Where to start with Vonnegut

No one “got” the late 20th century like Kurt Vonnegut, the science fiction writer and humorist best known for his 1969 World War II book, Slaughterhouse-Five. He saw the dangers of late capitalism, of religious fanaticism, of climate change, and of technological change with such clear eyes that it would be too difficult to read him if it weren’t for the fact that he was also very humane and very funny.

All told, he published 14 novels, 98 short stories, a children’s book, and god knows how many essays over the course of his 84 years. That can be a little daunting if you’re trying to pick a place to start (and didn’t, as so many of us did, have to read his work in high school English class).

So what follows is a breakdown of what to start with if you’re interested in Vonnegut. It’s a subjective list, obviously, but I claim three tiny bits of authority on the topic:

  1. I’ve read all of his novels, as well as most of his short stories and essays.

  2. My original blog was named “A Man Without a Country,” which was ripped off from one of his books. This was a terrible career move, as Vonnegut was always gonna beat me on SEO.

  3. My wife and I popped his saying, “If this isn’t nice, what is?” into our wedding vows.

So without further ado:

The Best Novels to Start With

Vonnegut did something no other author did, to my knowledge, which is that he published a self-graded list of the books he had published so far in 1982. This means some of his later books are left off of the list, but it’s actually a pretty good ranking, with a couple of tweaks. So if you want the opinion of the author himself, here they are:

At least two of these he’s far too harsh on (Breakfast of Champions is one of his best, and Slapstick is much better than a D), and maybe one he’s a bit too kind to (Cat’s Cradle is more of a B, to be honest), but it’s otherwise pretty accurate.

Here’s a breakdown of where to start:

Best Overall: Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

Slaughterhouse-Five is quintessential Vonnegut. Everything that came before doesn’t quite feel like Vonnegut, and everything that comes after echoes it. It has the black humor, the repeated phrases, the sudden appearances by the author, and the sci-fi weirdness that he did best.

The story is based on Vonnegut’s own experiences as a prisoner-of-war in World War II, when he survived the firebombing of Dresden. The main character in the book is a man named Billy Pilgrim who, depending on how you read it, either has a mental breakdown during the war, or he becomes “unstuck in time,” which means that he zips around to different moments in his life with no apparent control of where he’s going next. The book zips with him to those moments, including the moment on his wedding night where he is abducted by aliens called Trafalmadorians and is placed in an alien zoo with a pornstar as his “mate.”

While living with the aliens, he learns that they see time “as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains.” In other words, when they look at you, they see you now, they see you at the moment of your birth, and at the moment of your death, which makes every human look like a centipede. This gives them a fatalistic attitude towards death — they (and the book) say “So it goes” whenever someone dies. “So it goes” appears 106 times in the book.

It sounds, reading most synopses, like a very cynical book, but the magic of Vonnegut is just how humane it is. He’s upset about the loss of life he saw in the war, he can’t comprehend the suffering we put each other through, and the only way he manages to cope with it is through jokes. But the humor doesn’t harden you, it softens you. You can’t call it an easy read, but you can call it a beautiful read.

With all of that said, Vonnegut can be jarring to read (I’ve heard more than one person say he made them sick to their stomach), so if you’re looking for something that feels a bit more like a traditional novel, go with one of his earlier books.

Best for people who don’t “Get” Vonnegut: The Sirens of Titan (1959)

Before he was famous, Vonnegut was a bit of a hack — in a good way. He wrote short stories and his first couple of novels as a way of feeding his family, and he occasionally had to work other jobs — PR for a major corporation, running a Saab dealership — in order to make ends meet.

The Sirens of Titan was his second book, and it is the most classically pulpy sci-fi of any of Vonnegut’s books. It’s about a space-traveler and his dog who, by accident, gains the ability to materialize on other planets, and also to see the past in future. Using this ability and knowledge, he founds a church (“Of God the Utterly Indifferent”), and squabbles with an alien robot trapped on Titan, a moon of Saturn.

