Kurt Vonnegut, página 2 de 8

Eliot Rosewater e l'ultimo erede della casata; suo padre ha costituito la Fondazione Rosewater con l'incarico di gestire tutti gli immensi beni di famiglia e con la clausola che la presidenza venga tramandata di erede in erede. Lo scopo e impedire che il fisco si impossessi dei soldi. Eliot, pero, dopo aver partecipato alla Seconda guerra mondiale, e diventato un uomo strano: non solo ha iniziato a bere, a vagabondare, a prestare servizio come pompiere ma ha anche iniziato a usare il denaro per aiutare la gente. Ma cosa succede quando un uomo immensamente ricco decide di aiutare i poveri, dando loro buoni consigli, e, soprattutto, tanti tanti soldi? Verra considerato un benefattore o un pazzo?

Palm Sunday is a self-portrait by an American genius. Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too human journey through life. It is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born-story teller mesmerizing us with truth.

Foreword by Dave Eggers Smart, whimsical, and often scathing, the fiction of Kurt Vonnegut influenced a generation of American writers—including Dave Eggers, author of this volume's Foreword. In these previously unpublished gems, Vonnegut's originality infuses a unique landscape of factories, trailers, and bars—and characters who pit their dreams and fears against a cruel and sometimes comically indifferent world. Here are stories of men and machines, art and artifice, and how ideals of fortune, fame, and love take curious twists in ordinary lives. An ambitious builder of roads, commanding an army of bulldozers, graders, and asphalt spreaders, fritters away his free time with miniature trains—until the women in his life crash his fantasy land. Trapped in a stenography pool, a young dreamer receives a call from a robber on the run, who presents her with a strange proposition. A crusty newspaperman is forced onto a committee to judge Christmas displays—a job that leads him to a suspiciously ostentatious ex-con and then a miracle. A hog farmer's widow receives cryptic, unsolicited letters from a man in Schenectady about "the indefinable sweet aches of the spirit." But what will she find when she goes to meet him in the flesh? These beautifully rendered works are a testament to Vonnegut's unique blend of observation and imagination. Like a present left behind by a departed loved one, While Mortals Sleep bestows upon us a shimmering Kurt Vonnegut gift: a poignant reflection of our world as it is and as it could be.

Jailbird takes us into a fractured and comic, pure Vonnegut world of high crimes and misdemeanors in government...and in the heart. This wry tale follows bumbling bureaucrat Walter F. Starbuck from Harvard to the Nixon White House to the penitentary as Watergate's least known co-conspirator. But the humor turns dark when Vonnegut shines his spotlight on the cold hearts and calculated greed of the mighty, giving a razor-sharp edge to an unforgettable portrait of power and politics in our times.

In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut's most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.

"Il libro e il racconto in prima persona di un americano trasferitosi con la famiglia in Germania dopo la prima guerra mondiale, che vi resta anche dopo la presa del potere di Hitler e diventa la voce della propaganda nazista di Goebbels per gli Stati Uniti. All''inizio e alla fine del libro il protagonista si trova in una prigione israeliana, in attesa di processo per crimini di guerra, li ripensa alla propria vita e decide di scrivere le sue memorie. Il racconto, presentato come un autentico documento storico, risulta un''attuala riflessione sulla guerra, la violenza e le loro cause. Dal libro, pubblicato nel 1961, e stato tratto anche un film interpretato da Nick Nolte nel 1996. "

A companion novel to "Slaughterhouse 5", covering similar themes and drawing on the author's experiences as a prisoner of war in Dresden. A black satire, it tells of an American spy in Germany who becomes confused by his own methods as he sends his coded messages by using pro-Nazi radio broadcasts.

A novel about people, their pleasures, pains and perversions, and money. It is a satire on insanity - a millionaire's private lunacy, the inherited obsessions of a famous family and the collective madness that grips a whole nation. The author's other novels include "Slaughterhouse 5".

