"The authorized, updated, and comprehensive catalogue of characters, themes, phrasing, and imagery found in Kurt Vonnegut's beloved work. Vonnegut's five decades of writing yielded many worlds-worth of people, places, and things. This book is an invaluable tool for looking up the marvelous facts that exist only in the pages his work. The Encyclopedia identifies every major or minor Vonnegut character, as well as recurring images and significant themes from all of Vonnegut's books and short stories, including his essay collections. Editor Marc Leeds provides italicized notes explaining the significance of many items, but relies primarily on extended quotations from Vonnegut himself. This is a vital reference source for both fans and scholars of the great American writer"--
Now expanded and updated, this authorized compendium to Kurt Vonneguts novels, stories, essays, and plays is the most comprehensive and definitive edition to date.
Over the course of five decades, Kurt Vonnegut created a complex and interconnected web of characters, settings, and concepts. Few modern writers have left behind such a large and inventive body of work.The Vonnegut Encyclopedia is an exhaustive guide to this beloved authors world, organized in a handy A-to-Z format.
The first edition of this book covered Vonneguts work through 1991. This new and updated edition incorporates his writing through his death, in 2007. Marc Leeds, founder and president of the Kurt Vonnegut Society and a longtime personal friend of the authors, has devoted more than twenty-five years of his life to cataloging the Vonnegut cosmosfrom the birthplace of Kilgore Trout (Vonneguts sci-fi writing alter ego) to the municipal landmarks of Midland City (the midwestern metropolis that supplies the setting for Vonneguts 1973 masterpiece Breakfast of Champions and, later, the locale for neutron-bombing inDeadeye Dick).
The Vonnegut Encyclopedia identifies every major and minor Vonnegut character (from Celia Aamons to Zog), as well as recurring images and relevant themes from all of Vonneguts works, including his revisionist libretto for Stravinskys operaLHistoire du soldat or his 1980 childrens book Sun Moon Star. Leeds provides expert notes explaining the significance of many items, but relies primarily on extended quotations from Vonnegut himself. A work of impressive scholarship in an eminently browsable package, this encyclopedia reveals countless connections readers may never have thought of on their own.
A rarity among authors of serious fiction, Kurt Vonnegut has always inspired something like obsession in his most dedicated fans.The Vonnegut Encyclopedia is an invaluable resource for readers wishing to revisit his fictional universeand those about to explore it for the first time.
