Download or read book Posthumanism in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut written by Andrew Hicks and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-18 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Posthumanism in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut: Matter That Complains So re-examines the prevailing critical consensus that Kurt Vonnegut was a humanist writer. While more difficult elements of his work have often been the subject of scholarly attention, the tendency amongst critics writing on Vonnegut is to disavow them, or to subsume them within a liberal humanist framework. When Vonnegut’s work is read from a posthumanist perspective, however, the productive paradoxes of his work are more fully realised. Drawing on New Materialist, Eco-Critical and Systems Theory methodologies, this book highlights posthumanist themes in six of Vonnegut’s most famous novels, and emphasises the ways in which Vonnegut troubles human/non-human, natural/artificial, and material/discursive hierarchical binaries

Download or read book Matter that Complains So written by Andrew Hicks and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book 2BR02B written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by The Floating Press. This book was released on 2011-08-01 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Regarded by critics and fans alike as one of the most accomplished and witty social commentators of the twentieth century, all of Kurt Vonnegut's unique strengths as a writer shine in the short fiction piece 2BR02B. The title is a clever take on Hamlet's famous rhetorical question, "To be or not to be?" In this brave new world, it's the phone number one calls to schedule an assisted suicide or termination -- both of which are commonplace occurrences in a time when the population is strictly controlled by government mandate.

Download or read book Humanisms in Kurt Vonnegut written by Alexander Heath and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 59 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The literature of American author Kurt Vonnegut, from the idyllic society of 1950s post-war America in his earliest unpublished stories to his ultimate confrontation with an America run by "sickies" in 2005's A Man Without a Country, displays remarkable philosophical consistency which embodies Vonnegut's unique Humanism. A middle-class mentality helps define Vonnegut's emphasis on the importance of human compassion and common decency, his career's most consistent and recurring theme. In this thesis, "Humanisms in Kurt Vonnegut," I discuss many of Vonnegut's unpublished short stories made available through the Kurt Vonnegut Collection at Indiana University's Lilly Library in Bloomington, IN. With the aid of a Florida State University Bess H. Ward Honors Thesis Grant, I traveled in October of 2007 to research for a week these important unpublished documents. At the Lilly Library I studied nearly one hundred unpublished stories for the purpose of examining Vonnegut's early elements of Humanism and situating these stories within the larger context of Vonnegut's published work. The thesis is composed of four chapters which focus on American 1950s culture, World War Two, science-fiction, the notion of "progress," Post-Humanism, and evolution.

Download or read book God Bless You Dr Kevorkian written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Slapstick's "Turkey Farm" to Slaughterhouse-Five's eternity in a Tralfamadorean zoo cage with Montana Wildhack, the question of the afterlife never left Kurt Vonnegut's mind. In God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Vonnegut skips back and forth between life and the Afterlife as if the difference between them were rather slight. In thirty odd "interviews," Vonnegut trips down "the blue tunnel to the pearly gates" in the guise of a roving reporter for public radio, conducting interviews: with Salvatore Biagini, a retired construction worker who died of a heart attack while rescuing his schnauzer from a pit bull, with John Brown, still smoldering 140 years after his death by hanging, with William Shakespeare, who rubs Vonnegut the wrong way, and with socialist and labor leader Eugene Victor Debs, one of Vonnegut's personal heroes. What began as a series of ninety-second radio interludes for WNYC, New York City's public radio station, evolved into this provocative collection of musings about who and what we live for, and how much it all matters in the end. From the original portrait by his friend Jules Feiffer that graces the cover, to a final entry from Kilgore Trout, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian remains a joy.

