Book description
These letters are the autobiography that Kurt Vonnegut never wrote.
This collection includes the letter the twenty-two-year old Vonnegut
wrote home immediately upon being freed from the German POW camp; wry
dispatches from Vonnegut's years as a struggling writer; a letter to
the CEO of Eagle Shirtmakers with a crackpot scheme to manufacture
"atomic" bow ties; angry letters of protest to local school
boards that tried to ban his work; letters to his children including
advice like 'Don't let anybody tell you that smoking and boozing are
bad for you. Here I am fifty-five years old, and I never felt better
in my life'; fantastically wise letters to writers such as Norman
Mailer, Gunter Grass, and Bernard Malamud; and his characteristically
modest response to being called a 'great literary figure': 'I am an
American fad-of a slightly higher order than the hula hoop.'
Like Vonnegut's books, his letters make you think, they make you
outraged and they make you laugh. Written over a sixty-year period,
and never published before, these letters are alive with the unique
point of view that made Vonnegut one of the most original writers in
American fiction.
A laughing prophet of doom New York Times Unimitative and inimitable
social satirist Harper's A satirist with a heart, a moralist with a
whoopee cushion, a cynic who wants to believe -- Jay McInerney Unique --
Doris Lessing [Reveals] Vonnegut's passions, annoyances, loves, losses,
mind and heart ... The letters stand alone-and stand tall, indeed...
Vonnegut's most human of hearts beats on every page Kirkus Reviews
Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis in 1922 and studied
biochemistry at Cornell University. During the World War II he served
in Europe and, as a Prisoner of War in Germany, witnessed the
destruction of Dresden by Allied bombers, an experience which inspired
his classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five. He is the author of
thirteen other novels, three collections of stories and five
non-fiction books. Kurt Vonnegut died in 2007.
Dan Wakefield first befriended Kurt Vonnegut in 1963. Like
Vonnegut, he was born and raised in Indianapolis. He is a novelist and
screenwriter whose books include the bestselling Going All the
Way and the memoir New York in the Fifties.
