Kurt Vonnegut: Letters

Kurt Vonnegut: Letters

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
Newsweek/The Daily Beast â€¢ The Huffington Post â€¢ Kansas City Star â€¢ Time Out New York â€¢ Kirkus Reviews

This extraordinary collection of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Kurt Vonnegutâ€™s fiction. Written over a sixty-year period, these letters, the vast majority of them never before published, are funny, moving, and full of the same uncanny wisdom that has endeared his work to readers worldwide.
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Included in this comprehensive volume: the letter a twenty-two-year-old Vonnegut wrote home immediately upon being freed from a German POW camp, recounting the ghastly firebombing of Dresden that would be the subject of his masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five; wry dispatches from Vonnegutâ€™s years as a struggling writer slowly finding an audience and then dealing with sudden international fame in middle age; righteously angry letters of protest to local school boards that tried to ban his work; intimate remembrances penned to high school classmates, fellow veterans, friends, and family; and letters of commiseration and encouragement to such contemporaries as Gail Godwin, GÃ¼nter Grass, and Bernard Malamud.
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Vonnegutâ€™s unmediated observations on science, art, and commerce prove to be just as inventive as any found in his novelsâ€”from a crackpot scheme for manufacturing â€œatomicâ€ bow ties to a tongue-in-cheek proposal that publishers be allowed to trade authors like baseball players. (â€œKnopf, for example, might give John Updikeâ€™s contract to Simon and Schuster, and receive Joan Didionâ€™s contract in return.â€) Taken together, these letters add considerable depth to our understanding of this one-of-a-kind literary icon, in both his public and private lives. Each letter brims with the mordant humor and openhearted humanism upon which he built his legend. And virtually every page contains a quotable nugget that will make its way into the permanent Vonnegut lexicon.
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â€¢ On a job he had as a young man: â€œHell is running an elevator throughout eternity in a building with only six floors.â€
â€¢ To a relative who calls him a â€œgreat literary figureâ€: â€œI am an American fadâ€”of a slightly higher order than the hula hoop.â€
â€¢ To his daughter Nanny: â€œMost letters from a parent contain a parentâ€™s own lost dreams disguised as good advice.â€
â€¢ To Norman Mailer: â€œI am cuter than you are.â€
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Sometimes biting and ironical, sometimes achingly sweet, and always alive with the unique point of view that made him the true cultural heir to Mark Twain, these letters comprise the autobiography Kurt Vonnegut never wrote.

Praise for Kurt Vonnegut: Letters
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â€œSplendidly assembled . . . familiar, funny, cranky . . . chronicling [Vonnegutâ€™s] life in real time.â€â€”Kurt Andersen, The New York Times Book Review
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â€œ[This collection is] by turns hilarious, heartbreaking and mundane. . . . Vonnegut himself is a near-perfect example of the same flawed, wonderful humanity that he loved and despaired over his entire life.â€â€”NPR
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â€œCongenial, whimsical and often insightful missives . . . one of [Vonnegutâ€™s] very best.â€â€”Newsday
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â€œThese letters display all the hallmarks of Vonnegutâ€™s fictionâ€”smart, hilarious and heartbreaking.â€â€”The New York Times Book Review

From the Hardcover edition.
Country USA
Brand Dial Press Trade Paperback
Manufacturer Dial Press Trade Paperback
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 9780385343763
Color Multicolor
ReleaseDate 2014-01-14
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780385343763

Country	USA
Brand	Dial Press Trade Paperback
Manufacturer	Dial Press Trade Paperback
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	9780385343763
Color	Multicolor
ReleaseDate	2014-01-14
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780385343763

Kurt Vonnegut: Letters

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