Download or read book Lucky Mud Other Foma written by Christina Jarvis and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2022-11-22 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating deep dive into Kurt Vonnegut’s oeuvre and legacy, illuminating his unique perspective on environmental stewardship and our shared connections as humans, Earthlings, and stardust. Vonnegut’s major apocalyptic trio—Cat’s Cradle, Slapstick, and Galápagos—prompt broad global, national, and species-level thinking about environmental issues through dramatic and fantastic scenarios. This book, Lucky Mud and Other Foma, tells the story of the origins and legacy of what Kurt Vonnegut understood as “planetary citizenship” and explores key roots, influences, literary techniques, and artistic expressions of his interest in environmental activism through his writing. Vonnegut saw writing itself as an act of good citizenship, as a way of “poisoning” the minds of young people “with humanity . . . to encourage them to make a better world.” Often that literary activism meant addressing real social and environmental problems—polluted water, soil, and air; racial and economic injustice; isolating and dehumanizing technologies; and lives and landscapes desolated by war. Vonnegut’s remedies took many forms, from the redemptive power of the arts to artificial extended families to vital communities and engaged democracies. Reminding us of our shared connections as humans, as Earthlings, as stardust, Lucky Mud helps fans, scholars, and book lovers of all kinds experience how Vonnegut’s writings purposely challenge readers to think, create, and love.

Download or read book Racism and Xenophobia in Early Twentieth Century American Fiction written by Wisam Abughosh Chaleila and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Melting Pot," "The Land of The Free," "The Land of Opportunity." These tropes or nicknames apparently reflect the freedom and open-armed welcome that the United States of America offers. However, the chronicles of history do not complement that image. These historical happenings have not often been brought into the focus of Modernist literary criticism, though their existence in the record is clear. This book aims to discuss these chronicles, displaying in great detail the underpinnings and subtle references of racism and xenophobia embedded so deeply in both fictional and real personas, whether they are characters, writers, legislators, or the common people. In the main chapters, literary works are dissected so as to underline the intolerance hidden behind words of righteousness and blind trust, as if such is the norm. Though history is taught, it is not so thoroughly examined. To our misfortune, we naively think that bigoted ideas are not a thing we could become afflicted with. They are antiques from the past – yet they possessed many hundreds of people and they surround us still. Since we’ve experienced very little change, it seems discipline is necessary to truly attempt to be rid of these ideas.

Download or read book Kurt Vonnegut written by Jerome Klinkowitz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on his experiences as a young man in the Great Depression and the Second World War, Kurt Vonnegut created a new style of fiction responsive to the post-war world and unique in its appeal to both popular audiences and avant-garde critics. His work was profoundly innovative and yet perfectly lucid. In this comprehensive introductory study, originally published in 1982, Jerome Klinkowitz traces Vonnegut’s influences within the American middle class, his early efforts as a short-story writer for magazines in the 1960s and his startling and unprecedented success as a bestselling experimental novelist with Slaughterhouse-Five. His self-consciously moral posture led to readers throughout the world accepting him as their spokesman for humane values, a role which Klinkowitz considers within the context of his work.

Download or read book Objects and Intertexts in Toni Morrison s Beloved written by Maureen E. Ruprecht Fadem and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Objects and Intertexts in Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”: The Case for Reparations is an inspired contribution to the scholarship on one of the most influential American novels and novelists. The author positions this contemporary classic as a meditation on historical justice and re-comprehends it as both a formal tragedy— a generic translation of fiction and tragedy or a “novel-tragedy” (Kliger)—and a novel of objects. Its many things—literary, conceptual, linguistic— are viewed as vessels carrying the (hi)story and the political concerns. From this, a third conclusion is drawn: Fadem argues for a view of Beloved as a case for reparations. That status is founded on two outstanding object lessons: the character of Beloved as embodiment of the subject-object relations defining the slave state and the grammatical object “weather” in the sentence “The rest is...” on the novel’s final page. This intertextual reference places Beloved in a comparative link with Hamlet and Oresteia. Fadem’s research is meticulous in engaging the full spectrum of tragedy theory, much critical theory, and a full swathe of scholarship on the novel. Few critics take up the matter of reparations, still fewer the politics of genre, craft, and form. This scholar posits Morrison’s tragedy as constituting a searing critique of modernity, as composed through meaningful intertextualities and as crafted by profound “thingly” objects (Brown). Altogether, Fadem has divined a fascinating singular treatment of Beloved exploring the connections between form and craft together with critical historical and political implications. The book argues, finally, that this novel’s first concern is justice, and its chief aim to serve as a clarion call for material— and not merely symbolic—reparations.

