Kurt Vonnegut was an American author known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. His published work includes fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works over fifty-plus years; further works have been published since his death.
Philip José Farmer was an American author known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories.
Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a 1969 semi-autobiographic science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut. It follows the life experiences of Billy Pilgrim, from his early years, to his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant during World War II, to the post-war years. Throughout the novel, Billy frequently travels back and forth through time. The protagonist deals with a temporal crisis as a result of his post-war psychological trauma. The text centers on Billy's capture by the German Army and his survival of the Allied firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war, an experience that Vonnegut endured as an American serviceman. The work has been called an example of "unmatched moral clarity" and "one of the most enduring anti-war novels of all time".
Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. His seventh novel, it is set predominantly in the fictional town of Midland City, Ohio, and focuses on two characters: Dwayne Hoover, a Midland resident, Pontiac dealer and affluent figure in the city, and Kilgore Trout, a widely published but mostly unknown science fiction author. Breakfast of Champions deals with themes of free will, suicide, and race relations, among others. The novel is full of drawings by the author, substituting descriptive language with depictions requiring no translation.
Something Happened is Joseph Heller's second novel. Its main character and narrator is Bob Slocum, a businessman who engages in a stream of consciousness narrative about his job, his family, his childhood, his sexual escapades, and his own psyche. Although Something Happened failed to achieve the level of renown that Catch-22 did, it has since developed a cult following, with some considering it one of Heller's finest works.
Player Piano is the debut novel by American writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr., published in 1952. The novel depicts a dystopia of automation partly inspired by the author's time working at General Electric, describing the negative impact technology can have on quality of life. The story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the need for human laborers. The widespread mechanization creates conflict between the wealthy upper class, the engineers and managers, who keep society running, and the lower class, whose skills and purpose in society have been replaced by machines. The book uses irony and sentimentality, which were to become hallmarks developed further in Vonnegut's later works.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine, Kurt Vonnegut's fifth novel, was published in 1965 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston and as a Dell mass-market paperback in 1970. A piece of postmodern satire, it gave context to Vonnegut's following novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, and shared in its success.
Kilgore Trout is a fictional character created by author Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007). Trout is a notably unsuccessful author of paperback science fiction novels.
Galápagos (1985) is the eleventh novel published by American author Kurt Vonnegut. Set in the Galápagos Islands after a global financial disaster, the novel questions the merit of the human brain from an evolutionary perspective. The title is both a reference to the islands on which part of the story plays out, and a tribute to Charles Darwin, on whose theory Vonnegut relies to reach his own conclusions. It was published by Delacorte Press.
Alan Jay Pakula was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Associated with the New Hollywood movement, his best-known works include his critically-acclaimed "paranoia trilogy": the neo-noir mystery Klute (1971), the conspiracy thriller The Parallax View (1974), and the Watergate scandal drama All the President's Men (1976). His other notable films included Comes a Horseman (1978), Starting Over (1979), Sophie's Choice (1982), Presumed Innocent (1990), and The Pelican Brief (1993).
Hocus Pocus, or What's the Hurry, Son? is a 1990 novel by Kurt Vonnegut.
Deadeye Dick is a novel by Kurt Vonnegut originally published in 1982.
The RAMJAC Corporation is a fictional multinational conglomerate, or megacorp, featured in several novels by Kurt Vonnegut. In Vonnegut's 1979 novel, Jailbird, the company, at its height, owns 19 percent of the United States, twice as large as the next largest conglomerate in the "Free World". Copyrights on Vonnegut's later books are also held by RAMJAC, much like Isaac Asimov's later copyrights are held by Nightfall, Inc..
Palm Sunday is a 1981 collection of short stories, speeches, essays, letters, and other previously unpublished works by Kurt Vonnegut. The collection provides insight into Vonnegut's thoughts on various subjects, including writing, war, and his own literary career. The book is known for its eclectic mix of genres and personal reflections.
A motif is any distinctive feature or idea that recurs across a story; often, it helps develop other narrative elements such as theme or mood.
Loon Lake is a 1980 novel by E. L. Doctorow. The plot of the novel is mostly set on Loon Lake in the Adirondacks during the Depression. The novel is one of the more experimental works of Doctorow, incorporating a great variety of different techniques, many of which are used for preventing the reader from an easy understanding of the narration: traditional narratives, stream of consciousness, poetry, mixed up chronology.
William McCranor Henderson is an American author whose writing explores the mutual influences of popular culture and literature, and the dark side of celebrity. Boston Magazine noted that his work displays "a real feel for the sad, ridiculous squalor in America, the tacky bars and beauty shops and motel swimming pools, the even cheaper dreams of the people who hang out at them." Henderson, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, "has managed the estimable feat of breathing new life into the theme of adulation and emulation in a fame-happy era."
Jailbird or Jail Bird may refer to:
Flash Point is a 1974 novel by the British author Michael Gilbert published in England by Hodder and Stoughton and in the United States by Harper & Row. It was Gilbert's 17th novel and undoubtedly written during the last days of the American Watergate scandal. Although none of the events in the book directly parallel those of Watergate, it begins with a banal legal matter and then escalates into a government cover-up and national scandal. The American edition has an apparent subtitle shown only on its copyright page: "A Harper Novel of Law and Lawlessness". Like a number of other works by Gilbert and his near contemporaries Victor Canning and Ross Thomas, it is less a standard novel of suspense than a political thriller about the amorality and subsequent lethal reactions of those in the highest government positions when confronted by seemingly trivial events that blossom uncontrollably into perceived challenges to their positions.
Either/Or is the second novel from Turkish American writer Elif Batuman. The novel is a bildungsroman and a continuation of the story of Selin, a character introduced in Batuman's first novel The Idiot, and follows Selin in her second year at Harvard University.
