Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut

Book excerpt: This volume contains reviews of Vonnegut's major works and essays surveying his career and the history of scholarship on his fiction. The essays show an author preoccupied with life's apparent lack of meaning and purpose, with war and human suffering, and with the precariousness of human psychological and physical survival. Topics covered include: Vonnegut's use of literary devices such as defamiliarization and the hero monomyth; and the theme of the artificially created extended family as a bulwark against loneliness. Of particular interest are Robert Scholes' "Kurt Vonnegut and Black Humor"; David Cowart's "Culture and Anarchy: Vonnegut's Later Career"; and Kathryn Hume's "Kurt Vonnegut and the Myths and Symbols of Meaning." ISBN 0-8161-8893-9: $38.00.