FAQ for alt.books.kurt-vonnegut

Official FAQ for alt.books.kurt-vonengut

This is the official FAQ for the usenet newsgroup alt.books.kurt-vonnegut.

Maintained by Chris Huber (Durham, NC USA)

Version 3.21 (11/09/03)

Copyright (c) 1995 by George A. Cooley and Glenn Kurtzrock, 1996 by George A. Cooley, 1998-2003 by Chris Huber. All rights reserved. This document may be freely distributed in its entirety provided this copyright notice is not removed. It may not be sold for profit or incorporated in commercial products without the authors' written permission.

Questions & Answers · Translation · Credits · Revision History

Quick Index to Frequently Asked Questions

And Now: The Answers!

1. Who is Kurt Vonnegut?

Kurt Vonnegut was born on Armistice Day (November 11, 1922 - or Veterans Day, as we call it now [read Mother Night by KV for more on Armistice Day]) in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is, among other things, a writer of science fiction and satire (and the occasional dictionary review). A true master of contemporary American literature, he is the author of many highly acclaimed books, and dozens of short stories and essays. Among his most known works are The Sirens of Titan (1959), Cat's Cradle (1963), and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).

2. What has he written?

Here, in chronological order, is a record of Vonnegut's publications (not counting uncollected short stories and nonfiction) from Jerome Klinkowitz's Vonnegut in Fact: The Public Spokesmanship of Personal Fiction (Columbia, SC, 1998).

Novels

Player Piano. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952.
The Sirens of Titan. New York: Dell, 1959.
Mother Night. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1962. New York: Harper & Row, 1966 (second edition, first hardcover publication, with a new introduction by the author).
Cat's Cradle. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965.
Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Delcacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1969.
Breakfast of Champions. New York: Delcacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1973.
Slapstick. New York: Delcacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1976.
Jailbird. New York: Delcacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1979.
Deadeye Dick. New York: Delcacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1982.
Galapagos. New York: Delcacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1985.
Bluebeard. New York: Delcacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1987.
Hocus Pocus. New York: Putnam, 1990.
Timequake. New York: Putnam, 1997.

Collected Short Fiction

Canary in a Cat House. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1961.
Welcome to the Monkey House. New York: Delcacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1968.
Bagombo Snuff Box. New York: G.P. Putnam Sons, 1999.
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999.

Dramatic Works

Happy Birthday, Wanda June. New York: Delcacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1971.
Between Time and Timbuktu. New York: Delcacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1972.

Work for Children

Sun/Star/Moon. New York: Harper & Row, 1980 (with illustrations by Ivan Chermayeff).

Collected Nonfiction

Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons. New York: Delcacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1974.
Palm Sunday. New York: Delcacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1981.
Fates Worse than Death. New York: Putnam, 1991.

The definitive Vonnegut bibliography is Kurt Vonnegut: A Comprehensive Bibliography by Asa B. Pieratt, Jr., Julie Huffman-klinkowitz, and Jerome Klinkowitz (Hamden, CT: Archon Books/The Shoe String Press, Inc., 1987). Helpful in chasing Vonnegut scratching and scholarship published after 1987 are The Vonnegut Chronicles: Interviews and Essays edited by Peter J. Reed and Marc Leeds (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996) and The Vonnegut Chronicles: Interviews and Essays edited by Peter J. Reed and Marc Leeds (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996).. See also these pages: complete writings, critical bibliography on the Vonnegut Web.

3. How can I write to him?

Your best chance to contect him is via this address:

Kurt Vonnegut
c/o Donald C. Farber
Jacob Medinger & Finnegan, LLP
1270 Avenue Of The Americas
Rockefeller Center
New York, NY 10020

4. Does he surf the Web? Does he read this newsgroup?

In keeping with his take on technology as presented in Player Piano, Galapagos, and others of his writings, Kurt doesn't seem to be at all into ''this internet thing.'' Not completely unexpected, really. Thanks to our own John Dinsmore, though, he has read this FAQ (version 2.0), and had this to say about it, in a letter dated November 5, 1995:

The Internet stuff is spooky. I am of course not on line. I do remember ham radio operators though, usually in attics or basements, pallid, unsociable, and obsessed, inhabiting a spirit world, and harmless.

