Granfalloon: Celebrating the Life and Work of Kurt Vonnegut

"A funny, savage appraisal of a totally automated American society of the future."--San Francisco Chronicle Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut--wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality. Praise for Player Piano "An exuberant, crackling style . . . Vonnegut is a black humorist, fantasist and satirist, a man disposed to deep and comic reflection on the human dilemma."--Life "His black logic . . . gives us something to laugh about and much to fear."--The New York Times Book Review

"[Kurt Vonnegut's] best book . . . He dares not only ask the ultimate question about the meaning of life, but to answer it."--Esquire Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read The Sirens of Titan is an outrageous romp through space, time, and morality. The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course there' s a catch to the invitation-and a prophetic vision about the purpose of human life that only Vonnegut has the courage to tell. "Reading Vonnegut is addictive!"--Commonweal

Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.

"A free-wheeling vehicle . . . an unforgettable ride!"--The New York Times  Cat's Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat's Cradle is one of the twentieth century's most important works--and Vonnegut at his very best. "[Vonnegut is] an unimitative and inimitable social satirist."--Harper's Magazine "Our finest black-humorist . . . We laugh in self-defense."--Atlantic Monthly

"[Vonnegut] at his wildest best."--The New York Times Book Review Eliot Rosewater--drunk, volunteer fireman, and President of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation--is about to attempt a noble experiment with human nature . . . with a little help from writer Kilgore Trout. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is Kurt Vonnegut's funniest satire, an etched-in-acid portrayal of the greed, hypocrisy, and follies of the flesh we are all heir to. "A brilliantly funny satire on almost everything."--Conrad Aiken "[Vonnegut was] our finest black humorist. . . . We laugh in self-defense."--The Atlantic Monthly

"A desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century."--Time   Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time   Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world's great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Vonnegut describes as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he himself witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines science fiction, autobiography, humor, historical fiction, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber's son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. Billy, like Vonnegut, experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW, and, as with Vonnegut, it is the defining moment of his life. Unlike the author, he also experiences time travel, or coming "unstuck in time." Billy Pilgrim's odyssey reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most. Praise for Slaughterhouse-Five "Poignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement."--The Boston Globe "Very tough and very funny . . . sad and delightful . . . very Vonnegut."--New York Times "Splendid art . . . a funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears."--Life

"Marvelous . . . [Vonnegut] wheels out all the complaints about America and makes them seem fresh, funny, outrageous, hateful and lovable."--The New York Times In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut's most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth. "Free-wheeling, wild and great . . . uniquely Vonnegut."--Publishers Weekly

"Some of the best and most moving Vonnegut."--San Francisco Chronicle Slapstick presents an apocalyptic vision as seen through the eyes of the current King of Manhattan (and last President of the United States), a wickedly irreverent look at the all-too-possible results of today's follies. But even the end of life-as-we-know-it is transformed by Kurt Vonnegut's pen into hilarious farce--a final slapstick that may be the Almighty's joke on us all. "Both funny and sad . . . just about perfect."--Los Angeles Times   "Imaginative and hilarious . . . a brilliant vision of our wrecked, wacked-out future."--Hartford Courant

Jailbird takes us into a fractured  and comic, pure Vonnegut world of high crimes and  misdemeanors in government. . .and in the heart.  This wry tale follows bumbling bureaucrat Walter F.  Starbuck from Harvard to the Nixon White House to  the penitentiary as Watergate's least known  co-conspirator. But the humor turns dark when Vonnegut  shines his spotlight on the cold hearts and  calculated greed of the mighty, giving a razor-sharp  edge to an unforgettable portait of power and  politics in our times. From the Paperback edition.

"The master at his quirky, provocative best."--Cosmopolitan Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors--a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb--Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe . . . and who we say we are. Praise for Deadeye Dick "A moving fable . . . Vonnegut, sweet cynic and ugly duckling, continues to write gentle swan songs for our uncivil society."--Playboy    "A brilliantly unconventional novel . . . a must for all Vonnegut fans."--Worcester Sunday Telegram   "Hits the bull's-eye . . . dolefully celebrates the randomness of life, treating private and public disasters with a kind of reckless whimsy. . . . You don't read Kurt Vonnegut for meaning exactly. You read him for the sad-funny attitude of mind, the kind of weirdness that can interpret the world's weirdness."--USA Today   "Vonnegut is beguiling as ever . . . Incredible plot constructions and inventive language continue to leap from his typewriter . . . the humor is natural and inborn; the insight usually purchased by his characters at painfully high cost. Funny how life turns out. Even funnier how Mr. Vonnegut turns life's insanities into funny, profound sense. That takes a master's touch. Mr. Vonnegut still has it."--Kansas City Star    "Playful and imaginative . . . On finishing the novel, the kitchen of your mind is a cleaner and more well-lighted place than it was before."--Houston Chronicle   "Endearing and enchanting . . . a wise and charming book . . . very full of life."--Glamour

"A madcap genealogical adventure . . . Vonnegut is a postmodern Mark Twain."--The New York Times Book Review Galápagos takes the reader back one million years, to A.D. 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galápagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, and totally different human race. In this inimitable novel, America' s master satirist looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry-and all that is worth saving. Praise for Galápagos "The best Vonnegut novel yet!"--John Irving "Beautiful . . . provocative, arresting reading."--USA Today "A satire in the classic tradition . . . a dark vision, a heartfelt warning."--The Detroit Free Press   "Interesting, engaging, sad and yet very funny . . . Vonnegut is still in top form. If he has no prescription for alleviating the pain of the human condition, at least he is a first-rate diagnostician."--Susan Isaacs, Newsday   "Dark . . . original and funny."--People   "A triumph of style, originality and warped yet consistent logic . . . a condensation, an evolution of Vonnegut's entire career, including all the issues and questions he has pursued relentlessly for four decades."--The Philadelphia Inquirer   "Wild details, wry humor, outrageous characters . . . Galápagos is a comic lament, a sadly ironic vison."--St. Louis Post-Dispatch   "A work of high comedy, sadness and imagination."--The Denver Post   "Wacky wit and irreverent imagination .  . . and the full range of technical innovations have made [Vonnegut] America's preeminent experimental novelist."--The Minneapolis Star and Tribune

Broad humor and bitter irony collide in this fictional autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, who, at age seventy-one, wants to be left alone on his Long Island estate with the secret he has locked inside his potato barn. But then a voluptuous young widow badgers Rabo into telling his life story—and Vonnegut in turn tells us the plain, heart-hammering truth about man’s careless fancy to create or destroy what he loves.

From the New York Timesbestselling author of Slaughterhouse-Five comes anirresistible novel thatcombines"clever wit with keen social observation... and re-establishes Mr. Vonnegut's place as the Mark Twain of our times" (Atlanta Journal & Constitution). Here is the adventure of Eugene Debs Hartke. He's a Vietnam veteran, a jazz pianist, a college professor, and a prognosticator of the apocalypse (and other things Earth-shattering). But that's neither here nor there. Because at Tarkington College-where he teaches-the excrement is about to hit the air-conditioning. And it's all Eugene's fault.

A New York Times Notable Book from the acclaimed author of Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, and Cat's Cradle. At 2:27pm on February 13th of the year 2001, the Universe suffered a crisis in self-confidence. Should it go on expanding indefinitely? What was the point? There's been a timequake. And everyone--even you--must live the decade between February 17, 1991 and February 17, 2001 over again. The trick is that we all have to do exactly the same things as we did the first time--minute by minute, hour by hour, year by year, betting on the wrong horse again, marrying the wrong person again. Why? You'll have to ask the old science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout. This was all his idea.