Armageddon In Retrospect - Kurt Vonnegut [0]
A Man Without a Country
Bagombo Snuff Box
Timequake
Fates Worse Than Death
Hocus Pocus
Bluebeard
Galápagos
Deadeye Dick
Palm Sunday
Jailbird
Slapstick
Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons
Breakfast of Champions
Happy Birthday, Wanda June
Slaughterhouse-Five
Welcome to the Monkey House
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Cat’s Cradle
Mother Night
The Sirens of Titan
Player Piano
Armageddon in Retrospect
And Other New and Unpublished Writings on War and Peace
Kurt Vonnegut
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA · Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.) · Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England · Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) · Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) · Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India · Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) · Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa · Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © 2008 by The Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Trust Introduction © 2008 by Mark Vonnegut Frontispiece and images on pages 14, 47, 48, 71, 91, 103, 115, 137, 143,
153, 181, 207, and 233 copyright © 2008 by Kurt Vonnegut &
Origami Express LLC (www.vonnegut.com).
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada
ISBN: 1-4362-0354-6
This is a work containing fiction and nonfiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents, fictional and factual, are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The writings by Kurt Vonnegut in this collection have been edited only minimally from the originals. Typographical and minor factual errors have been corrected.
Contents
Introduction by Mark Vonnegut
Letter from PFC Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., to his family, May 29, 1945
Kurt Vonnegut at Clowes Hall, Indianapolis, April 27, 2007
Wailing Shall Be in All Streets
Great Day
Guns Before Butter
Happy Birthday, 1951
Brighten Up
The Unicorn Trap
Unknown Soldier
Spoils
Just You and Me, Sammy
The Commandant’s Desk
Armageddon in Retrospect
List of Illustrations
Introduction
I trust my writing most and others seem to trust it most when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am.
We might as well have been throwing cream pies.
KURT, ESTIMATING THE NET EFFECT OF THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT ON THE COURSE OF THE VIETNAM WAR
Writing was a spiritual exercise for my father, the only thing he really believed in. He wanted to get things right but never thought that his writing was going to have much effect on the course of things. His models were Jonah, Lincoln, Melville, and Twain.
He rewrote and rewrote and rewrote, muttering whatever he had just written over and over, tilting his head back and forth, gesturing with his hands, changing the pitch and rhythm of the words. Then he would pause, thoughtfully rip the barely written-on sheet of typing paper from the typewriter, crumple it up, throw it away, and start over again. It seemed like an odd way for a grown-up to spend his time, but I was just a child who didn’t know much.
He had an extra gear language-wise. At eighty-plus