Download or read book Practising the Posthumanities written by Erica Brown Moore and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis demonstrates how selected texts by J.G. Ballard--Crash (1973), Concrete Island (1974) and High-Rise 1975)--and Kurt Vonnegut--Player Piano (1952), Slaughterhouse-Five(1969) and Galápagos (1985)--can be considered in terms of theoretical stances derived from posthumanism. By analysing representations of the 'human' in relation to both the 'machine' and the 'evolutionary human animal', this thesis illustrates the emergence of the posthuman subject. In addition, by recognising the intersection between posthumanism and evolutionary theory, a wider project of this thesis involves demonstrating how the use of various theoretical approaches, from the 'humanities' and the 'sciences', contributes to the formation of a 'posthumanities' approach to literature. J.G. Ballard and Kurt Vonnegut consistently present fictional scenarios in which the lines between 'human', 'machine' and 'evolutionary animal' are disrupted and blurred. Depictions assume various triangulations and configurations: from the protagonist Ballard's auto-eroticism, to the characters of High-Rise conflating boundaries between the 'human' and the evolutionary animal that is conveyed as a constituent of human identity, as well as between the machinic environment and the human inhabitant. Further,comparable configurations characterise Vonnegut's texts: Player Piano's Paul Proteus' war against the machine is superimposed by human affiliation with the machine, and the castaway characters of Galápagos are stranded by evolutionary forces that displace human authority and control to the uttermost limit. Each of these instances contributes to the effective intervention of posthumanist thinking when reading the texts. In addition, the utilisation of evolutionary concepts derived from contemporaneous publications circulating in the cultural and scientific sphere highlights the usefulness of acknowledging sources from beyond the remit of traditional literary studies' methodologies when reading texts. The triangulation between literature, posthumanism and evolutionary theory results in a reconfigured methodological approach to fictional texts: the posthumanities.

Download or read book Slapstick or Lonesome No More written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-02-23 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Manhattan has become the Island of Death. The former President of the United States stands barefoot in a purple toga around a cooking fire in the lobby of the Empire State Building. He is Dr Wilbur Daffodil-II Swain and Slapstick or Lonesome No More! is his story – one of monstrous twins, orgies, revenge, golf, utopian schemes, and very little tooth brushing. In this post-apocalyptic black comedy – dedicated to Laurel and Hardy – Vonnegut is at his most hilarious, grotesque, and personal.

