Kurt Vonnegut: Novels & Stories 1950-1962 (Loa #226): Player Piano / The Sirens of Titan / Mother Night / Stories: 1 (Library of America Kurt Vonnegut Edition)

A Total collection of Vonnegut is not the worst time to spend time.

I have read Kurtz before, but was recommended the Player Piano and what an amazing story. Very much in the nature of a philosophical treaty of today, let alone 60 years ago. The American library edition is something special. A Note to self....Must save up and buy the other two volumes. His stories are interesting and off beam but fascinating.

I love it! Nice hardback book with my favorite author in it. I liked Slaughterhouse 5, but I wasn`t sure of the other books he wrote, but they are as great as that one.

Top seller. A+++. Thanks Pi

Very well presented - I really like the Library of America (LOA) editions with strong binding and built in ribbon bookmarks. An extra built in bookmark would be an advantage as I frequently refer to the extensive "notes" at the rear of the book; very handy in understanding references to events no longer current, translations of foreign words and the sources of/allusions to phrases. To content: Vonnegut's writing has always been uneven but what never fails is his lightness of touch, even with challenging topics. Like many "science fiction" writers (and he hated being called that) character development is not a top priority! I need to confess to having first read KV in "Sirens of Titan" so it always impacts above its weight for me but at any level it is a great read with its depths revealed on repeat reading. Player Piano is showing its age a little although the themes of the dignity of work are ageless - one of the challenges in reading these earlier works now is that so many more modern writers have copied/developed from these roots that the originals can look a little quaint. Mother Night is a simply-told tale with great weight - brilliant. The stories at the end are a bit light and more of collectors interest but the appendix with his own observations on his writing is well worth reading. As always, the LOA product has a chronology to go with the book so you can place his writing in the context of his life and world events. A good buy but not the best introduction to KV - for that choose the later volume with Slaughterhouse 5...or like me buy all three volumes.

The pages are thin, like in some Bibles, but this is still much better than the various paperback editions that have come out over the years.

In a review for the previous LOA collection of Vonnegut's work, I groused about them releasing his mid-career material first. I felt, and still feel, that THIS collection should've come out first. Why? Because you can see how Vonnegut developed as a writer. Vonnegut spent years toiling away in what is referred to as the "sci-fi ghetto" before hitting it big with "Slaughterhouse Five." You can see why because, with the exception of "Mother Night," all the novels and stories in this collection are science fiction in nature. Not that it's bad science fiction, but some folks aren't hip to that genre and might be turned off by that. To each his own. I feel that if you look past the science fiction aspects of these stories, you will find some truly perceptive commentary by the man buried within. Take the first novel "Player Piano" as an example. On the surface, it reads like a story of man trying to rebel against the machines that rule his life. Look deeper and you'll find that it is a commentary about man trying to regain his sense of worth and dignity in a society that no longer has a place for that sort of thing. It's about man being consigned to the scrap heap of menial labor for the rest of his life because machines have determined, as the result of being IQ tested as a youngster, that is where you belong. Or because machines can do your job more effectively than you can with technology being so advanced. Yet you can't go through advanced training to upgrade your skills to keep up with technology. No second chances. No attepts to reform. No other options whatsoever. It also skewers the importance of corporate hierarchy as well. Change some of the references regarding the technology of the time and it almost feels like a commentary on what is happening in our society today. A very prescient novel. It's fascinating to read this early stuff because you see the style Vonnegut uses in his later works early on. He already has his voice established, but you get the sense that he's trying to break out of the trappings of the science fiction genre and is working towards something bigger. Science fiction was never embraced by the literati because it lacked style: it was about concepts and ideas and the ability to tell a good story that wrapped up those concepts within itself. Vonnegut had a style that embraced the story and the concepts. In fact, the style was the concept because Vonnegut's style was observing the world and society at large with an almost cynical eye and practically saying to the audience why he's looking at things with a cynical eye, even if those things involved outer space aliens, omnipresent machinery, nazism, suburbia, or the fire bombing of Dresden. The other thing to remember about Vonnegut's style is that, despite the cynical tone, he's very funny. Also, you also have characters from these earlier books making cameo appearances in his later books. It's kind of fun, having finished reading his early stuff, to find references to people and places in his later works. It's like the easter eggs one used to find on special edition DVDs. I highly recommend this and the other collection to anybody who loves Vonnegut. These two books highlight Vonnegut at his cantankerous best. However, if you buy both books for somebody reading Vonnegut for the first time, or for somebody who hasn't read him in a long time, have that person read this collection first.

