Asked how he's doing, Kurt Vonnegut says, "I'm mad about being old and I'm mad about being American. Apart from that, OK."
Thus starts the interview with Kurt Vonnegut at AlterNet.
I recently reread (after at least 20 years) God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and found it wonderfully comic and dark, the mix that saturates most of this writer's works.
<-- bookslut
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Coincidentally,I was just thumbing through my Vonneguts and resolved to reread Venus On the Halfshell, by "Kilgore Trout," maybe my favorite (and it's real short). Over the years V just became too bitter and cynical and the balance you mention went away in the later writing.
2 - Bill Sherman
Didn't Philip Jose Farmer (Peoria's finest) write that 'un, using the Trout persona?
3 - Eric Olsen
I was under the impression it was Vonnegut himself - am I wrong? This would be startling!
4 - Bill Sherman
Yup, according to the Philip Jose Farmer home page, Farmer (who has also written pastiches of Edgar Rice Burroughs & Kenneth "Doc Savage" Robeson) wrote Venus on the Half Shell after getting permission from Vonnegut to use the Trout name. The resultant credits confusion apparently led to some hard feelings and misunderstandings between the two authors, which Farmer describes in the Bantam paperback reissue of Venus.
Personal favorite Vonneguts: Rosewater and Slaughterhouse Five.