| Kurt Vonnegut - who is variously known as "the Mark Twain of our times," "Doomsday Critic Laureate," "our most distinguished and indispensable grouch" - is unquestionably one of the major shapers of the way the late twentieth century views itself. As the 1900s stagger toward an end, Vonnegut looks back, examining the issues and events, both personal and cultural, that to him denote the past decade. |
With his extraordinary talent for understatement Vonnegut terms Fates Worse Than Death "a collection of essays and speeches by me, with breezy autobiographical commentary serving as connective tissue and splints and bandages." More accurately, it is a work of enormous originality, ranging freely through time, fusing memory and imagination as only a master can do.
Whether Vonnegut's subject is a death in the family, his own brush with suicidal depression, or the future of the planet; Hemingway, Reagan, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Geraldo Rivera, Salman Rushdie, or Vonnegut's architect father; Neo-Conservatism, Alcoholics Anonymous, or unicorns; the Galapagos, the firebombing of Dresden, liturgical music, or his keen interest in discovering if there is indeed a fate which qualifies as worse than death - Vonnegut's genius for turning idiosyncratic experience into universal narrative has rarely been better served.
In its boundless humanity, great good humor, and commendable frankness, Fates Worse Than Death is everything his countless devotees worldwide expect from Kurt Vonnegut.
Kurt Vonnegut, author of thirteen novels - most recently, Hocus Pocus - has also written three books of nonfiction: Welcome to the Monkey House; Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons; and Palm Sunday.
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240 page, hard cover book with dust jacket (unclipped). 1st edition/1st printing, Putnam, New York, 1991. Remainder mark on bottom, a few words are written on the last page, otherwise in near-fine condition.
Weight when packed: 650 grams |
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