George Cooley responds: ''Way off. Doesn't sound like me at all. Nope. Nuh-uh. No way. My computer is in a room on the ground floor, thank you very much!''

Though Vonnegut may not be a web surfer, he has cooperated in the creation Joe Petro III's www.vonnegut.com. Those close to KV insist that this endoresement does not change the fact that he still makes no use of the Internet and has likely never seen Joe's site.

5. What about his uncollected short stories?

Vonnegut has written many many short stories for a wide variety of magazines and newspapers. His book Welcome to the Monkey House, published in 1968, is a collection of only 22 of his ''best.'' Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, published in 1999, is a collection of 23 1950s/early 60s-era writings that didn't make the initial cut when Monkey House was assembled. (For you football enthusiasts, think of the latter as the XFL of Vonnegut short fiction.)

At one point we included here William J. Herbst's list of uncollected short fiction but that is no longer necessary because Bagombo mostly swept the cupboards clean.

There may be others. Vonnegut has said that there are still a few which were missed when the publishers of Bagombo dredged the lake. If you think there is forgotten Vonnegut fiction, check a bibliography like Klinkowitz and Somer's The Vonnegut Statement (New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1973) or The Vonnegut Chronicles: Interviews and Essays edited by Peter J. Reed and Marc Leeds (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996).

6. Who wrote Venus on the Half-Shell?

This has been by far the most frequently asked question of the newsgroup. The book is attributed to Kilgore Trout, a fictional author appearing in many of Vonnegut's works. In actuality, Venus on the Half-Shell was written by Philip Jose Farmer. There have been reports from numerous sources that this is the case, and that Vonnegut and Farmer themselves have each identified Farmer as the real author. No, Kurt didn't write it. No, Kilgore Trout is not a real person. A later publication of the work even correctly names Farmer as the author. If you're looking for it, I'd recommend looking in used books stores under both the names Trout and Farmer; if you find it under Vonnegut, it's been misfiled. For fun I've collected a few reviews of Venus from main stream publications where the reviewers believed Vonnegut was the actual author.

On the subject, Chris A. Hall writes:

In the introduction to his story ''The Phantom of the Sewers'' in Riverworld and Other Stories, Farmer talks about his occasional habit of writing ''fictional author'' stories as a method of breaking writer's block. According to him, Venus on the Half-Shell was the very first of these attempts. He also says that that was him on the back cover under all that hair (actually pieces of a wig glued to his face.)

I have not made it all the way through the book, and there have been mixed reviews of it in the newsgroup. For more information see these related pages: Kilgore Trout, Reviews of Venus, and Philip Jose Farmer's version of how he came to write as Kilgore Trout.

7. Can someone tell me where to find Canary in a Cathouse?

Well, the short answer is ''lots of luck'' if you are looking for the original printing which carries collector value. Though listed under ''by the same author'' in thousands of recent publications of KV's books, this book has been out of print for years, and is rumored to be selling for over $100 a copy now. It isn't worth going after unless you are a serious collector, because all it really is is 11 of the 22 stories that are also in Welcome to the Monkey House, plus one extra, entitled ''Hal Irwin's Magic Lamp.''

So what are the twelve stories in Canary in a Cathouse? Courtesy of Jeff Rhodes, they are:

"Report on the Barnhouse Effect"
"All the King's Horses"
"D.P."
"The Manned Missiles"
"The Euphio Question"
"More Stately Mansions"
"The Foster Portfolio"
"Deer in the Works"
"Hal Irwin's Magic Lamp"
"Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog"
"Unready to Wear"
"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow"

A reprint of this collection is published as an illegal bootleg, with no collectors value, by Buccaneer Books (c. 1991).

8. Where can I find "Hal Irwin's Magic Lamp" (or similarly obscure Vonnegut short fiction)? (Or "But I've just got to read everything he's ever written!")

If you must read all the long-forgotten Vonnegut scratchings from the 1950's and early 60's, buy yourself a copy of Bagombo Snuff Box, a recently published collection of Vonnegut's 1950s-era fiction (see #5 above).

If you want to be more creative, find a copy of the first edition Canary in a Cat House or to shell out $25 for the bogus Buccaneer Books reprint (see #7 above). To see the story in its original published skin, check your local library for the original printing of Canary or for the June, 1957 issue of Cosmopolitan, on pages 92-95.

