The Vonnegut Effect

Acknowledgments

xiii acknowledgments working on kurt vonnegut has been an especially pleasurable task, thanks to all the good company. In an era when the subject contemporary studies too often involves battles of the books, the mood surrounding Vonnegut has been consistently cheerful. Chiefly responsible for this is the author himself, whose life and writings serve as good examples of how community support is essential for anyone getting anything done. From John Somer, with whom I began working on Vonnegut more than a third of a century ago, to Kevin Boon and David Andrews, Vonnegut scholars younger than my children with whom I have cooperated, studying fiction by the “Grand Old Man” (as we have come to call him) has brought me in contact with some of the nicest people in the business. Loree Rackstraw, Asa Pieratt, Bob Weide, André Eckenrode—life would dull without them. Peter Reed, who published the first book on Vonnegut back in 1972, has shared other interests with me as well, including his experience as a Royal Air Force officer fascinated by the narratology of air combat memoirs from World War II. It is one of the many ironies of our times that as he was being bombed by the Luftwaffe in Britain the RAF was bombing Vonnegut in Dresden. There is no need to say “so it goes” because each survived. It is to Peter, just now winding up a long and brilliant career as a teacher, scholar, and administrator at the University of Minnesota, that this book is dedicated. Extended families start at home. My wife, Julie Huffman-klinkowitz, is a co-author (along with Asa B. Pieratt Jr. and me) of Kurt Vonnegut: A Comprehensive Bibliography (1987) and has helped research new items while keeping our Vonnegut archive professionally organized. My children , Jonathan and Nina, now well into their adulthood careers in journalism and law, often spot news media references before I do and have made Vonnegut’s writings part of their own lives. At the University of Northern Iowa, where I have taught since 1972, colleagues are always a great help, as is the university’s Graduate College, which underwrote a acknowledgments xiv semester’s “Professional Development Leave” that made my work on this book possible. Kurt Vonnegut has been progressively tolerant, amused, and cooperative with all of our work on his canon. In the preface to his 1974 essay collection , Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons, he described John Somer and me as “two nice young college professors” whose “intentions were friendly” but who nevertheless seemed to be performing “therapeutic vivisection” on him. Thankfully he survived, and over the years he has become a friend to all of us, making us characters in a concluding scene in his novel Timequake and completing the cycle of critical and creative intervention. Quotations from Vonnegut’s works are used with his permission. They are indicated with page numbers and abbreviated titles. Full citations appear in the bibliography. ...