At Millennium's End: New Essays on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791449300 ISBN 13: 9780791449301

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 2001

Synopsis

Collected essays by noted scholars covering the breadth and influence of Kurt Vonnegut's literature.

“When I look back at my incredibly lucky career as a writer, it seems that there was never time to think. It was as though I were skiing down a steep and hazardous mountain slope. When I look back at the marks my skis made in the snow on the way down, I only now realize that I wrote again and again about people who behaved decently in an indecent society.” ― From the Foreword by Kurt Vonnegut

At Millennium’s End looks back over the body of Kurt Vonnegut’s writing, examining the novels, essays, and short stories of one of the century’s most beloved and widely read authors and social critics. It also looks forward, projecting Vonnegut’s relevance to the next millennium. The essays, by noted Vonnegut scholars and personal friends, are each written from the perspective of someone familiar with Vonnegut’s entire canon.

About this title

About the Author

Kevin Alexander Boon is Assistant Professor of English at Penn State Mont Alto. His previous books include Absolute Zero and Chaos Theory and the Interpretation of Literary Texts: The Case of Kurt Vonnegut.

From Publishers Weekly

The prolific novelist, essayist and short story writer Kurt Vonnegut occupies an ambiguous position in the canon of postmodern American literature. Unclassifiable as either lowbrow or highbrow, his works teem with apocalyptic visions and alienated heroes; they are rarely studied in an academic context, which makes this collection something of an oddity. This volume, edited by Boon, who teaches American studies at SUNY-Maritime, mainly covers what will be familiar territory for Vonnegut fans: his obsession with humanity's loss of morality in the machine age and the certainty of technological disaster, and his reluctance to be labeled a science-fiction writer. Half of the essays consider (at more length than might have been thought possible) Vonnegut's relationship to technology and humanism. The rest cover a hodgepodge of topics, ranging from Vonnegut's use of quantum theory to his relationship to Hemingway and his translation into film. The collection suffers somewhat from a case of academic myopia; it seems ironic that Vonnegut, one of the most deft stylists of his time, could inspire an observation like this: "Either Vonnegut is celebrating the dualistic ascendancy of the body or, far more probably, the indivisibility of the body-soul unity, with `body' and `soul,' like `form' and `content,' being two different ways of talking about the same irreducible thing." Though Vonnegut may yet become a more central figure of academic study, this collection does little to further the case. For most of his readers it will mainly serve as a reminder that the pleasures of reading Vonnegut himself easily eclipse the pleasures of reading his dry expositors.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0791449300
• ISBN 13: 9780791449301
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 216
• Editor: Boon Kevin Alexander