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Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (born 1922) is acknowledged as a major voice in American literature and applauded for his pungent satirical depictions of modern society. Emphasizing the comic absurdity of the human condition, he frequently depicts characters who sear...

[This entry was updated by Peter J. Reed (University of Minnesota) from his entry in DLB 152: American Novelists Since World War II, Fourth Series.] Though Kurt Vonnegut had been a widely read short-story writer throughout the 1950s and though his novels...

As of 1987 Kurt Vonnegut's work includes twelve novels, a play and a television play, two collections of short stories, two collections of essays, and a miscellany of uncollected shorter pieces of fiction and nonfiction. He is himself the subject of a nu...

Within the past year, three of the most famous authors to emerge after World War II have died: Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and William Styron. Their deaths all resulted in front-page stories, lengthy appreciations and ongoing discussions about their place in American letters.No writer was...

Barry Bonds' smiling mug won't be gracing boxes of the Breakfast of Champions anytime soon. Since hitting No. 756 there have been no "I'm going to Disneyland" moments for Bonds, no cereal box immortality."We simply have no plans at this point," to work with Bonds,...

James Laurinaitis’s father, Joe Laurinaitis, worked as a pro wrestler under the name “Animal” for years. His in-ring costume included football pads adorned with metal spikes and multi-colored face-paint. His son was apparently meant to wear a helmet on Saturdays (and soon, on Sundays), hitting...

In Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut intends to release his characters from his control. In doing so, he shows their unreadiness to cope with freedom, or to measure up to its responsibilities. In a sense, he is telling us that we are all living in our own private novels, but our actions do not, in reality, follow a coherent plot. Our lives collide and interfere with each other. We inevitably become what we do…. Vonnegut's people were once machines that one could wind up and set loose. He wants ...

[Breakfast of Champions] is almost a deliberate curiosity, an earnest attempt to play after getting Dresden out of the way. It's filled with Vonnegut's cartoon drawings of items mentioned in the text; it plays the whimsical game of pretending that we know nothing about life on earth … and it delivers many straight-faced criticisms of Life…. He indulges in some obligatory no-no's: he talks about Niggers, he draws a vagina, he gives penis measurements of most of the male cha...