The Vonnegut Statement: Original Essays on the life and Work of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. With A Bibliography.

With the great popular and critical success of Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and his earlier novels, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. has emerged as a major American writer. He has also written plays, films, stories, essays, and personal journalism for McCall’s, Collier’s, The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, and other popular magazines, all of which are studied here for their contribution to Vonnegut’s world. The Vonnegut Statement confronts the difficult task of explaining a living and productive author—how his works came into being, why they became popular, and what may be the clues to their artistic success. Fourteen authorities on different aspects of the writer’s career have pooled their efforts to produce a complete and coherent picture of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. as both a public figure and a literary figure, concluding with an assessment of his work. Vonnegut’s popular acceptance as a paperback writer, as a nationally prominent personality, and as a hero of college youth is studied alongside his own development from college and popular magazine writing to his current status as one of the significant novelists of our time. Jerome Klinkowitz has researched the facts of Vonnegut’s publication and popularity. Dan Wakefield has written a personal essay from the view of a fellow writer and friend. The critic Robert Scholes deals with Vonnegut’s early writing as an undergraduate and also conducts an interview with the author. John Somer, with several other contributors, sums up the achievement of Vonnegut’s literary art. The Vonnegut Statement begins with a consideration of Kurt Vonnegut himself—"the artistic canary in a cathouse"—and concludes with a study of his cry on the last page of his most recent novel: “Poo-tee-weet?”