9. Who is Kilgore Trout?

Kilgore Trout is perhaps Vonnegut's fictional alter ego. He is mentioned in many of KV's books as a little known science fiction writer who is usually published in pornographic magazines and books with pictures of ''wide open beavers,'' although his stories have nothing to do with the accompanying photographs. Frequently, Vonnegut will give a synopsis of an amusing story written by Trout, as read by one of Vonnegut's main characters. Trout himself is a main character in Breakfast of Champions, (where Vonnegut actually writes himself in to his own book, and allows Trout to meet him) and in Timequake. He appears also appears in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Slaughterhouse-Five. His writings are mentioned in Jailbird and Hocus Pocus while his son Leon is the narrator of Galápagos.

10. Can you name any resources for finding rare and used Vonnegut books?

Used Vonnegut books are plentiful on sites like amazon.com, eBay or half.com. First editions can be searched for via www.bookfinder.com.

11. Didn't Vonnegut write a story using the name "Kilgore Trout" as a pseudonym?

No. See question #6, ''Who wrote Venus on the Half-Shell?''

12. What is Timequake? I heard it is his last book. Will there be other Vonnegut books?

This is Vonnegut's most recent and, perhaps, last novel.

After Timequake, scattered, previously-"uncollected" fiction from his magazine writing days in the 1950s and early-60s was dredged up and printed as Bagombo Snuff Box.

Shortly later, a series of audio essays Vonnegut did for New York Public Radio have been assembled in book form under the title, God Bless You Dr.Kevorkian.

But really now, if you are a serious Vonnegut-reader, will republished 1950s short-stories or transcribed radio talks sate your thirst?

Around 2001 certain soundings suggested Mr. Vonnegut was writing something post-Timequake. Remarks made by KV late 2003 seem to confirm ongoing work on one more novel.

13. What is The Eden Express?

Kurt's son Mark Vonnegut wrote a book, The Eden Express, about his episode with schizophrenia. I haven't read it, and though it was critically well received, there have been mixed reviews of it in the newsgroup.

14. What books have been written about Vonnegut?

Here's a selected list culled mostly from Jerome Klinkowitz's Vonnegut in Fact: The Public Spokesmanship of Personal Fiction. (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1998):

William Rodney Allen. Understanding Kurt Vonnegut. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1991.
_____, editor. Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1998),
Boon, Kevin Alexander, ed. At Millennium's End: New Essays on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001.
Lawrence R. Broer. Sanity Plea: Schizophrenia in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1989. Second edition, expanded, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994).
Richard Giannone. Vonnegut: A Preface to His Novels. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1977.
Jerome Klinkowitz. Kurt Vonnegut. London & New York: Methuen, 1982.
_____. Slaughterhouse-Five: Reforming the Novel and the World. Boston: Twayne, 1990.
Jerome Klinkowitz and John Somer.The Vonnegut Statement, edited by Jerome Klinkowitz and John Somer. New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1973
James Lundquist. Kurt Vonnegut. New York: Ungar, 1977.
Robert Merrill, ed. Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1990.
Robert Morse. The Novels of Kurt Vonnegut: Imagining Being an American. Westport, CT: 2003.

Leonard Mustazza. Forever Pursuing Genesis: The Myth of Eden in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut. Lewsiburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1990.
Peter J. Reed. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. New York: Warner, 1972.
Stanley Schatt. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Boston: Twayne, 1976.
Robert Scholes. Fabulation and Metafiction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979.
_____. "Slaughterhouse-Five," New York Times Book Review, April 6, 1969, pp. 1, 23.
Yarmolinsky. Angels without Wings. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1987.

Check the Vonnegut Web critical bibliography for a listing of over 250 more titles.

15. Have any bands been influenced by Vonnegut's writing?

Yes. Plenty of them. We keep getting posts to the group about various artists who use Vonnegut characters (and other Vonnegutian nouns) as names and/or song titles. Here's a short list:

Ambrosia worked a chapter from Cat's Cradle into their first album.
The Karabekians (Netherlands)
Billy Pilgrim
Kilgore Trout (Canadian folk)
The Nixons do a song called "Foma."
Guitarist Joe Satriani does a song called "Ice Nine." (On his album "Dreaming #11.")
The Grateful Dead publishes their music under their own company, "Ice Nine Music." They also used to own the movie rights for The Sirens of Titan before kV recently bought them back.