Finally read it the second time and it's even better now. Underestimated writer. Distinct style. Othrwise, the publisher did a fantastic job -- excellent advanced thin paper, nice typeset and font large enough, completed in an excellent binding. Highly recommended (and that goes for all 3 Vonnegut volumes of this superb LOA edition).

I'm a huge Vonnegut fan so of course I'm rating this highly. My only complaint is that it doesn't include all his short stories from this era (for those you need to check out Welcome To The Monkey House). Still it has his early novels which are pretty damned amazing.

Mother Night ========== Vonnegut quotes from "Faust" in this novel to obtain his title. Creation is the light that came out of the chaos and darkness of "Mother Night". Vonnegut also describes his experience in the Dresden fire storm in the introduction. For me, it is evident that this novel is Vonnegut's reaction to the evil and chaos that he experienced in the world. The protagonist Howard Campbell experiences much the same. He is an American secret agent in NAZI Germany but is also the chief propagandist for teh NAZI regime. He writes and broadcasts NAZI propaganda but also sends coded messages to American intelligence in the broadcasts. He sends the codes but has no idea what the content of the coded messages are. American intelligence rescues him from war crimes prosecution after the war but refuses to acknowledge and exonerate him so he is vilified as a NAZI and hunted by Israeli agents for prosecution there. Howard Campbell is trapped in a chaos of contradictions. It is these contradictions in society that Vonnegut explores in this novel. What is the source of this chaos? Can guilt be assigned?. Sirens of Titan =========== This novel concentrates on some favorite themes of Vonnegut; those of inequality, luck, happenstance and indifference to others. The novel is very similar in terms of them and characterization to "Slaughterhouse 5" and in terms of the themes of inequality and indifference to "Player Piano". Vonnegut was born in 1922 and so was a member of the generation that grew up in the Great Depression and entered adulthood during World War 2. I don't find it surprising then that this novel points out the degree with which luck and happenstance are behind much of the apparent success of individuals in society. people. He saw action in WW2. He saw masses of people being killed by simply being in the wrong place. He saw the indifference to life that marks war. What then is the purpose of life? Why are we alive. How do we confront the meaningless that is behind existence? In the novel, human civilization is directed by Tanfalmadorians to function as a means of sending messages to the pilot of a disabled space ship on the Saturn moon Triton. Malachi Constant is distressed whn he discovers this on Triton. Vonnegut proposes an answer the questions in ending of the book. That is the answer of empathy and compassion to each other. Life is inherently meaningless at its base but that does not mean that it cannot be given meaning. Salo supplies Malachi Constant with a hypnotic post suggestion that gives him comfort in the final seconds of his life. Salo is a machine that the organic inhabitants of Trnfalmadore developed to find the meaning with life. When the machines found that there was no meaning, the organic Tranfalmaorians committed mass suicide by machine. Salo, the machine, found a purpose with his development of empathy and compassion by his interaction with constant on Triton ================================ Player Piano ========== “Player Piano” is a novel written in the early 1950s. It is remarkably prescient but not particularly about the technology. In technology, It envisions an automated world of the 1950s. it fails to envision the massively interconnected Internet-based world of today. There is no inkling in it of the power and wealth of the financial industry. However, and this is the most important thing, it fully envisions the fact of and implications of the inequality that modern technology ahs created. It has brought material wealth, but it has caused a loss of the sense of purpose and meaning for large portions of the population. They have become superfluous and are being displaced both from their jobs by automation and from their homes by gentrification. “Player Piano” foresees both. The novel itself is rather slow and belaboured at times. The characters seem rather artificial and seem created only to represent certain themes. This is not Vonnegut of “Slaughterhouse 5” or “Breakfast of Champions”.