For people who don’t like Vonnegut, this is probably as close as you can get to the good parts of his work before he really developed his style, which is an acquired taste. It’s also one of his best books period, and thus possibly the best Vonnegut book for beginners.

Best for people who don’t “Get” Vonnegut or Science Fiction: Mother Night (1962)

If sci-fi is not your bag, your best choice is probably Mother Night. The book is about Howard Campbell, Jr., an American who was recruited by the OSS (precursor of the CIA) to spy on the Nazis from within the party. In his role, Campbell becomes an English-speaking propaganda broadcaster for the Nazis, sending out messages to the Allied troops telling them to give up and surrender (kind of a German Tokyo Rose). He does his job so well that after the war, he ends up on trial in Israel for crimes against humanity, all while scrambling to prove that he was actually a spy.

Vonnegut gives a moral to the story: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful what we pretend to be.” It’s one of his more straightforward books, and its one of his more affecting — many people do terrible things during the war, for all sorts of “justified” reasons. Vonnegut, for his part, wants to weigh the justification against the deed.

He never did a spy novel again, though he did one more set in jail (1979’s Jailbird, about a Watergate conspirator). It remains one of his most moving. And it’s not too Vonnegut for people who aren’t into him just yet.

Next Steps

If you liked one of those books and are looking for something that does have the Vonnegut style, the best of his remaining novels are:

Breakfast of Champions is the first book Vonnegut wrote after he became mega-successful with Slaughterhouse-Five, so he just kind of lets all of his weird impulses off the chain. The resulting book is probably his funniest, and also probably the Vonneguttiest book he ever wrote. It is also not for people who aren’t into Vonnegut. It’s about a syphilitic Pontiac dealer who is slowly losing his mind and a failing sci-fi writer, but honestly, who cares about the plot? This book is bonkers and hilarious.

Vonnegut’s A+ for this may be overstated, but it’s probably his highest regarded book after Slaughterhouse-Five. It involves an inventor who develops something called “Ice-Nine,” a new type of ice that freezes at a higher temperature, and thus has the ability to freeze all of the oceans on earth. It has all the classic Vonnegut features: a made-up religion that’s mostly just goofy quips, horrifying sci-fi catastrophes, and short verbal tics that are repeated throughout the book.

Slapstick (1976)

Slapstick deserves far better than the D he gave it, but it’s possible that Vonnegut’s judgment was clouded by how the critics had panned this book (something which had never happened to him before). In reality, it’s delightful. Inspired by his relationship with his sister (she died of cancer two days after her husband was killed in a trainwreck, and Vonnegut adopted two of her kids), it’s the story of a brother and sister who ascend to the Presidency in a post-apocalyptic America by campaigning on the promise of ending loneliness.

Among his other novels, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is probably the least bizarre — it’s the story of a rich do-gooder son and the plot against his inheritance — and also maybe the best regarded. Broadly speaking, his best novels were the ones written between 1959 and 1976. His first book — Player Piano — is good, but is the work of a green novelist, while the later ones — Jailbird, Deadeye Dick, Galapagos, Bluebeard, and Hocus Pocus don’t do much that his earlier novels didn’t do. His final “novel,” Timequake, is one of the most interesting, as he basically gave up on writing it and made it half of a novel and half an autobiographical work.

His Other Work

On a personal level, I’ve always loved Vonnegut’s nonfiction writing, in particular his speeches. His novels can often be jarring and depressing, but his essays always manage to balance funny and furious in a way few others can. Because of his popularity, books of his nonfiction have continued to be published posthumously for the past 14 years. I will say as a parent that his children’s book Sun Moon Star is not all that great, judged by the metric that it has never managed to capture my kid’s attention. It is an extremely simple telling of the Nativity from the perspective of the baby Jesus and what he saw — the illustrations are all very simple shapes, so perhaps some younger babies would be engaged with it, but it fails to interest my toddler.

