JAILBIRD by Kurt Vonnegut

Originally published in 1979.

Synopsis

Jailbird is the fictional story of William F. Starbuck, the least important member of the Watergate conspiracy to go to prison. 

The story begins with the day that Starbuck is released from a makeshift federal prison (and very cushy, for a prison) on a Georgia military base. He has no idea what he is going to do and he doesn't have a lot of money, but he figures that he will be okay - after all, he has a degree from Harvard and he learned how to be a bartender in a correspondence class while he was in prison.

What follows is a wild tale of good and bad coincidences that take Starbuck to a broken-down residential motel in New York City. Like the hotel, Starbuck is a broken man in many ways - he is an ex-con, his wife of many years has passed away, he never speaks to his son, and he feels shame for accidentally ruining the career of one of his friends due to an offhand comment he made during a anti-Communist Congressional hearing lead by then-Congressman Richard Nixon.

But, in just a few hours everything changes...

My Review

In many ways Jailbird is considered to be a comeback novel for Vonnegut (1922-2007). After the overwhelming success of Slaughter-House 5, Vonnegut struggled to "do it again."

He struggled to write Breakfast of Champions. His next book, Slapstick, was too personal and too weird to be a bestseller. Jailbird reminds me more of Mother Night and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater than the three science fiction books that he published from 1969 to 1976.

World War II looms large in each of those books - the main characters are struggling to deal with what they saw and did (also a massive theme in Slaughter-House 5)

William F. Starbuck worked as a part of the prosecution team during the Nuremberg Trials. If it hadn't been for the war, he wouldn't have met his wife. The war made him, and everything about it was accidental - he met his wife on by sheer luck. He was assigned to the the trials because he happened to be around and ht happened to be around because of the education he was given by an old millionaire who was a recluse because someone unknown strikebreaker mistakenly pulled the trigger during a tense moment in a strike when the millionaire was a child.

One unrelated thing leads to another and leads to another like a thread of random events that led us to where we are now. Vonnegut spent a lot of time thinking about this idea. In his science fiction books he often explores it through time travel. This book relies heavily on flashbacks.

Vonnegut's report card for his own books.

Jailbird often looks at the plight of the regular working stiff - restaurant managers, chauffeurs, receptionists, the least important guy in the Nixon Administration, down and out authors, affable guards in a minimum security prison, and so on. There is a lengthy introduction about a real-life event in Vonnegut's life that blends into a fictional story about a strike at an Ohio factory that ended in a bloody massacre.

Vonnegut famously graded his own books in the essay collection Palm Sunday. He gave Jailbird an A. I disagree a bit. I rate it 4 stars out of 5, which I would consider to be a B.

Jailbird can be found on Amazon.com here: Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut.

2 B R 0 2 B (audiobook) by Kurt Vonnegut

Originally published in 1962 in the magazine If: Worlds of Science Fiction.

Published in 2017 by Author's Republic.

Read by Phil Chenevert

Duration: 19 minutes.

Unabridged.

2 B R 0 2 B is set in a future world where the population is kept at a strict limit so that the living can live in a clean and safe environment. When a new person is born into the world, someone must volunteer to leave because aging has pretty much been cured. The Federal Bureau of Termination keeps track of all of the births and deaths to be sure that the math works out. The phone number for the Federal Bureau of Termination is 2 B R 0 2 B - pronounced "two be or naught to be."

The story is about a father whose wife is about to give birth to triplets. One of the grandparents of the triplets has agreed to die. Unless something changes, the future parents will have to pick out two babies to kill...

This is an intentionally provocative short story that had a quick and brutal ending that surprised me. 

I rate this short story 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: 2 B R 0 2 B by Kurt Vonnegut.

SLAPSTICK or LONESOME NO MORE! by Kurt Vonnegut

Originally published in 1976.

Synopsis

In the essay that serves as the prologue to Slapstick, Kurt Vonnegut writes about family, connection, and acceptance. He spends a lot of time talking about his older brother - more than he usually does in his essays. He also talks about his sister - a topic of frequent discussion in his essays. She and her husband both died with days of one another, one of an accident and the other of cancer. Kurt Vonnegut and his wife adopted three of their four children. 

