaster.
Vonnegut brilliantly shows human limitations and foolishness with his description of an imaginary religion called Bokononism, which originated and blossomed in San Lorenzo.

Vonnegut, who survived the cruelty of war and faced life's emptiness, is one of the few writers who can laugh at the human inability to reconcile the inherent conflict of science's power and capabilities with the needs and limitations of humanity.

Editorial Review:

Cat's Cradle, one of Vonnegut's most entertaining novels, is filled with scientists and G-men and even ordinary folks caught up in the game. These assorted characters chase each other around in search of the world's most important and dangerous substance, a new form of ice that freezes at room temperature. At one time, this novel could probably be found on the bookshelf of every college kid in America; it's still a fabulous read and a great place to start if you're young enough to have missed the first Vonnegut craze.

Breakfast of Champions

Kurt Vonnegut

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 253 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane." So reads the tombstone of downtrodden writer Kilgore Trout, but we have no doubt who's really talking: his alter ego Kurt Vonnegut. Health versus sickness, humanity versus inhumanity--both sets of ideas bounce through this challenging and funny book. As with the rest of Vonnegut's pure fantasy, it lacks the shimmering, fact-fueled rage that illuminates Slaughterhouse-Five. At the same time, that makes this book perhaps more enjoyable to read.

Breakfast of Champions is a slippery, lucid, bleakly humorous jaunt through (sick? inhumane?) America circa 1973, with Vonnegut acting as our Virgil-like companion. The book follows its main character, auto-dealing solid-citizen Dwayne Hoover, down into madness, a condition brought on by the work of the aforementioned Kilgore Trout. As Dwayne cracks, then crumbles, Breakfast of Champions coolly shows the effects his dementia has on the web of characters surrounding him. It's not much of a plot, but it's enough for Vonnegut to air unique opinions on America, sex, war, love, and all of his other pet topics--you know, the only ones that really count.

Mother Night

Kurt Vonnegut

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 99 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Kurt Vonnegut is a master of contemporary American literature. His black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America’s attention in The Sirens of Titan in 1959 and established him as a “true artist”* with Cat’s Cradle in 1963. He is, as Graham Greene has declared, “one of the best living American writers.”

Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.

*The New York Times

“A great artist.”—Cincinnati Enquirer

“Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer…a zany but moral mad scientist.”—Time

Welcome to the Monkey House

Kurt Vonnegut

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 78 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

embarassing at times 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I was surprised at how bad some of these are. Definitely not his best. A story like "Who Am I This Time?" is dull, contrived, and when you come down to it, kind of cornball.

Glen Williamson performs two of these stories as a play 5 out of 5 stars.
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Glen Williamson (Google him) has been performing two of these stories for years as a one-man play: "Who Am I This Time?" and "The Kid Nobody Could Handle."

"Cheers and congratulations again! Your performance Tuesday evening was truly extraordinary. I feel so fortunate to have been there. I called Kurt [Vonnegut] the next morning and raved about you - then wrote him a note and raved some more."
--Sally Forbes, Executive Director, The Beaux Arts Alliance, New York, NY

"It was so good to see your [Vonnegut] show, which I enjoyed enormously. The stories were delightful. There was a thread running through both stories - the oddball characters, and the need for imagination to give them their place in the community. I loved your characterizations, and was bubbling with mirth at the end of the "Romeo and Juliet" piece, as was the rest of the audience."
-- Andrew Floyd
Stroud, England

"I attended [The Kid Nobody Could Handle and Who Am I This Time?] with sixth, seventh, eighth graders from both Waldorf and public schools. The children were captivated. The plots and characters seemed to speak to them profoundly. Glen is a very skilled actor. He brought the characters to life beautifully, fleshing out the unique details and idiosyncrasies of each so that we all felt like we knew them well. He is a flexible, versatile actor able to portray an incredible range of characters. It was powerful and memorable.

You could hear a pin drop in that auditorium...and that's saying something for middle school kids."
-- Jill Wolcott
Lake Champlain Waldorf School
Shelburne, Vermont

Editorial Review:

This collection of Vonnegut's short masterpieces share his audacious sense of humor and extraordinary creative vision.