Desayuno de campeones es la novela más personal, satírica y disparatada del incomparable Kurt Vonnegut. Una suerte de historia abreviada del siglo XX estadounidense en particular y de la humanidad en general, contada (e ilustrada) para niños o extraterrestres por un loco, que bien podría ser el Creador del Universo. La publicó originalmente en 1973, cuando ya era un escritor consagrado, y narra en un juego de cajas chinas el encuentro entre un grupo de personajes tan estrafalarios como entrañables con el escritor que los inventó. Novela de culto para los vonnegutianos, Desayuno de campeones es una prueba de hasta qué punto, con su irreverencia formal, el autor de Cuna de gato amplió el horizonte de posibilidades del género, y también una oportunidad para descubrir cómo son la política, el sexo, el arte, la vida y la muerte en el planeta Tierra según Kurt Vonnegut. Escuchen: "Una vez que comprendí el motivo por el que Estados Unidos se estaba transformando en un país tan peligroso e infeliz de gente que no tenía nada que ver con la vida real, decidí evitar la narración de historias. Escribiría sobre la vida. Cada persona sería tan importante como las demás. Todos los hechos tendrían el mismo peso. Nada sería excluido. Que los demás pusieran orden en el caos. Yo pondría caos en el orden, y creo que lo he logrado. Si todos los escritores hicieran eso, quizá los ciudadanos que no se dedican a la literatura comprenderían que no hay orden en el mundo que nos rodea, sino que en cambio debemos adaptarnos a los requerimientos del caos. Es difícil adaptarse al caos, pero es posible. Soy prueba viviente de ello: es posible".

This short-story collection Welcome to the Monkey House (1968) incorporates almost completely Vonneguts 1961 Canary in a Cathouse, which appeared within a few months of Slaughterhouse-Five and capitalized upon that breakthrough novel and the enormous attention it suddenly brought.Drawn from both specialized science fiction magazines and the big-circulation general magazines (Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, etc.) which Vonnegut had been one of the few science writers to sell, the collection includes some of his most accomplished work. The title story may be his most famous--a diabolical government asserts control through compulsory technology removing orgasm from sex--but Vonneguts bitterness and wit, not in his earlier work as poisonous or unshielded as it later became, is well demonstrated.Two early stories from Galaxy science fiction magazine and one from Fantasy & Science Fiction(the famous Harrison Bergeron) show Vonneguts careful command of a genre about which he was always ambivalent, stories like More Stately Mansions or The Foster Portfolio the confines and formula of a popular fiction of which he was always suspicious. Vonneguts affection for humanity and bewilderment as its corruption are manifest in these early works.Several of these stories (those which appeared in Colliers) were commissioned by Vonneguts Cornell classmate and great supporter Knox Burger, also born in 1922.

Presten atención, por favor, pues en este libro, que es la historia de mi vida hasta ahora, los personajes no son solo las personas sino los años. Mil Novecientos Trece me dio el regalo de la vida. Mil Novecientos Veintinueve desbarato la economia estadounidense. Mil Novecientos Treinta y Uno me envio a Harvard. Mil Novecientos Treinta y Ocho me consiguio mi primer empleo en el gobierno federal. Mil Novecientos Cuarenta y Seis me dio una esposa. Mil Novecientos Cuarenta y Seis me dio un hijo ingrato. Mil Novecientos Cincuenta y Tres me echo del gobierno federal. Mil Novecientos Setenta me dio un empleo en la Casa Blanca de Nixon. Mil Novecientos Setenta y Cinco me envio a la carcel por mis absurdos aportes a los escandalos politicos conocidos colectivamente como Watergate. Asi se presenta Walter F. Starbuck, el protagonista de esta novela, y asi comienza a contar su vida, inextricablemente unida a la historia de los Estados Unidos. Desde las ejecuciones de Sacco y Vanzetti hasta la voracidad de las multinacionales sin olvidarse, por supuesto, de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, Kurt Vonnegut se pasea con total libertad por el lado oscuro del siglo XX norteamericano y construye una satira magistral sobre el poder y el dinero con las herramientas que nadie dominaba mejor que el: el sarcasmo, el ingenio, la invencion, pero tambien la compasion y la ternura. Pajaro de celda es una novela cruel y cautivante, honesta y divertida, Vonnegut en estado puro.

En este libro nada es cierto. Jonás (o John) se propone investigar qué estaban haciendo los norteamericanos más destacados el día en que se arrojó la bomba en Hiroshima. Las cartas que intercambia con el hijo menor del doctor Felix Hoenikker uno de los padres de la bomba atomica lo zambullen en una intriga familiar que oculta la mas terrorifica contribucion de la ciencia a la humanidad...