In his essays Vonnegut makes frequent mention of the lack of family connection in our modern world and he thinks we are far the worse off for it. This novel is all about family connection, featuring two physically deformed twins who who are psychically connected.

The twins were kept apart from society in an old mansion on a large estate in order to protect them from society and to protect the reputations of their elite, ultra-rich parents. After all, the "right sort of people" don't have freaks for children.

It was assumed that the children would have mental disabilities. It turns out that they were geniuses, especially when they were physically close to one another...

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

My Review

This is a truly bizarre novel, even by the standards of Kurt Vonnegut. I liked the book in many ways, but I really can't say that it was a great or even a particularly good novel. There are times when it just gets so weird that the story gets buried in its own absurdities.

In one of his essays, Vonnegut graded all of his books up to that point. He gave Slapstick a grade of 'D.' I will do better than that - I give it 3 stars out of 5 (a solid 'C') because it has a lot of heart. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut. 

BREAKFAST of CHAMPIONS or GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Originally published in 1973.

Breakfast of Champions, to me, is the second most well-known Vonnegut novel after Slaughterhouse-Five. 

The plot of this story is deceptively simple and the writing style is not complicated - but this story has a lot going on.

There are three main characters. One is Dwayne Hoover, a very successful owner of a Pontiac car dealership from Midland, Ohio and numerous other small businesses. He is by far the most successful man in town. He helps bankroll a fine arts festival that the town helps will make them known as a cultural center. He is also going crazy.

The fine arts festival has invited Kilgore Trout, a recurring character from other Vonnegut novels, to be the star of the arts festival. Trout is a prolific, but unsuccessful author. He is published, but only by publishers of porn novels. They use his books as a way to make their books seem more legit, kind of like Playboy used "the articles" to make the magazine seem classier. Trout iis so unsuccessful as an author that he literally has to hitchhike from New York City to Midland. 

The third character is the narrator. The narrator is the author of the book and, I presume, the narrator is Vonnegut himself. The narrator has filled the book with his line drawings. Sometimes, the narrator uses the pictures to move the plot along, sometimes he uses it to avoid describing something, and sometimes he just throws in an illustration for the heck of it. 

The book is constantly moving to the point where all three characters meet in a hotel bar...

Vonnegut famously graded his own books in report card style. He gave Breakfast of Champions a C. 

I disagree, even though I have had a hard time coming up with a rating for this novel. This novel is too unique to be a middle of the road "C". It is often juvenile (Vonnegut spends a lot of time talking about penises, he has a drawing of his anus) but it is very Meta in the way the author is a character in his own story. Plus, the quirky illustrations add a certain charm.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Breakfast of Champions. 

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL by Kurt Vonnegut and Ryan North.

Adapted by Ryan North.
Illustrated by Albert Monteys.

Graphic novel published in 2020 by Archaia. 
Original novel published in 1969.

This is my third review of Slaughterhouse-Five. I've reviewed the audiobook, the written novel, and now the graphic novel. 

All are different, of course. I've given 5 out of 5 stars to every version, but the graphic novel is the weakest of the three. It's a good graphic novel, but it seemed a little thin when compared to the novel. It's good for its medium.

I'm not going to review the plot of one of the most famous anti-war books of the last century - it's too well-known for that. Vonnegut can be weird, but he's always approachable. He writes in an friendly, easy to follow style, no matter if it is the audiobook, the written novel, or this graphic novel.

But, if the very idea of reading this book intimidates you, read the graphic novel. It hits the main plot points and it would certainly support you if you went ahead and read the novel at some points afterwards.

I very much enjoyed the style of the art in this graphic novel. I think Albert Monteys did an exceptionally good job of making the art clear, clean, and easy to follow. Let's face it, the story goes all over the place - the art did not need to add to the confusion. I really liked the way he drew the Tralfamadorians.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Slaughterhouse-Five: The Graphic Novel.

