Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. (Vol. 8) - Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. 1922–
Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. 1922–
An American novelist, short story writer, and playwright, Vonnegut satirizes American contemporary life through the use of fantasy, black humor, and the absurd. Although many of his books have been best sellers, Vonnegut is probably best known for Slaughterhouse-Five. (See also CLC, Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and Contemporary Authors, Vol. 1-4, rev. ed.)
Today, many of the best writers are … writing about art, primarily. Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut's major achievement, is essentially different from Nabokov's Pale Fire or Borges's ficciones, however, because it insists on both the world of fiction or fantasy (Tralfamadore) and the world of brutal fact (Dresden). Vonnegut's novel urges the primacy of the imagination in the very act of facing one of history's most infamous "massacres," the fire-bombing of Dresden in World War II, the source of its great originality.
The poignancy...
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