Cat's Cradle

Cat's Cradle deals with atomic scientists, ugly Americans, gorgeous sex queens, vengeful midgets, Caribbean dictators, undertakers, Hoosiers, a new way of making love, ice-nine, Bokononism, the end of the world... Ice-nine?  Bokononism?  The end of the world?  No one but Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., could have created this masterful mix of satire, fantasy and all-too-real realism.  An ultimate commentary on modern man and his madness, Cat's Cradle is one of the most brilliant and important novels of the decade.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

For many years Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., has been a hero of underground literature in America.  Only recently, however, has the general public become aware of his unique genius.  His is a far-out imagination which always winds up right on target, an irresistible humor with a superb cutting edge, a storytelling talent that makes reading a pleasure as well as a mind-jolting experience.  He is, as Graham Greene has declared, "one of he best living American writers."

Vonnegut is "the comic of poet weightlessness, the magician who freshens for a time, in grown-ups, knowledge of the insides of unsettledness...  The grand old Vonnegutian comedy of causelessness's still holds center stage...  This very good writer is good medicine."  - The New York Times Book Review

WATCH OUT FOR LIFE.  IT'LL GET YA!

In the euphoria of colossal innocence, he shot a bullet in the air.  By the time if fell to earth, twelve-year-old Rudy Waltz was condemned as a double murderer; whose ultimate fate rested on a radioactive mantelpiece, and his father, who - in his salad days - had found his best and only friend in a hapless young art student, Adolf Hitler.  It was an odd beginning, if not an auspicious one.  What can you expect when you're born in an Ohio city destined to be depopulated by a "friendly" neutron bomb?  And - after all - it was only the beginning.  As for the rest, ask Rudy, forever to be known as...

DEADEYE DICK

"First-class Vonnegut!"  - Associated Press

"A marvelous entertainment...  The author of Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five has never offered a more wacky view of the world."  - People

"A moving fable of passive resistance.  Vonnegut, sweet cynic and ugly duckling, continues to write gentle swan songs for our uncivil society."  - Playboy

A BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB SELECTION

GALÁPAGOS
KURT VONNEGUT TAKES YOU BACK ONE MILLION YEARS.  TO A.D. 1986 - AND THE BEGINNING OF THE HUMAN RACE.

KURT VONNEGUT LIVES AND WORKS ON THE ISLAND OF MANHATTAN.  HE WAS BORN IN INDIANAPOLIS IN 1922 AND HOLDS A MASTER'S DEGREE IN ANTHROPOLOGY FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.  HE HAS BEEN TO THE GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS ON A CRUISE.

God bless you, Mr. Rosewater

Eliot Rosewater, drunk, volunteer fireman, and President of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation is the hero of this darkly-humored comic masterpiece.  In the stringently irrelevant story of a man filled with total love for humanity, and tormented by a maddeningly sane vision of society, the author has created a wild, brilliant, etched-in-acid portrayal of the greed, hypocrisy, waste and folly of modern man.  Once again Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., has written a novel that stands head, heart and funnybone above all others on the scene today.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

For many years Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., has been a hero of underground literature in America.  Only recently, however, has the general public become aware on his unique genius.  His is a far-out imagination which always winds up right on target, an irresistible humor with a superb cutting edge, a storytelling talent that makes reading a pleasure as well as a mind-jolting experience.  He is, as Graham Green has declared, "one of the best living American writers."

"VINTAGE VONNEGUT!" - Time magazine

"JAILBIRD DEFINATELY MOUNTS UP ON ANGELIC WINGS - IN ITS SPEED, IN ITS SPARKLE, AND ON ITS HIGH-FLYING INTENT. ...A PROFOUNDLY HUMANE COMEDY." - Chicago Tribune Book World

"A GEM... A MATURE, IMAGINATIVE NOVEL, - POSSIBLY THE BEST HE HAS WRITTEN....  JAILBIRD IS A GUIDED TOUR DE FORCE OF AMERICA.  TAKE IT!" - Playboy

THERE ARE ENOUGH KERNELS IN JAILBIRD TO FEED THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF AN INTELLECTUALLY RAVENOUS WORLD." - Los Angeles Times

HE IS OUR STRONGEST WRITER... THE MOST STUBBORNLY IMAGINATIVE.  HE IS UNIQUE AND WISE, GRACEFUL AND KIND, AND HE CAN FOOL YOU BY HOW 'EASY' HE IS TO READ." - John Irving, author of The World According to Garp

A BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB DUAL
MAIN SELECTION

Player Piano

Want the computer to solve all your problems?  Want machines to give you everything you need?  Want to be taken care of from cradle to grave by an industrial society that knows what is best for you?  Want to find out what hell is really like?