Note: This book has been challenged multiple times over the last 50 years for sexual content, foul language and teaching principles contrary to the Bible. Amazingly, it has stayed on "banned books" lists for more than 50 years. The graphic novel is no different. It made a banned book list in Florida and in Missouri and other places as well (Texas, Utah, and Iowa - to name a few.)

Note: This book was put on book ban lists in Tennessee in multiple counties in 2025. The article has a searchable database because the list has more than 1,100 unique titles

To its credit, the Vonnegut Museum in Indianapolis has a history of sending free copies of Slaughterhouse-Five to students at schools where the book has been banned.

KURT VONNEGUT: THE LAST INTERVIEW and OTHER CONVERSATIONS (Last Interview Series) edited by Tom McCartan

 

Published in 2011 by Melville House.

The Last Interview Series is a collection of 42 books that collect interviews with various artists, celebrities, and political figures. The book includes the last interview given by the featured person.

In the case of Vonnegut, his last interview is very short because he was ill at the time so he cut it short.

There are six interviews here. The best is a co-interview with fellow author Joseph Heller (best known for Catch-22) from Playboy (turns out their interviews were a good reason to buy the magazine!) Heller helps Vonnegut focus a bit - he tends to go off on riffs and some interviewers don't know what to do with that (the first one seemed annoyed by this tendency.)

If you like Vonnegut's essays, you will enjoy these interviews. I love his collections of essays so I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Kurt Vonnegut: The Last Interview and Other Conversations.

SUN MOON STAR by Kurt Vonnegut and Ivan Chermayeff

 

Highly Recommended

Originally published in 1980.

A mutual friend in publishing approached artist/graphic designer Ivan Chermayeff and author Kurt Vonnegut with a proposal. He wanted them to work together on a book. His proposal was that Chermayeff work up some illustrations and present them to Vonnegut and then Vonnegut would write a book based on those illustrations.

Vonnegut, even then, was an internationally celebrated author. Chermayeff created many of the images Americans see every day - the corporate logos for such companies as Chase Bank, National Geographic, Scholastic Books, Univision, NBC, PBS, and more.

Chermayeff presented Vonnegut with a series of simple, childlike paintings of the moon, star, and the sun. They came with no explanation. There is also a diagram of an eyeball. I do not know if that was part of Chermayeff's art or if Vonnegut added it, but I would imagine that Vonnegut added it.

Vonnegut took the drawings and made Sun Moon Star, a beautiful children's story about Jesus on the day of his birth. 

When I say that this is a children's story, I really mean that this is a book for adults in the guise of a children's story. There is nothing that is inappropriate for children and a child would be able to follow along with most of it. 

pages 62 and 63 of Sun Moon Star

Adults, however, will appreciate the care that well-know atheist Vonnegut brings to the concept that the creator of the universe has brought himself into his creation as a baby, with all of the limited perspective that a baby has. The warmth of a sun is compared to the warmth of a mother's embrace - and the love of a mother's embrace is superior. The eyes that witnessed creation itself are now the eyes of a newborn that don't quite know how to work together yet.

I found this to be a thoughtful and surprisingly sweet book. It doesn't feel like a typical Vonnegut book, but it may just be one of my favorites. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Sun Moon Star by Kurt Vonnegut and Ivan Chermayeff. 

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut

The first edition cover

Published with the alternate title "The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death."
Originally published in 1969.

Listed in Time Magazine's 100 Best Novels Since 1923.

Slaughterhouse-Five is the most famous, most celebrated, and most controversial novel of Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007.) 

My synopsis:

The book serves as a memoir to Vonnegut's horrific experiences as a prisoner of war in World War II and as a sci-fi exploration of the concept of time travel. 

Vonnegut's very green unit was rotated to the front in December of 1944 in order to give experienced combat troops a break. The weather was bad, the terrain was bad, and the Germans had been retreating regularly. It was presumed that the Germans would be content to settle in to winter quarters, rest, refit, and pick up the fighting in 1945. 

Instead, the Germans launched a surprise offensive and what followed was the Battle of the Bulge. Lots of Americans were captured and taken back to Germany to be prisoners of war, including Kurt Vonnegut. Eventually, Vonnegut was taken to Dresden to work. The main character of this novel, Billy Pilgrim, was also captured and eventually taken to Dresden.