Download or read book Who Am I This Time written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Dramatic Publishing. This book was released on 1970 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book 2 B R 0 2 B written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by . This book was released on 2017-08-19 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this chilling short-story by a master of the craft, Kurt Vonnegut creates a fictional world of the future where life and death are no longer matters of individual choice or destiny. The title refers to the famous quote from Hamlet, "To be or not to be...." with "0" being pronounced as "naught." It also refers to the eternal dilemma of life and death that face every human being at some point in their lives.Written in 1962 it is set in some unspecified time in the future, when earth has become a Utopia. The population is under control, there is no poverty, suffering or even natural death. Man has conquered all. It's common for humans to live for two centuries or more. Death happens only when someone requests it. 2BR02B in the story is the telephone number that volunteers must call when they are ready for assisted suicide. It belongs to the Federal Bureau of Termination which decides that for every child born, one person must volunteer to die. However, all is not perfect in this paradise - human beings still retain a spark of humanity and yearn for freedom.When the story opens, Edward Wehling, a youngish father-to-be is waiting for his wife to give birth. What follows is both spine-chilling and eerie. It makes you introspect about the future of humankind, whether the earth can sustain itself at the pace at which population is growing and about the ethics of concepts like assisted suicide. The reader pauses to wonder whether greater common good can replace love and the individual.2BR02B has memorable characters like the nameless two-hundred-year-old painter, the genial Dr Hitz who created the first population control gas-chamber and Leora Duncan a gas-chamber hostess.Apart from these, the story explores Vonnegut's favorite anti-establishment ideas, where the government is seen as the enemy of personal freedom. Art in the future, according to Vonnegut, will become dull, commercialized and prescribed by the state. Creativity and individual expression will die out along with other freedoms. Technology and scientific advancements will render simple human concepts of compassion and love redundant.Though the story is a trifle dated (it refers to the year 2000 as the year in which population control systems were first imposed, and the earth had run out of food and water) it is an interesting one that appeals to readers of all ages. In this chilling short-story by a master of the craft, Kurt Vonnegut creates a fictional world of the future where life and death are no longer matters of individual choice or destiny. The title refers to the famous quote from Hamlet, "To be or not to be...." with "0" being pronounced as "naught." It also refers to the eternal dilemma of life and death that face every human being at some point in their lives.Written in 1962 it is set in some unspecified time in the future, when earth has become a Utopia. The population is under control, there is no poverty, suffering or even natural death. Man has conquered all. It's common for humans to live for two centuries or more. Death happens only when someone requests it. 2BR02B in the story is the telephone number that volunteers must call when they are ready for assisted suicide. It belongs to the Federal Bureau of Termination which decides that for every child born, one person must volunteer to die. However, all is not perfect in this paradise - human beings still retain a spark of humanity and yearn for freedom.When the story opens, Edward Wehling, a youngish father-to-be is waiting for his wife to give birth. What follows is both spine-chilling and eerie. It makes you introspect about the future of humankind, whether the earth can sustain itself at the pace at which population is growing and about the ethics of concepts like assisted suicide. The reader pauses to wonder whether greater common good can replace love and the individual.

Download or read book Between Time and Timbuktu written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Dial Press. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An experimental television play composed of excerpts from his novels and stories, Between Time and Timbuktu features Kurt Vonnegut’s special blend of scientific expertise, wit, and penetrating comment. “Most unusual, ultra imaginative . . . a sort of cross between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alice in Wonderland.”—Philadelphia Inquirer The basic story line: Young Stony Stevenson wins a jingle contest and, as his prize, is blasted off into the time-space warp. The country’s first poet-astronaut thus experiences both past and future human history simultaneously. His observations on it consist mainly of dramatized selections from the author’s works. The result is a unique Vonnegut sampler cast in the form of “an excellent drama” (Pittsburgh Press).

Download or read book Timequake written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to Vonnegut's alter ego, science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a global timequake will occur in New York City on 13 February 2001. It is a moment when the universe suffers a crisis of consience. Should it expand or make a great big bang? It decides to back up a decade to 1991, making everyone in the world ten years of deja vu and a total loss of free will - not to mention reliving every nanosecond of one of the tawdriest and most hollow decades. In 1996, dead centre of the 're-run' Vonnegut is wrestling again with Timequake I, a book he couldn't write the first time and won't be able to now. As he struggles, he addresses, with his trademark wicked wit, the relationship between memory and deja vu, humanism, sucicide, the Great Depression and World War Two as the last generational character builders, the loss of American eloquence, the obsolescent thrill of reading books, and what 'extended family' really means.

Download or read book Slapstick Or Lonesome No More written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Dell Publishing Company. This book was released on 1989 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Slapstick presents an apocalyptic vision seen through the eyes of the current King of Manhattan (and last President of the United States), a wickedly irreverent look at the all-too-possible results of today's follies. But even the end of life-as-we-know-it is transformed by Vonnegut's pen into hilarious farce--a final slapstick that may be the Almighty's joke on us all.

Download or read book Galapagos written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Dell Publishing Company. This book was released on 1988 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Observed by a ghost of the Vietnam War for one million years, the descendants of survivors of a cruise to the Galapagos Archipielago prove Darwin's Theory of Evolution