There is also a band called Deadeye Dick, and Ben Colmery reports that he heard Casey Kasem specifically say that they drew their name from the Vonnegut novel of the same name.

English folksinger Al Stewart wrote a song called "Sirens of Titan" in 1975. Here are the lyrics, courtesy of Peter Wieriks:

Sirens of Titan
I was drawn by the sirens of Titan
Carried along by their call
Seeking for a way to enlighten
Searching for the sense of it all
Like a kiss on the wind I was thrown to the stars
Captured and ordered in the army of Mars
Marching to the sound of the drum in my head
I followed the call

Only to be Malachi Constant
I thought I came to this earth
Living in the heart of the moment
With the riches I gained at my birth
But here in the yellow and blue of my days
I wander the endless Mercurian caves
Watching for the signs the harmoniums make
The words on the walls

I was drawn by the sirens of Titan
And so I came in the end
Under the shadow of Saturn
With statues and birds from my friends
Finding a home in the end of my days
Looking around I've only to say
I was a victim of a series of accidents
As are we all

"I adored Kurt Vonnegut, and Slaughterhouse Five and Sirens of Titan are his best books, so I just decided to put Sirens into a song. The line 'I was a victim of a series of accidents' comes from the book." -sleeve notes from Al Stewart on 1992 CD reissue.

Finally be sure to check out the most thorough record in the known world on bands influenced by Kurt Vonnegut maintained by Brian Rodriguez.

16. Where's the "flying fuck" quote from?

A favorite quote among at least a faction of the newsgroup readership, the quote is thought to have originated in Slapstick (1976.) It appears numerous times in that book, and actually becomes a bit of a plot point. The quote is "why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the mooooooooooooon?" (pp 163, among others.) But it was also found (by Kevin Brophy) in Slaughterhouse-Five. "'Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut,' murmured Paul Lazzaro in his azure nest. 'Go take a flying fuck at the moon.'" (PP 147) This is the earliest known appearance of the quote to date.

M. Andre Z Eckenrode reports, ''I'm pretty certain the quote is used in Galapagos as well. As I recall, Andrew Macintosh suggests to Zenji Hiroguchi that Zenji tell him to [insert quote], if he is the one who is upsetting Zenji. This was shortly before the two of them were killed.''

17. Have any movies been made from his books?

You bet. Elsewhere there is a page here dedicated to all manner of plays, films, and television programs written by Vonnegut and those adapted from his canon. Here we'll focus on Vonnegutian films. In chronological order:

First is Happy Birthday, Wanda June completed in 1971. I've not seen this but have heard widely that it is horrible. Of course Happy Birthday was written as a play but the movie was made by restaging, then filming, the play. Vonnegut doesn't like at all; he even tried to have his name removed from it. As he writes in Palm Sunday, "This proved to be impossible, however. I alone had done the thing the credits said I had done. I had really written the thing."
Perhaps the best (according to almost everyone including Kurt), is George Roy Hill's 1972 "Slaughterhouse Five." Starring Michael Sacks, this is a wonderful film. As kV says in Palm Sunday, "There are only two American novelists who should be grateful for the movies made from their books. I am one of them (for Slaughterhouse-Five). The other one? Margaret Mitchell, of course."
The 1983 Jerry Lewis / Madeline Kahn film "Slapstick (Of Another Kind)" is widely regarded as "just plain terrible." Interesting here is that I've heard the director, Stephen Paul, was 20 years old at the time of production.
I said Slaughterhouse-Five is perhaps the best of the Vonnegut films. "Perhaps" because Mother Night is a wonderful film. Released in 1996, the film was adapted by longtime Vonnegut compatriot Robert Weide. The closeness of author with screenwriter is clear. While Slaughterhouse-Five might be the finest Vonnegut film, Mother Night is the most faithful.
Breakfast of Champions is a Bruce Willis project that circulated in limited release in 1999.

Robert Weide is working on a documentary on Kurt Vonnegut, and also, at the request of KV, adapting The Sirens of Titan for the screen.