At Dresden, in February of 1945, Billy Pilgrim and Vonnegut were firebombed along with the rest of the city. The prisoners of war survived because they were being housed in partially underground slaughterhouse for hogs (the hogs had long ago been consumed.) They were in slaughterhouse number 5. 

Where Pilgrim and Vonnegut's stories separate is the sci-fi portion. At the beginning of the book we are told that "Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." 

Pilgrim is sliding back in forth in time along his own timeline. He can do nothing to change events, he just keeps sliding back and forth. 

My review:

Vonnegut graded his own books in his book
Palm Sunday. I agree with his assessment of 
Slaughterhouse-Five.

This is the second time I've read this book. This time around I really paid attention to the non-science fiction parts of the book and looked for the connections to Vonnegut's own life. Chapter One practically screams for the reader to do so, but I did not the first time around.

This time, I could really see that Vonnegut was working through his wartime experiences through the story of Billy Pilgrim and his own story as the narrator. 

I was struck by the passage describing the condition of the American prisoners of war as their overloaded train car waited on the tracks for a turn on the tracks:

"Even though Billy's train wasn't moving, its boxcars were kept locked tight. Nobody was to get off until its final destination. To the guards who walked up and down outside, each car became a single organism which ate and drank and excreted through its ventilators. It talked or sometimes yelled through its ventilators, too. In went water and loaves of black-bread and sausage and cheese, and out came shit and piss and language.

Human beings in there were excreting into steel helmets which were passed to the people at the ventilators, who dumped them. Billy was a dumper. The human beings also passed canteens, which guards would fill with water. When food came in, the human beings were quiet and trusting and beautiful. They shared."

Vonnegut in 1965.

What struck me was that there in the middle of the most destructive war in human history, enemies were taking care of their enemies like decent people. Later in his career Vonnegut would make the same point with this comment in his book A Man Without a Country:  "A saint is a person who behaves decently in a shocking indecent country."

Vonnegut's trademark humor and clever new ways of saying the same old things abound in this book. Here is his commentary on a female character: "She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies. Men looked at her and wanted to fill her up with babies right away."

And there it is in a nutshell. This is Vonnegut's masterpiece. It is profoundly sad. It is funny. It is a memoir. It is sci-fi. And so it goes.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. 

Note: This book has been challenged multiple times over the last 50 years for sexual content, foul language and teaching principles contrary to the Bible. Amazingly, it has stayed on "banned books" lists for more than 50 years. At one point, it was referred to a prosecutor to see if the school was distributing pornography to students. The prosecutor said that it was "not in violation of criminal laws." See this site for more information.

Note: This book was put on book ban lists in Tennessee in multiple counties in 2025. The article has a searchable database because the list has more than 1,100 unique titles

To its credit, the Vonnegut Museum in Indianapolis has a history of sending free copies of Slaughterhouse-Five to students at schools where the book has been banned.

GOD BLESS YOU, MR. ROSEWATER by Kurt Vonnegut

 

Originally published in 1965.

After a steady stream of science fiction books, Kurt Vonnegut delivers a straight out social commentary with God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. 

Synopsis:

Eliot Rosewater is the heir to a family fortune built on selling munitions in the Civil War and every war after that. The family fortune was built in Indiana but the family has moved to Providence, Rhode Island where it has a family mansion along with all of the others along the waterfront. His father is one of the senators from Rhode Island.

The Rosewater family avoids paying income taxes on this vast fortune by funding the Rosewater Foundation. Generally speaking, the foundation has been a legal way to not pay taxes and instead pay Eliot a whole lot of money to do nothing but supervise a foundation that does next to nothing.

A mural of Vonnegut in his
hometown - Indianapolis.
Photo by DWD

Eliot is suffering from PTSD (called "combat fatigue" in this book) from his experiences in World War II and drowns in troubles in bottle after bottle of alcohol. His only interests are science fiction and volunteer fire departments. He often gets black out drunk and comes back to his senses in a new town. He checks out the nearest volunteer fire department and sees if they have any new techniques or if they need any new equipment. Either way, he gives them something with foundation money.

