Friday, November 11, 2022

Kurt Vonnegut at 100

 Apparently Kurt Vonnegut would have been 100 today. 

I believe I have just read my first Kurt Vonnegut work, Slaughterhouse-Five. I actually listened to the audiobook version, for a bookclub today. I didn't know it was about the bombing of Dresden in WWII. And interesting to be talking about this today, on Remembrance Day. So much I didn't know...

Kurt Vonnegut would have turned 100 today — his war novels are relevant as ever - NPR

What Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” Tells Us Now (Salman Rushdie New Yorker essay on the novel from 2019) 

Listing his works here, for myself, as reminders:

Novels

  • Player Piano (1952)
  • The Sirens of Titan (1959)
  • Mother Night (1962)
  • Cat's Cradle (1963)
  • God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)
  • Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) - read, liked it!
  • Breakfast of Champions (1973)
  • Slapstick (1976)
  • Jailbird (1979)
  • Deadeye Dick (1982)
  • Galápagos (1985)
  • Bluebeard (1987)
  • Hocus Pocus (1990)
  • Timequake (1997)

Short fiction collections

  • Canary in a Cat House (1961)
  • Welcome to the Monkey House (1968)
  • Bagombo Snuff Box (1997)
  • God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)
  • Armageddon in Retrospect (2008) – short stories and essays
  • Look at the Birdie (2009)
  • While Mortals Sleep (2011)
  • We Are What We Pretend to Be (2012)
  • Sucker's Portfolio (2013)
  • Complete Stories (2017)

Nonfiction

  • Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons (1974)
  • Palm Sunday (1981)
  • Nothing Is Lost Save Honor: Two Essays (1984)
  • Fates Worse Than Death (1991)
  • A Man Without a Country (2005)[66]
  • Kurt Vonnegut: The Cornell Sun Years 1941–1943 (2012)
  • If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice to the Young (2013)
  • Vonnegut by the Dozen (2013)
  • Kurt Vonnegut: Letters (2014)
  • Pity the Reader: On Writing With Style (2019) with Suzanne McConnell
  • Love, Kurt: The Vonnegut Love Letters, 1941–1945 (2020) Editor Edith Vonnegut

Plays

  • The First Christmas Morning (1962)
  • Fortitude (1968)
  • Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)
  • Between Time and Timbuktu (1972)
  • Stones, Time and Elements (A Humanist Requiem) (1987)
  • Make Up Your Mind (1993)
  • L'Histoire du Soldat (1997)

Children's books

  • Sun Moon Star (1980)


Update: returning periodically to record what I've read (not enough yet!)

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