That's it for things tossed up on the silver screen (although Andrew Silver's 1975 black-and-white short adaptation of Front Door may count as a film). There have been lots of stage adaptations (Penelope/Happy Birthday Wanda June, Fortitude, Welcome to the Monkey House, The Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Make Up Your Mind, Miss Temptation, L'Historie du Soldat, Schlachthof 5, Slaughterhouse-Five) and things for the little box ("Auf Wiedersehen," "Between Time & Timbuktu," "Epicac," "Who Am I This Time?," "DP," "Kurt Vonnegut's Monkey House," "Harrison Bergeron").

18. What about the 'new' movie based on Breakfast of Champions?

O.K. There are good Vonnegut adaptations and then there are projects like Steven Paul's abortive Slapstick (of Another Kind). Alan Rudolph/Bruce Willis' Breakfast of Champions, released in 1999, is more Slapstick than Slaughterhouse.

19. I remember seeing a Vonnegut program on PBS in the early 1970s. Can I get a copy of the tape?

Most likely this was the National Educational Television Playhouse production of ''Between Time and Timbuktu or Prometheus-5: a space fantasy based on materials by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'' which aired on PBS March 13, 1972. It was a collage of previously published Vonnegut material directed by Fred Barzyk and starring William Hickey as the reluctant astronaut Stony Stevenson. It may have been pretty cool when it was first made, (though they ran out of money so they couldn't fix parts they knew didn't work) the program has not aged well. If you find yourself in Los Angeles or New York, you can arrange a viewing at the Museum of Television and Radio.

Can you get a copy? No.

20. Has Vonnegut been in any movies?

He appears for approximately five seconds in Back To School starring Rodney Dangerfield. He delivers an essay about himself that Dangerfield paid him to write. The essay is later graded 'F,' because, as Dangerfield's instructor (Sally Kellerman) says, ''whomever wrote this obviously knew nothing about Vonnegut!'' (paraphrase)

Vonnegut makes an interesting a cameo appearance in Mother Night and, in a related sense, has been in a few commercials. Most recently he has a small cameo in the ''Breakfast of Champions'' debacle.

21. Are there any web sites about Vonnegut?

Here is a partial list of some of the more enduring sites. Indexes of Vonnegut centered sites are also available from Google, Yahoo, Infoseek, and Brian Rodriguez.

There's some good stuff posted on The Vonnegut Web.
Peruse the Internet Movie Database for movie info on Kurt Vonnegut.
The Indiana Historical Society houses Ray E. Boomhower's "Kurt Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse-Five" essay.
More than a few of the Vonnegut pages out there are simply little collections of links that lead to other little collections of links that lead to other little collections of links.... Brian Rodriguez has no little collection of links. This is the largest, intelligently indexed, freaking collection of Vonnegutian links in the cosmos. I've often considered making a comprehensive linkography of Vonnegut but have never done it because Brian's site renders such a task redundant.
Marek Vit also has some interesting things, including some essay's he's written or gathered, and some favorite quotes.
Of course, you must drop by http://www.vonnegut.com/. It's as close to an ''official'' Kurt Vonnegut site as you'll find in that Vonnegut wrote it an introduction. Mostly it is a place to check out Vonnegut's collaborative silk-screens.
Finally, you all must know about the usenet newsgroup alt.books.kurt-vonnegut!

22. Could you please help me get a copy of Vonnegut's "sunscreen" speech at MIT?

Sure. It is available from the Chicago Tribune's Mary Schmich. Not because she is a Vonnegut archivist but because she wrote the thing.

Kurt has done his share of graduation addresses but the sunscreen piece is Mary Schmich's from her June 1, 1997 column. Somehow, in the wonder that is cyberspace, it became separated from her authorship, attributed to kV and then e-zapped unmercifully around the world. See the Sunscreen/MIT Hoax page for a complete account.

23. Where can I find full-text postings of Vonnegut's writings on the Web?

Our good friend, filmmaker Robert B. Weide, answers this one:

Two companies, Dell and Punam, have taken Vonnegut's full-text stories as they appear on the net, and have printed them out on paper, so that you don't have to stare at your computer screen. They've bound the printed pages into little cardboard covers -- even put artwork on these covers. These printed versions of the fulltext stories are now being sold in various bookstores. You can even borrow them for free at your local library. It's the latest in technology.

That's it for now. If there is any information that you feel should be in here, or if you think something is wrong or out of date, please e-mail me at chris @ vonnegutweb . com.

Any and all information and/or suggestions for improvement will be welcomed!

Last updated 11/09/03

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