Since the mid 1960s this combination has evolved into what is often called "postmodernism."
The release of the film Slaughterhouse-Five in 1972 completed the emergence of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., from the obscurity of ten years before to a level of fame rivaled by few contemporary American authors. From 1950 to 1960 he remained virtually a literary unknown, despite stories in large-circulation glossy magazines and two novels; from 1960 to 1970 his following swelled from a loyal but small "underground" coterie to a steadily expanding college-age audience to encompass finally a broad, heterogeneous, and perhaps truly national readership. Now it is accurate to speak of his appeal as international. That an international audience should develop is appropriate, for although in some ways, such as in his humor, he seems particularly American, and although he has been an astute observer and diagnostician of the American scene, Vonnegut's perspective remains essentially international. He makes it clear that he distrusts nationalism. He is the product of an era in which world war and nuclear explosion have made most parochial nationalism obsolete, in which humans have for the first time seen their own planet from space and recognized the imperative of mutual dependence.
