33 posts
Interview
From his first published story (“Report on the Barnhouse Effect”) in which the narrator addresses an unnamed committee to the scathing indictments of the Bush Administration in A Man Without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut…
Interview
In his late career book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I’m dead.”…
Interview
For Kurt Vonnegut, writing was an act of good citizenship, his way of “poisoning the minds of young people” with humanity. In Lucky Mud & Other Foma: A Field Guide to Kurt Vonnegut’s Environmentalism and Planetary…
Interview
Over the past few years a renewed focus on the issue of race in America has entered the public conversation. In 2021, writer S.G. Ellerhoff taught a class at the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library (KVML) on Vonnegut and…
Interview
In A Man Without A Country, Kurt Vonnegut writes that music “makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it.” During his last fifteen years, Vonnegut shared his passion for music with…
Interview
On October 1, 2020, Readings from Kurt Vonnegut: WordPlay by David Hoppe will be performed by The Phoenix Theater as a fundraiser for the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis. For tickets, visit the Kurt…
Interview
If there’s a Disney World for hard-core Vonnegut fans, it just might be at the Lilly Library at Indiana University, home of the Kurt Vonnegut Manuscript archives, a collection of papers, letters, drafts, and other…
In a fine essay published by The New Yorker, Salman Rushdie offers his thoughts on Slaughterhouse-Five. Comparisons to Catch-22 and War and Peace are mixed with reflections on Vonnegut's exploration of free will and the…
Interview
Kurt Vonnegut Remembered, recently published by The University of Alabama Press, is a must-read for Vonnegut fans as it traces the author’s life through a series of essays and recollections from those who knew him best.…
Interview
Need something to do this summer? Why not tackle the Vonnegut canon? In 2013 Wilson Taylor and Matthew Gannon, two friends and writers with a passion for literature, criticism, and Kurt Vonnegut, launched their Summer…
It's been fifty years since Delacorte Press first published Kurt Vonnegut's masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five, on March 31, 1969. The novel's popularity and influence continue to this day, and though Vonnegut, in the…
The celebration of the 50th anniversary of Slaughterhouse-Five continues with news of two recent group readings of Vonnegut’s classic novel. First, from the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library (KVML), an interview with…
In Sanity Plea: Schizophrenia in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut (1989, University of Alabama Press), Lawrence R. Broer writes: "A striking paradox of Slaughterhouse-Five is that it presents us with Vonnegut's most…
In 2019 The Daily Vonnegut will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five, "a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the…
Though Kurt Vonnegut identified as a secular humanist, he often described himself as a "Christ-loving atheist," and readers can find a wealth of reflections on Christ and Christianity within Vonnegut's work. Among The…
On November 11, 1922, a peephole opened quite suddenly in Indianapolis. Light and sound poured in, and the wisp of undifferentiated nothingness we now know as Kurt Vonnegut came into the world. Happy Birthday, Kurt!…
Interview
In December 1970, Kurt Vonnegut wrote to his friend, fellow novelist Jose Donoso, “…The adventure of having a play produced was harrowing…But I had to begin my theatrical career with something—and now I have in fact…
After a brief hiatus, The Daily Vonnegut will return this Sunday with new trivia and some Vonnegut video. Until then, here's a quote from Vonnegut friend (and former student), novelist John Irving, from a 1986 interview…
Interview
Even casual fans of Kurt Vonnegut’s work recognize him as a writer engaged with the issues of his time. Vonnegut’s range of interests was vast: the waste and futility of war, the dangers of excessive automation, the…
The Daily Vonnegut mourns the recent passing of the great American novelist Philip Roth. Vonnegut's Jailbird and Roth's The Ghost Writer were both Main Selections of the Book of the Month Club in September 1979--a…
With another school shooting in the news last week, it's worth revisiting some of Kurt Vonengut's writing about guns. In Fates Worst than Death, Vonnegut writes: "When Charlton Heston (a movie actor who once played…
Interview
One of Kurt Vonnegut’s most enduring phrases is foma, harmless untruths that can make life easier. Yet Vonnegut also explored the opposite—harmful untruths, lies people believe which create havoc for individuals and…
In a 2017 interview with The Daily Vonnegut, Professor Lawrence Broer discussed his 2011 book Vonnegut & Hemingway - Writers at War. In the following excerpt, not included in last year's interview, Broer discusses the…
In 2016, Zachary Perdieu, co-Vice President of the Kurt Vonnegut Society, delivered a paper at the American Literature Association’s annual conference titled “’That was I. That was me.’ The Many Vonneguts and Their…
Zachary Perdieu is co-Vice President of the Kurt Vonnegut essay. In the following essay, he shares how Vonnegut's work helped shape his future academic career. What I Pretended to Be Ask any friend of mine to provide a…
Interview
Vonnegut & Hemingway: Writers at War – An Interview with Lawrence R. Broer While a surface reading of each man’s fiction might find little connection between Kurt Vonnegut and Ernest Hemingway beyond the trauma of war,…
What would Kurt Vonnegut think of Donald Trump? Vonnegut scholar Marc Leeds shares his thoughts in an essay from Literary Hub. http://lithub.com/what-would-kurt-vonnegut-think-of-donald-trump/ For more from Marc Leeds,…
Originally published in 1961 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, “Harrison Bergeron” is Kurt Vonnegut’s most well-known story. In The Short Fiction of Kurt Vonnegut, Peter J. Reed describes the story as…
Tom Carson offers an extended essay on George Roy Hill's adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five on the Library of America website. Check out the full essay at the following link: The Moviegoer -…
The Brothers Vonnegut, by Ginger Strand, is a fascinating study of Kurt Vonnegut’s career in public relations for General Electric (GE) in the late 1940’s. Yet equally important is the story of Bernard Vonnegut, Kurt’s…
Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night, originally published as a paperback original in 1961, continues to resonate with its times. Professor Susan Farrell, in an essay presented at the American Literature Association Conference…
The Vonnegut Encyclopedia by Marc Leeds, an invaluable reference for Vonnegut fans, has been published by Delacorte Press in a new updated edition. For more, read The Daily Vonnegut's interview with Leeds from 2015.…
Check out this 2011 interview with Vonnegut's long-time agent, business manager, and friend Donald Farber. Donald Farber on the Legacy of Kurt Vonnegut Interestingly, Farber is asked about Vonnegut's final, unfinished…
Nothing matches. So it goes.