Timequake - Hardcover

Vonnegut, Kurt

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399138986 ISBN 13: 9780399138980

Publisher: Putnam Adult, 1997

Synopsis

"His funniest book since Breakfast of Champions... There are nuggets of Vonnegutian wisdom throughout". -- Newsweek"Vonnegut is at his best". -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Delightful...fun...plenty of Vonnegut gems for the taking". -- Publishers Weekly

"Hilarious...unsettling...exhilarating...This work has been a blessing". -- Valerie Sayers, New York Times Book Review

"Timequake is a novel by, and starring, Kurt Vonnegut...What Vonnegut does, and no one can do better, is give a big postmodern hug...You've got to love him". -- Washington Post Book World

"Humorous, sardonic...Timequake makes for irresistible reading that's loaded with more important truths than it lets on...Moralizing has never been funnier". -- Chicago Sun-Times

There's been a timequake. And everyone -- even you -- must live the decade between February 17, 1991 and February 17, 2001 over again. The trick is that we all have to do exactly the same things as we did the first time -- minute by minute, hour by hour, year by year, betting on the wrong horse again, marrying the wrong person again. Why? You'll have to ask the old science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout. This was all his idea.

"The Mark Twain of our times". -- Atlanta Journal & Constitution

"He is a satirist with a heart, a moralist with a whoopee cushion". -- Jay McInerney, New York Times

"We are lucky in our time to have a Kurt Vonnegut to prod us, scold us, astonish us, unnerve us, entertain us, and make us laugh". -- Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Vonnegut evokes the cynical chortle, the knowing grin, the inner laughter that soothes our troubled reflections...He's mad as hell and laughing all the way to the Apocalypse". -- Playboy

About this title

Review

Think of Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut's 19th and last novel (or so he says), as a victory lap. It's a confident final trot 'round the track by one of the greats of postwar American literature. After 40 years of practice, Vonnegut's got his schtick down cold, and it's a pleasure--if a slightly tame one--to watch him go through his paces one more time.

Timequake's a mongrel; it is half novel, half memoir, the project of a decade's worth of writer's block, a book "that didn't want to be written." The premise is standard-issue Vonnegut: "...a timequake, a sudden glitch in the space-time continuum, made everybody and everything do exactly what they'd done during past decades, for good or ill, a second time..." Simultaneously, the author's favorite tricks are on display--frequent visits with the shopworn science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a Hitchcockian appearance by the author at the book's end, and frequent authorial opining on love, war, and society.

About the Author

Kurt Vonnegut, one of the most acclaimed American writers of the past century, died in New York City on April 11, 2007. He was the New York Times bestselling author of fourteen novels, including such literary classics as Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Penguin Group (USA) was fortunate to publish several of Mr. Vonnegut’s books, including the novels Timequake and Hocus Pocus as well as a collection of short fiction, Bagombo Snuff Box.

Edition details

• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0399138986
• ISBN 13: 9780399138980
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 219