Eliot is convinced to settle down in Rosewater County in southern Indiana. This is where his ancestors came from. He moves the foundation headquarters to Rosewater, Indiana and becomes the de facto caretaker of the people in this small town. People come to him with their problems and he listens. Sometimes, they need a little money to get over a rough patch or to help with a medical expense. It's all tedious, but the town needs him - even if it is to be someone to yell and scream at. 

The problem is, a lawyer at the law firm that handles the foundation business has found a different Rosewater from another branch of the family. The lawyer thinks he can remove Eliot as the head due to insanity. He will replace him with this other Rosewater and then make a fortune by representing him...

My review:

Vonnegut's report card

I am reading the Vonnegut novels in order of publication. This one is my favorite so far. Eliot is both a great man and a terrific loser. In a way, he is an imitation of Jesus and in a way he's a pathetic drunk that reads too much science fiction. This book is also the introduction to Vonnegut's literary alter-ego, Kilgore Trout.

Vonnegut famously graded his own books in the essay collection Palm Sunday. He gave God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater an A and I agree. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

PALM SUNDAY: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COLLAGE by Kurt Vonnegut

 

Published in 1981 by Delacorte Press.

Kurt Vonnegut offers this collection (he calls is a "collage") of fiction, non-fiction, interviews, and even a musical based on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

As is the case with all collections, some parts of the collection are excellent and some parts are not very good. I believe that he first half of the collection is the best, mostly because of the inclusion of a history of the Vonnegut family in Indianapolis. Ironically, it was not written by Vonnegut, but by a family member who had married into the Vonnegut family. 

Indianapolis is my adopted hometown and this Vonnegut family history reads like a history of the city from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. I found it fascinating reading, especially the story of the subscription brothel gentlemen's club that was frequented by the city's elite in an area that still has political "clubs" with fancy dining and smoking rooms more than 100 years later. It would be tacky to pay a prostitute, but paying club dues that were used to maintain the club and also to pay the prostitutes - well that's not tacky at all!

The musical based on Jekyll and Hyde written in 1978 was completely horrible.

Vonnegut is well-known for having written a report card of his published books - this is the book that features that report card. Oftentimes, I disagree with his self-assessment - but not this time. He gives this book a "C" (yes, he graded the book as he was writing/collecting all of the parts of it) and I agree.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: PALM SUNDAY: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COLLAGE by Kurt Vonnegut.

MOTHER NIGHT by Kurt Vonnegut

Originally published in 1962

Mother Night is one of Kurt Vonnegut's (1922-2007) early novels (his third) and the first that is not a work of science fiction. 

The book features Howard W. Campbell, a defendant awaiting trial in Israel for war crimes in Israel. He is wanted for being a well-known voice for the Nazis on broadcasts that he made during World War II. 

Campbell freely admits that he did what they say he did, but he does have a defense - he was working as a double agent for the Americans and was passing secret messages during those broadcasts. 

The book sets itself up to be a legal thriller - will the hero of the book be saved? Can he prove what he says is true?

But, there's none of that in this book. Campbell probably would have been the voice of the Nazis in the broadcasts no matter if he was recruited as a spy or not? He is just a self-absorbed author of plays that was way more concerned about bedding his German wife than politics or any "trivial" things like a World War or the mass murder of millions of people. 

Most of the book is about the last few months of Campbell's life and how he was found hiding in plain sight in New York City where he had been living in a tiny apartment. We get to meet a cast of freaks and creeps that loathe or worship Campbell for his part in the war while Vonnegut demonstrates that patriotism, duty, and racism/race loyalty are all illusory constructs at best. 

Self-portrait by the author

The book starts out with these themes by having Campbell introduce his prison guards. One of them is too young to really remember the war, one doesn't care and one worked in a death camp - he helped lead his fellow Jews to the gas chambers by telling them it was just a de-lousing. Then, he would help loot their bodies and bury them. He did this to save his own life - but he still gets to guard a man who literally didn't do anything to hurt anyone in the war except talk.

