San Antonio College Library

Chapters include Cosmic Irony, Science Fiction and The New Reality of Slaughterhouse-Five.

Kurt Vonnegut's career as a novelist encompasses virtually the whole second half of the twentieth century, and his novels are among the most widely read in America. Yet Vonnegut enjoyed another successful career as a short story writer. His short fiction brought him much acclaim in the early years of his writing career and made him visible to a very large audience. His stories were illustrated by some of the best artists in the business and were featured...

"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...

Traces the development of Vonnegut's style and philosophy, considering his novels, short stories, and plays, and looks at the American writer as a public man who speaks out on contemporary issues.

Traces Vonnegut's influences within the American middle class, his early efforts as a short-story writer for magazines, and his success as a bestselling experimental novelist with Slaughterhouse-Five.

In this original comparative study of Kurt Vonnegut and Ernest Hemingway, Lawrence R. Broer maps the striking intersections of biography and artistry in works by both writers, and he compares the ways in which they blend life and art. Broer views Hemingway as the "secret sharer" of Vonnegut's literary imagination and argues that the two writers -- while traditionally considered as adversaries because of Vonnegut's rejection of Hemingway's emblematic...