Then you are invited to visit Kurt Vonnegut's funny and savage vision of a future that is somewhere between Animal Farm and Alive in Wonderland.  You'll until you cry.

Kurt Vonnegut, jr.

For many years Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., has been a hero of underground literature in America.  Only recently, however, has the general public become aware on his unique genius.  His is a far-out imagination which always winds up right on target, an irresistible humor with a superb cutting edge, a storytelling talent that makes reading a pleasure as well as a mind-jolting experience.  He is, as Graham Green has declared, "one of the best living American writers."

From amazon.com:

The Sirens of Titan (1959) is Vonnegut's second novel and was on the Hugo ballot with Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers but lost in what Harlan Ellison has called a monumental injustice. Sirens of Titan is a picaresque novel which almost defies being synposized; it is an interplanetary Candide (lacking perhaps Voltaire's utter bitterness), the book follows lead character Malachi Constant, a feckless but kind-hearted millionaire as he moves through the solar system on his quest for the meaning of all existence.

Constant is aided by another tycoon, Winston Rumfoord, who with the help of aliens has actually discovered the fundamental meaning of life (the retrieval of an alien artifact with an inscribed message of greetings). With the assistance of Salo, an alien root and overseeing the alien race, the Tralmafadorians (who also feature in Slaughterhouse-Five), Constant attempts to find some cosmic sense and order in the face of universal malevolence. Together Constant and Rumfoord deal with the metaphysics of "chrono-synclastic infundibula", they deal with the interference of the Tralmafadorians; the novel is pervaded by a goofy, episodic charm which barely shields the readers (or the characters) from the sense of a large and indifferent universe.

All of Vonnegut's themes and obsessions (which are further developed and/or recycled in later work) are evident here in this novel which is more hopeful than most of Vonnegut's canon. It is suggested that ultimately Constant learns that only it is impossible to learn, and that fate (and the Tralmafodorians) are impenetrable, unavoidable circumstance.

On the basis of this novel, Vonnegut was wholly claimed by the science fiction community (as witnessed by the Hugo nomination), but Vonnegut did not likewise wish to claim the community for himself and the feelings were not reciprocal. He felt from the outset that being identified as a science fiction writer could only limit his audience and trivialize his themes. His recurring character, the hack science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout (who also features in Slaughterhouse-Five), represented to Vonnegut the worst case scenario of the writer he did not wish to become.

"BOTH FUNNY AND SAD... JUST ABOUT PERFECT!"
- LOS ANGELES TIME

KURT VONNEGUT
is a master of contrmporary American literature.  His black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America's attention in The Sirens of Titan in 1959 and established him as "a true artist"* with Cat's Cradle in 1963.  He is, as Graham Green has declared, "one of the best living American writers."

SLAPSTICK
presents an apocalyptic vision seen through the eyes of the current King of Manhattan (and last President of the United States), a wickedly irreverent look at the all-too-possible results of today's follies.  But even the end of life-as-we-know-it is transformed by Vonnegut's pen into hilarious farce - a final slapstick that may be the Almighty's joke on us all.

"VONNEGUT'S ONGOING PUPPET SHOW... THE FABULOUS IS REBORN."  - John Updike

"IMAGINATIVE AND HILARIOUS... A BRILLIANT VISION OF OUR WRECKED, WACKED OUT FUTURE!"  - Hartford Courant

* The New York Times

SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE
"KURT VONNEGUT, JR. HAS WRITTEN ONE OF THE MAJOR NOVELS OF THE YEAR... HAUNTING... IRRESISTIBLE READING... POIGNANT AND HILARIOUS, THREADED WITH COMPASSION AND, BEHIND EVERYTHING, THE CATARACT OF A THUNDERING MORAL STATEMENT... WORK OF ART."
Boston Globe

"SPLENDID ART AND SIMPLICITY... NERVE-RACKING CONTROL... A FUNNY BOOK AT WHICH YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO LAUGH, A SAD BOOK WITHOUT TEARS, A TALE TOLD IN A SLAUGHTERHOUSE."
Life Magazine

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
With Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., took center stage as one of America's most important writers, and went on to produce such best sellers as Breakfast of Champions, Deadeye Dick, and Galápagos.