The Sirens of Titan

Kurt Vonnegut

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 160 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Trip to the Meaning of Life 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Abandon all native ways of thought processing. Kurt Vonnegut strips his readers' idea of reality apart and replaces it with a new one. Whether it is dark or beautiful it is the reader's choice depending on how it is perceived.
Vonnegut's, Sirens of Titan, exploits tremendous amounts of black comedy, satire, irony, and contradictory ideas. This may leave the reader overwhelmed but, he does this with grace and a complete unexpected turn of events. Even though that these ideas are blatant throughout the novel it is laced with underlying messages and philosophies.
Malachi Constant is told his destiny by Winston Niles Rumfoord and it foreshadows the novel (21). Rumfoord is a man who is "Chrono-synclastic infundibulated" (8-9). He is a man that can tell the future because he says, "...everything that ever has been always will be, and everything that ever will be always has been" (20). Constant is to marry Rumfoord's wife, Beatrice and he will travel to Mars, to Mercury, back to Earth, then to Titan (24). The theme of free will and destiny is expressed throughout the novel. He also demonstrates just how society is easily manipulated. Constant being a very dynamic character goes through a series of drastic changes from the luckiest man on Earth, to a man on Mars named Unk, then to the title of The Space Wanderer. Throughout these changes his ultimate destiny is unfolded.
Sirens of Titan has strong science fiction overtones. Vonnegut utilizes the forces of the universe to express the meaning of life. It contains space ships, aliens, and traveling to other planets which are able to sustain life.
The ideas in Sirens of Titan are very compelling and appealing to just about anyone who pursues the novel. Vonnegut has a way of creating unusual thought patterns which forces the reader to review the ideas. He tickles the idea of reality with philosophies such as infinite moments where time does not exist (301). The reader is taken on a trip to discover the purpose of humankind. Just because human beings see things the way they do from day to day, Vonnegut takes on the meaning of truly seeing things from another perspective. He has quite a way of explaining things and using descriptive imagery to really put the reader into another world. His creatures are uniquely described especially the harmoniums on the planet Mercury. These creatures are nourished by the song of Mercury, its vibrations (188). The novel is only 326 pages long, but it is able to express many of the ideas by getting to the point. Inasmuch it keeps the reader addicted to the events and always asking for more. His style is original and sometimes odd such as the run on sentences which may overwhelm the reader. It is a challenging text but it is also rewarding. His writing may seem far out there, but the reader should remember just how strange the universe really is, how much is unknown to humankind, and anything is possible.
The reader should definitely remember to always keep an open mind. Absorb the ideas and themes before making a final judgment on this novel. Prepare to be spiraling in a new wave of thought patterns, watching the universe put itself back together, and remember that the universe is stranger than it seems. Vonnegut takes his reader on a truly brilliant trip.

Editorial Review:

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.

The Bad Girl: A Novel

Mario Vargas Llosa

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

An enjoyable romp through the world 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This novel paints a panoramic history of four decades of South American and European life as the story traces Ricardo's love for "the bad girl." The characters are not particularly complex, and I never really believed the love story, but I really enjoyed the romp through the world.

Editorial Review:

A New York Times Notable Book of 2007

"Splendid, suspenseful, and irresistible . . . A contemporary love story that explores the mores of the urban 1960s--and 70s and 80s."--The New York Times Book Review

Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as "Lily" in Lima in 1950, when she flits into his life one summer and disappears again without explanation. He loves her still when she reappears as a revolutionary in 1960s Paris, then later as Mrs. Richardson, the wife of a wealthy Englishman, and again as the mistress of a sinister Japanese businessman in Tokyo. However poorly she treats him, he is doomed to worship her. Charting Ricardo's expatriate life through his romances with this shape-shifting woman, Vargas Llosa has created a beguiling, epic romance about the life-altering power of obsession.

Player Piano

Kurt Vonnegut

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 81 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Convential debut - not Vonnegut's best, but still worth reading 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Vonnegut's debut novel, published in 1952, is a little constrained. There are hints of Vonnegut's sardonic wit, wild imagination, and unconventional writing style, but only hints. Unlike virtually all of Vonnegut's other novels, Player Piano tells its story in a linier fashion. It starts at the beginning and ends at the end. There's nothing really wrong with that, but for fans of the author, accustomed to Vonnegut's eccentric voice, it feels a little too conventional.

