The Works of Kurt Vonnegut

Since I’m thinking about the late, great Kurt Vonnegut, I decided to do a short summary of his works here, along with my take on them and my star ranking of each. Vonnegut graded his own books in the course of his collection Palm Sunday, and I’ve included those rankings here too. Keep in mind that it’s been many years since I’ve read some of these books, so my remembrances of a few might be a bit off.

Player Piano (1952) — 3 1/2 stars (Vonnegut’s own grade: B)
A relatively straightforward satire of a dystopian future about mechanization and its effects on blue-collar workers a la Huxley’s Brave New World. Vonnegut was still finding his voice here, so you’ll find relatively little of his trademark humor or authorial noodling. Some of the symbolism is a bit clunky and obvious. Yet his deep and abiding humanism still shines through every page.

Kurt Vonnegut's 'The Sirens of Titan'The Sirens of Titan (1959) — 4 1/2 stars (Vonnegut’s own grade: A)
The classic space-faring science fiction story as written by Salvador Dali and Lenny Bruce after smoking lots of weed. Vonnegut comes out after a seven-year hiatus swinging with a fully developed voice. The cosmic speculation here about the purpose(lessness) of human existence is both cynical and mindblowing.

Mother Night (1961) — 5 stars (Vonnegut’s own grade: A)
An angry and morally biting story about a Nazi turncoat on death row in Israel post-World War II. This is perhaps the most conventional of all Vonnegut’s novels, and one of his most heartbreaking. The moral, as spelled out in the author’s own preface: “We are who we pretend to be, so we must be careful who we pretend to be.” Don’t miss the Nick Nolte film adaptation either.

Canary in a Cathouse (1961) — See Welcome to the Monkey House below.

Cat’s Cradle (1963) — 5 stars (Vonnegut’s own grade: A+)
The novel pits the cold and brutal scientific worldview of Dr. Felix Hoenikker against the ludicrous made-up religion of Bokononism. The adherents of Bokononism engage in silly rituals, speak gibberish to one another, hold contradictory beliefs about God, and have lots of sex. On a purely metaphysical level, the Bokononists are dead wrong about how the universe works; and yet Hoenikker’s scientific truths bring the world nothing but misery and apocalypse.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) — 4 stars (Vonnegut’s own grade: A)
Vonnegut’s ode to community and civic responsibility, and how they can go horribly awry. A comic American novel about an eccentric philanthropist and the lawyer who tries to bring about his downfall in the tradition of Sinclair Lewis. I believe this is the novel that introduces Vonnegut’s fictional alter ego Kilgore Trout.

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) — 5 stars (Vonnegut’s own grade: A+)
Vonnegut writes about Billy Pilgrim, a World War II veteran and witness to the firebombing of Dresden (as Vonnegut himself was). Like the Bokononists, Billy’s defense against the horrors of the world is to retreat into insanity. He decides that he’s “come unstuck in time” and become the plaything of a fantastic race of aliens who experience their lives by dipping in and out of time at their leisure. The film adaptation is… eh.

Welcome to the Monkey House (1968) — 5 stars (Vonnegut’s own grade: B-)
The seminal collection of KV short stories, repackaging almost all of the stories from Canary in a Cathouse and adding lots more. Includes classics such as “Harrison Bergeron,” “Report on the Barnhouse Effect,” and the title story. Alternately hysterical, wistful, psychedelic, and just plain groovy. Yes, there are a couple of clunkers here, but the magic shines through.

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So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, RIP

The news of Kurt Vonnegut’s death today hits me particularly hard. For me, Vonnegut was the novelist. He was perhaps the first “adult” novelist I read seriously, the first novelist I fell in love with, and undoubtedly the novelist who got me through high school. I’m sure there are millions of people out there who can say the same thing.

I’ve read just about everything Vonnegut ever published, including his obscure drama Between Time and Timbuktu and his experimental children’s book Sun Moon Star (with Ivan Chermayeff). I’ve probably read Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle at least a dozen times each. I own Philip Jose Farmer’s convincing Vonnegut ventriloquism act Venus on the Half-Shell, penned under the name Kilgore Trout. I brought Timequake with me on my first honeymoon. Just about the only book of Vonnegut’s I never got around to buying was his last collection of essays, A Man Without a Country (though I do own some of his other late output, including Bagombo Snuff Box and God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian).

Kurt VonnegutMy first exposure to Vonnegut was through his seminal collection of short stories, Welcome to the Monkey House. I was probably around 13 or 14. Up to that point, my reading had consisted mostly of straightforward, unironic science fiction and fantasy: J.R.R. Tolkien, Piers Anthony, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov. My other recent obsession at that time was Douglas Adams, who strove all his life to achieve Vonnegutdom with mixed (albeit funnier) results.

Then my sister brought Welcome to the Monkey House home and it quickly swept through the whole family. I was stunned. I’d never read anything like these stories. Cynical, yet wondrous; funny, yet deadly serious; childish, yet crammed full of adult insight.

In short order, I discovered that we had a copy of Slaughterhouse-Five in the home library, and devoured that in one late-night insomniacal sitting. My sister also owned copies of Cat’s Cradle and Player Piano, which I quickly appropriated and wore to pieces. After that I went on a buying spree of mass-market Vonnegut paperbacks until I had bought and read all the Vonnegut I could get my hands on in those pre-eBay days. I remember eagerly passing Bluebeard and Palm Sunday back and forth to friends in high school.

Vonnegut’s lessons are the lessons that I think all teenagers should be required to absorb. They’re the lessons that saved me from completely withdrawing into my shell or going Columbine on my classmates.

These are, I think, the main lessons of Vonnegut’s work:

  • Adults take many things too seriously.
  • We all get buffeted around by powerful forces we don’t understand.
  • Religion, art, politics, and careers are largely full of shit.
  • Just because something is full of shit doesn’t mean it can’t be wonderful or useful.
  • Be nice to each other. We’re all trying the best we can.

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