Vonnegut revels in pointing out that life is contradictory and complicated and no one is who they act like they are.

Good quotes:

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." 

"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile."

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: MOTHER NIGHT by Kurt Vonnegut.

CAT'S CRADLE by Kurt Vonnegut

 

Originally published in 1963.

Synopsis:

Cat's Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut's fourth novel. The narrator is a writer who wants to tell the story of the first atomic bombing by telling what various people did that day. One of the people he is interested in is one of the creators of the bomb, a researcher named Felix Hoennikker. 

Hoennikker has already passed away so the author reaches out to his three children and finds two of them. They describe a man with no real emotions. He is not a cruel man, he is utterly detached from everything except research. 

During his interviews with a colleagues at the laboratory he worked at in Ilium, New York (also the setting for his first novel Player Piano, but these books are clearly not in the same time line) the narrator discovers that Hoennikker may have invented a more dangerous weapon than the atomic bomb - a substance called "ice-nine."

Ice-nine was created as a simple thought experiment that came from an offhand comment from a general who had complained about how the U.S. Army kept getting bogged down in the mud. Ice-nine solidifies all of the water it contacts - freezes it at room temperature. And, it keeps spreading. Ice-nine creates more ice-nine as it freezes. Theoretically, if someone dropped it into a body of water it would just keep on going until it runs out of water to freeze. If you dropped it into a river it would just keep going until it got to an ocean and then keep going around the world.

That's when the narrator figures out that each of the three children possesses a chunk of ice-nine and one of them who was missing has just become the head of the military of a very backward third world country in the Caribbean...

My Review: 

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

This book, unlike the previously mentioned Player Piano, has the complete feel of a Vonnegut novel. There is a lot of dark humor that is barely trying to hide Vonnegut's commentary about the insanity of the Cold War and the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction. It fits in nicely with the 1964 movie Doctor Strangelove.

I found the first part of the book to be fairly slow and tedious (the part described in my synopsis), but the second half zips along pretty well and gets better and better as it gets more ridiculous, including the creation of an original religion.

Vonnegut has a habit of mentioning his native Indiana and/or Indianapolis in his books and this book features plenty of those mentions. 

At one point, Vonnegut gave all of his books a letter grade. He gave Cat's Cradle an A+. I think it was good, but not that good. I will give it a B.

I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars. It can be found on Amazon.com here: CAT'S CRADLE by Kurt Vonnegut.

PLAYER PIANO by Kurt Vonnegut

Originally published in 1952.

Synopsis:

Paul Proteus is the director of the Ilium Works in New York State in an alternate timeline to our current one. It is roughly the 1950's after yet another World War. 

That war taught the engineers to trust mechanization and the government to continue the central planning model that won the war (a more extreme model of the system the real United States used during World War II.)

In the Ilium works there are multiple factory buildings full of machines, but there are no people because the whole thing is automated. Proteus and the other engineers replaced all of the people with machines in the name of efficiency. Even the best human workers make mistakes or get an illness and miss work or, eventually, die. 

The machines don't have that problem. They work and work and work until the day they are replaced with even faster machines.

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
in 1952

This is the source of the title, Player Piano. A player piano plays itself thanks to a roll that is inserted. In the town across the river from Ilium Works, there is a player piano in the bar where all of the unemployed factory workers drink their days away.

The major theme of the book is that it is not good for humans to have no work, no skills to master and no sense that they have put in a good day's work, even if it is more efficient for machines to do it all.

And...Paul Proteus is starting to come around to that way of thinking.

My Review:

This is Vonnegut's first novel. It follows a more normal narrative form than his later, more famous novels. It's too long. It has too many characters. I has too many side plots that don't really go anywhere.

But, it is amazingly prophetic. Vonnegut was working in the public relations department of General Electric when he wrote this novel. He was constantly being exposed to miraculous "labor-saving" devices and his imagination took him to a world where so much labor has been saved with labor-saving devices that there is practically nothing for anyone to do anymore because a person with nothing to do has no reason to be here at all.

