Kurt Vonnegut (Bloom's Modern Critical Views), New Edition

207 Pages·2009·1.85 MB·English

by  Harold Bloom (Editor)

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Bloom’s Modern Critical Views
KuRT VONNEGuT
New Edition
Edited and with an introduction by
Harold Bloom
Sterling Professor of the Humanities
Yale university
Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Kurt Vonnegut—New Edition
Copyright ©2009 by Infobase Publishing
Introduction ©2009 by Harold Bloom
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kurt Vonnegut / edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom.—New ed.
p. cm.—(Modern critical views)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60413-167-3 (alk. paper)
1. Vonnegut, Kurt—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Science fiction, American—History
and criticism. I. Bloom, Harold.
PS3572.O5Z7534 2008
813’.54—dc22
2008037161
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Contents
Editor’s Note vii
Introduction 1
Harold Bloom
Vonnegut’s Melancholy 3
Kathryn Hume
History and Story:
Leon Trout’s Double Narrative in Galápagos 19
Oliver W. Ferguson
Sensational Implications:
Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano (1952) 29
Donald E. Morse
The “Black Frost” Reception of Kurt Vonnegut’s
Fantastic Novel Breakfast of Champions (1973) 41
Donald E. Morse
Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan:
Human Will in a Newtonian
Narrative Gone Chaotic 53
Mónica Calvo Pascual
v
vi Contents
Leakings: Reappropriating Science Fiction
—The Case of Kurt Vonnegut 65
Tamás Bényei
Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano;
or, “Would You Ask EPICAC
What People Are For?” 87
Peter Freese
Surviving the Perpetual Winter:
The Role of Little Boy in Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle 127
Fumika Nagano
“This Promising of Great Secrets”:
Literature, Ideas, and the (Re)Invention of Reality in Kurt
Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater,
Slaughterhouse-Five, and Breakfast of Champions
Or “Fantasies of an Impossibly Hospitable World”:
Science Fiction and Madness in
Vonnegut’s Troutean Trilogy 143
Josh Simpson
Evolutionary Mythology in the
Writings of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 155
Gilbert McInnis
“A Launching Pad of Belief”:
Kurt Vonnegut and Postmodern Humor 171
Kevin Brown
Chronology 179
Contributors 183
Bibliography 185
Acknowledgments 189
Index 191
Editor’s Note
My Introduction briefly but admiringly considers both Slaughterhouse-Five
and Cat’s Cradle, noting that Vonnegut was at work rewriting the wonder-
ful Book of Jonah throughout his literary career. As an acquaintance of
Vonnegut, I found him to be as kind and generous a person as I have ever
known.
Kathryn Hume offers a retrospective view of Vonnegut, noting his be-
nign stance, while Oliver W. Ferguson admires the narrative perplexities of
Galápagos.
The dystopia of Player Piano is studied by Donald E. Morse, after which
he contemplates the negative reception of Breakfast of Champions.
Mónica Calvo Pascual finds in The Sirens of Titan a desperate defense of
free will, while Tamás Bényei salutes risk-taking in Breakfast of Champions.
Player Piano, Vonnegut’s first novel, is read by Peter Freese as a know-
ing prelude, after which Fumika Nagano concentrates on the Little Boy of
Cat’s Cradle.
Josh Simpson, admiring Vonnegut’s trilogy, dwells on the frontiers of
schizophrenia in that trio of fantasies.
The theory of evolution is hailed as Vonnegut’s quasi-theology by Gil-
bert McInnis, while in this volume’s final critique Kevin Brown assesses
Vonnegut’s particular mode of humor.
vviiii

HAROLD BLOOM
Introduction
kurt vonnegut (1922–2007)
O
n December 19, 1944, Kurt Vonnegut was captured by the Germans
during the Battle of the Bulge; he was twenty-two years old. Sent to Dresden,
he survived the firebombing of the city on February 13–14, 1945, in which
135,000 Germans were killed. That is the biographical context (in part) for
the novel, Slaughterhouse-Five; or The Children’s Crusade (1969).
Since Vonnegut had begun publishing novels in 1952, it is clear that
nearly a quarter-century had to go by before the trauma of 1945 could be
transmuted into the exorcism of Slaughterhouse-Five. I have just reread the
novel after thirty years, remembering my shocked admiration for it when it
first appeared, and not looking forward to encountering it again. As it should,
Slaughterhouse-Five remains a very disturbed and disturbing book, and still
moves me to troubled admiration. I prefer Cat’s Cradle, but Slaughterhouse-
Five may prove to be an equally permanent achievement.
The shadow of Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night never quite leaves
Vonnegut’s starker works, including Slaughterhouse-Five. I myself read the
anti-Semetic Céline with loathing; one sees what is strong in the writing, but
a Jewish literary critic is hardly Céline’s ideal audience. So it goes.
It is difficult to comment upon Slaughterhouse-Five without being
contaminated by its styles and procedures, which is necessarily a tribute to
the book. In “structure” (an absurd term to apply to almost any novel by
Vonnegut), Slaughterhouse-Five is a whirling medley, and yet it all coheres.
Billy Pilgrim, as a character, does not cohere, but that is appropriate, since his
schizophrenia (to call it that) is central to the book.
11