Vonnegut is a humanitarian and the message of Player Piano is that people need to have a sense of purpose, and that if you take that away from them - their lives will be empty. Throughout the novel, a leader from another country tours the cities of the United States and having no similar word in his own language, confuses `civilians' for `slaves'. The message of course, is that the civilians, in this machine dominated world, are in-fact slaves.

Similarities between this novel and Brave New World are inevitable, as both novels explore the relationship between technology and happiness, and the role class structure plays in our society. In both Player Piano and Brave New World, the protagonist is unfulfilled by the trappings of the privileged class and longs for something `real'. Player Piano is arguably more hopeful than Brave New World (and certainly 1984) suggesting that people will band together to fight for their freedom, however futile, even if it means that they are doomed to repeat the same mistakes again.

Player Piano is admittedly dated. It is evident from this novel, and others of the era, that people were wary of the advent of computers and the proliferation of machines and technology. As for predicting the future, neither Brave New World nor Player Piano (nor 1984 for that matter) proved to be a reliable crystal ball. These novels are far more reflective of the times they were written and the author's commentary on those times, than of any actual or likely future.

Player Piano is far from Vonnegut's best. Cat's Cradle and Slaughter House Five are two of the best novels ever written and there are close to a half dozen other Vonnegut novels (he wrote 14) I would recommend before Player Piano, but it's still worth reading.

3 ½ stars (almost four).

Editorial Review:

Vonnegut’s first novel 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. Paul’s rebellion is vintage Vonnegut–wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.

Lincoln: A Novel

Gore Vidal

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 59 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Lincoln is a masterwork of historical fiction, in which Gore Vidal combines a comprehensive knowledge of Civil War America with 20th-century literary technique, probing the minds and motives of the men surrounding Abraham Lincoln, including personal secretary John Hay and scheming cabinet members William Seward and Salmon P. Chase, as well as his wife, Mary Todd. It is a book monumental in scope that never loses sight of the intimate and personal in its depiction of the power struggles that accompanied Lincoln's efforts to preserve the Union at all costs--efforts in which the eradication of slavery was far from the president's main objective. As usual, there's plenty of room for Vidal's wickedly humorous deflation of American icons, including a comic interlude in a Washington bordello in which Lincoln's former law partner informs Hay that Lincoln had contracted syphilis as a young man and had, just before marrying Mary Todd, suffered what can only be described as a nervous breakdown. (Protestors should note that Vidal is only passing along what that former partner had written in his own biography of Lincoln.) Don't be intimidated by the size of Lincoln; if you like historical fiction, you should read this book at the first opportunity. --Ron Hogan

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Kurt Vonnegut

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 80 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

It's hard to critique Vonnegut 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Vonnegut is one of those genius writers that you can't help but love. "Slaughterhouse 5" was my first venture into the realm of Vonnegut, but I have to say that I think I enjoyed this tale much more. Perhaps because the topic is closer to my heart, or perhaps I was able to identify more closely with the characters, I found this novel to be both thought provoking and utterly hysterical.

The short synopsis - The heir to a ridiculously large family fortune would rather spend his days helping the poor and destitute than attending the large social gatherings which his family feels he should prefer. Naturally this means that he is insane right? His family and one rather unscrupulous attorney seem to think so. They begin their plans on having him declared mentally incompetent, but he may have a trick or two up his sleeve.

I often find that I have to be in the right mood to read through a Vonnegut book, for some reason this one gripped me and I was done with it in less than 2 hours. The characters were hysterical, slightly caricaturistic and over the top, but entirely identifiable and comparable to someone we all know. This entire tale is a treatise on capitalism, money, redistribution of wealth, and the question of selflessness vs insanity. If you like Vonnegut, then this is already on your list. If you haven't encountered Vonnegut, give this book a try for an amusing look at true satire.

Editorial Review:

A rich man attempts a noble experiment with human nature. The result is an etched-in-acid portrayal of universal greed, hypocrisy, and follies of the flesh.