Just look at all of the jobs that have been replaced by technology - Line workers in factories, print setters, cashiers, most farm labor and on and on and on. Everyone thinks all of the jobs have gone oversees, but 85% of them have actually been lost to technology. So it goes.

The book gets better as it goes along and has a bittersweet ending.  

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut.

SUCKER'S PORTFOLIO (kindle) by Kurt Vonnegut

Published in 2012 by Amazon Publishing.

Amazon collected 6 short stories, 1 essay and 1 unfinished sci-fi story and added yet another collection to the Vonnegut library.

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) started writing during the Golden Age of sci-fi, when magazines were filling their pages with short stories. Some of these are sci-fi, some are just little human stories. 

Indianapolis native quoting fellow Hoosier author 
James Whitcomb Riley's poem "Little Orphan Annie"

I particularly enjoyed the first story, called "Between Timid and Timbuktu." It is a "Twilight Zone" type of story that I found satisfying in a gruesome sort of way. I also enjoyed the title story. It actually had a surprise twist that was pretty much out of character for a Vonnegut story. 

The seventh entry is an essay from 1992. Vonnegut was a prodigious writer of essays in the latter half of his career. I generally am more of a fan of his caustic and insightful essays than his fiction and this one did not disappoint. 

But, for me, the eighth entry was the surprise. It was an unfinished dystopian future story set in a small town after a human-robot war. It had a lot of zip to it and I was really intrigued right up to the moment it ended in mid-sentence.

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SUCKER'S PORTFOLIO (kindle) by Kurt Vonnegut.

GOD BLESS YOU, DR. KEVORKIAN by Kurt Vonnegut

 

Originally published in 1999.
Version with Neil Gaiman foreword published in 2010 by Seven Stories Press.

Synopsis:

In the late 1990's Kurt Vonnegut made a series of 90 second recordings for WNYC, the local NPR station for New York City. The premise of each spot was simple enough - Vonnegut travels to the afterlife to conduct a very short interview with someone (some famous, some not) and then he brings word back to the land of the living to tell us the wisdom he has learned.

How does he get to afterlife? Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the creator of the assisted suicide machine works with Vonnegut to render him about 3/4 dead in the very room and on the very bed where the state of Texas administers the death penalty via lethal injection. One of the people he interviews is a murderer who had just been executed - Karla Faye Tucker, although Vonnegut misspells her first name as Carla.

The Vonnegut mural in his hometown
of Indianapolis. Photo by DWD.

Since he is 3/4 dead, Vonnegut is able to travel to the afterlife and is called back away when he is revived. Eventually, St. Peter gets tired of Vonnegut going back and forth and he is told he must wait just outside of the Pearly Gates. 

All of this going back and forth is cut short by the real life arrest of Kevorkian in Michigan in 1998, an event that Vonnegut refers to at the end of the book.

My review:

This short book is not Vonnegut's best work, but it is certainly packed with Vonnegut's famous biting sarcasm. It is an up and down book and it was clearly printed with an eye to making it seem to be a bigger book than it actually is - with extra wide margins, blank pages between chapters and the like. 

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: GOD BLESS YOU, DR. KEVORKIAN by Kurt Vonnegut.

IF THIS ISN'T NICE, WHAT IS? (EVEN MORE) EXPANDED THIRD EDITION: THE GRADUATION SPEECHES and OTHER WORDS to LIVE BY by Kurt Vonnegut

 

Published in 2020 by Seven Stories Press.
Edited by Dan Wakefield.
Introduction by Dan Wakefield.

Many of the well-known quotes from Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) were not actually in his novels - they came from speeches he gave (mostly) in the latter half of his career. Vonnegut became quite a popular deliverer of graduation speeches. And why not? He was witty, irreverent and sometimes came up with a great quote like this one: "Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody want to maintain it." (p. 230)

The title of this book comes from a story that Vonnegut has included in other essays. Vonnegut had two uncles who responded very differently to his World War II experiences. His Uncle Dan congratulated Vonnegut for having gone to war as a boy and come back as a man. 

