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...

Blake Edwards feiert seinen 80. Geburtstag In einer seiner letzten Arbeiten, dem Fernsehfilm "Justin Case" (1988) - Buch, Regie und Executive Producer Blake Edwards -, gibt es eine fast stumme Figur, die immer dann, wenn sie ihren Auftritt hat, und das ist leider...

The redistricting season got off to a splendid start last week and promises to bring as much amusement to Washington as the new Mel Brooks musical, "The Producers," apparently will deliver on Broadway. Our political slapstick promises mind-reading, side-switching Supreme Court justices, feuding politicians...

Vonnegut's novels are science fiction, will he or nil he. Listen, Slapstick is about a pair of telepathic twins whose intelligences synergize into super-genius when they're in close proximity but deteriorate to bright-normal when they're farther apart. They pretend to be idiots, however, as a form of protective coloration. Nice old science fiction device, first used by Olaf Stapledon around 1935, I believe. It also involves a scheme to relieve population pressures by breeding miniature ...