A loving, intimate memoir from a lifelong friend of Kurt Vonnegut, including photos and never-before-published correspondenceWhen Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. ducked into his classroom at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in September of 1965, his jokes drew only weak laughter and a few rolled eyes. But workshop student Loree Rackstraw was quietly impressed by this “great bear of a man” and his down-to-earth sensibilities about writing.That fall, an impossible romance began between the then-unknown author and his student—a brief affair that matured into a joyful, lifelong friendship. Rackstraw distills four decades of memories and Vonnegut’s letters to her into an affectionate memoir that crackles with the creative energy of one of America’s most beloved writers.Rackstraw’s unique perspective on Vonnegut’s life and how it shaped his famous works portrays a deeply humane man who looked for the humor and absurdity in life in order to survive. And then there are Vonnegut’s own letters: Whether energetic about new projects or frustrated with the “game” of writing and selling “a gazoolian copies,” Vonnegut writes with the playful imagination and generous, accessible brilliance that have always been his trademarks.  

Product Description: Book by Vonnegut, Kurt

Product Description: Before winning international fame with Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut was a master of the drugstore paperback and the popular short story. This authoritative collection of his brilliant early work opens with Player Piano (1952), a Metropolis-like parable of breakneck technological innovation and its effect on those it robs of their livelihoods...read more

Product Description: From one of the most original narrative writers of the 20th century comes an anthology of stories full of sharp humor, fierce social criticism, and strange, diverse characters. A crazy psychiatrist-turned-counselor to the families of murder victims concocts a cruel plot to make money off of the instincts of his paranoid patients; a family discovers the consequences of telling a magical invention their deepest secrets; and a man becomes trapped in a Kafkaesque world after he gets on the bad side of the boss who dominates the underworld of a small New York town...read more

The author of Slaughterhouse Five and Jailbird jumps back and forth from the afterlife to interview Sir Isaac Newton, Clarence Darrow, William Shakespeare, and his own character, Kilgore Trout, in this humorous look at death. Reprint. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Eugene Debs Hartke (named after the famous early 20th century Socialist working class leader) describes an odyssey from college professor to prison inmate to prison warden back again to prisoner in another of Vonnegut's bitter satirical explorations of how and where (and why) the American dream begins to die...read more

Product Description: Hocus Pocus is the fictional autobiography of a West Point graduate who was in charge of the humiliating evacuation of U.S. personnel from the Saigon rooftops at the close of the Vietnam War. Returning home from the war, he unknowingly fathered an illegitimate son...read more