His Uncle Alex was a different sort of man. The kind of man who encouraged everyone to notice the good things of life as they happen around us. "...when life was most agreeable - and it could be just a pitcher of lemonade in the shade - he would say, 'If this isn't nice, what is?'" He goes on to note, "If he hadn't said that so regularly, maybe five or six times a month we might not have paused to notice how rewarding life can be sometimes." (p. 135)

An illustration from the book
and the inspiration for the cover.

The book has several of Vonnegut's unique illustrations with their own distinctive Vonnegut style. The book is printed with multiple colors and is literally one of the most attractive looking paperback books I have held in my hands. 

The quality of speeches is all over the place. If you read a lot of Vonnegut, you are used to him rambling along in a seemingly pointless way with any number of weird observations and then he suddenly he drops a profound thought. Some of these are very much that way. Some are strong throughout and some are kind of weak. Having said that, this collection could serve as a fine introduction to a reader who is starting to read Vonnegut's essays. 

I rate this collection 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: IF THIS ISN'T NICE, WHAT IS? (EVEN MORE) EXPANDED THIRD EDITION: THE GRADUATION SPEECHES and OTHER WORDS to LIVE BY by Kurt Vonnegut.
 

SIRENS of TITAN by Kurt Vonnegut

 

Originally published in 1959.
Finalist for the 1960 Hugo Award.

The Sirens of Titan is the second published novel by Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007). I decided to do a systematic reading of Vonnegut's books and I started with this one. Why did I start with his second bookbecause it mentioned the fictional planet of Tralfamadore and I know that Tralfamadore figures into several other Vonnegut books later on.

I must admit that I am a huge fan of Vonnegut's essay collections, but I have found some of his books to be...a bit too chaotic. That's funny, because I love that about his essays.

This book features a couple of very rich men. One had become a space explorer because of a phenomenon called the chrono-synclastic infundibulum that exists in a spiral in the solar system. Earth governments have stopped sending people on exploration missions because they could just disappear. Winston Niles Rumfoord built a private, luxury space ship and he and his dog headed directly for the chrono-synclastic infundibulum and disappeared.

Rumfoord now reappears on Earth every 59 days for one hour. On one of those days, he requested to meet the world's richest man - Malachi Constant because he has a message for him. What follows is a series of predictions that all come true.

************

This book is full of all sorts of themes, including the ideas that organized religion is bunk, no one is really totally in control of their lives and God does not intervene in our lives which are simply the product of random chance. 

A mural of Kurt Vonnegut in his hometown -
Indianapolis, Indiana. Photo by DWD.

The beginning of this book and the ending were interesting to me. The whole middle part about the Martian invasion and a detour to Mercury was tedious for me. 

In one of his essays, Vonnegut gave an A-F grade to a bunch of his novels. He gave Sirens of Titan an A. I am going to disagree and give it 3 stars out of 5 - my equivalent of a C.  

Quotes I liked:

"...a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."

"Indianapolis, Indiana...is the first place in the United States of America where a white man was hanged for the murder of an Indian. The kind of people who'll hang a white man for murdering an Indian...that's the kind of people for me." (Note: this is pretty much true - it happened near a suburb of Indianapolis - Anderson)

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE SIRENS of TITAN by Kurt Vonnegut.

FATES WORSE THAN DEATH: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COLLAGE by Kurt Vonnegut

 

Originally published in 1991.

Fates Worse Than Death is a collection of essays is basically Vonnegut's commentary on the 1980's. It was interesting to note how many of his essays (or parts thereof) address current day problems. I don't know if that means there are some problems that are timeless or if it simply means that we have just ignored the problems and they have festered. I know what Vonnegut would say:

"We probably could have saved ourselves, but were too damned lazy to try very hard...and too damn cheap." (p. 116, Essay XI)

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

There are 21 essays (some are actually transcribed speeches), a preface and a lengthy Appendix with multiple essays. Like any collection, there are good ones, mediocre ones and even a couple of terrible essays here. But, I found this collection to be pretty good, especially if you space them out.

I rate this collection 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: FATES WORSE THAN DEATH: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COLLAGE by Kurt Vonnegut.