Vonnegut’s books Palm Sunday (1981) and Fates Worse Than Death are must-reads if you want a look into Vonnegut’s brain particularly in regards to his writing and his personal history. In these books, he discusses his early life, his mental health, his experiences during the war, and the writers who inspired him. These are good books for people who have been intrigued by the novels and want to get a better sense of the man.

Vonnegut considered himself a humanist for all of his life (and politically, usually aligned himself with socialism). Towards the end of his time on earth, these alliances made him feel less and less comfortable with the country of his birth, which he saw as increasingly corrupt and violent. A Man Without a Country is, for my money, Vonnegut’s best non-fiction book, and is required reading for anyone who looks back on the Bush years with a sense of deluded nostalgia.

After Slaughterhouse-Five was released, Vonnegut became an in-demand commencement address speaker. This book collects nine of those speeches. It includes the advice his uncle passed down to him: during the good moments in life, take a moment to acknowledge it by saying, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

Vonnegut’s bread and butter in the early part of his career were short stories. Some of them are great, and some of them are forgettable. There were three books of his short stories released in his lifetime, more seem to keep leaking out after his 2007 death. Your best bet is the Complete Short Stories, a compendium that was released in 2017. Three to check out to start:

“EPICAC”

“EPICAC” is about a computer technician who falls in love with a mathematician. The mathematician tells him that she could never love a man who isn’t “poetic,” so the technician asks his computer, EPICAC, to write her a love poem. As he asks EPICAC for more help, he realizes that the computer has fallen in love with the mathematician. It’s actually a fairly heartbreaking story, and it’s one of his best.

“Harrison Bergeron”

This is the one you may have read in high school English — it’s about a world in which all people are forced to be equal. If you have really great eyesight, you have to wear thick glasses. If you’re athletic, you have to wear weights around your neck. One man, the most exceptional of all, Harrison Bergeron, decides to stage a revolution. No more should be said, read it, it’s beautiful.

“2 B R 0 2 B”

“2 B R 0 2 B” imagines a world in which aging has been cured, but the world can’t sustainably hold onto an eternally increasing population. So a rule is set up: You can have kids, as long as one person agrees die for each person that’s born. If you can’t find someone, you child is killed at birth. The story focuses on a man in a hospital waiting room while his wife is giving birth to triplets. He does not have three deaths lined up. For a story that was written in 1962, it is bananas how ahead of its time this one is.

Similar Authors

During his life, Vonnegut was mostly neglected by academics and critics, but he was enormously influential on other authors. His style is his own, and it can’t be replicated, but if you like Vonnegut, you may like the following authors. The first, Celine, was a direct inspiration for Vonnegut, the second, Heller, was a friend and contemporary who wrote perhaps the only WWII book better than Slaughterhouse-Five, and the latter two, Palahniuk and Kobek, are satirists with as sharp an eye and as distinct a voice as Vonnegut.

Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Vonnegut acknowledged that his writing owed a lot to the French writer: he read Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night while writing Slaughterhouse-Five, and the influence shows. That book’s influence on 20th century writing is huge, you can pick up traces of it in Vonnegut and in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. It is, in short, about a man who finds himself in the horrors of World War I, then as a colonist in Africa, then as a galley slave, then as a doctor in Detroit. It is, without a doubt, one of the bleakest, most cynical books you will ever read. Fortunately, Vonnegut never became that cynic: he always had humanity left in him. Not so for Celine — after his experiences in the first World War and his success as a nihilistic writer, he became an enthusiastic antisemite and Nazi collaborator.

Joseph Heller

The only literary equal to Slaughterhouse-Five is Catch-22. They are totally different styles, but they are both chaotic, hilarious books about the stupidities of World War II. Heller’s protagonist, Yossarian, is a bombardier in the Mediterranean during the siege of Italy, who increasingly starts to wonder, “Is any of this worth me dying?” When he answers no, he realizes he has to work incredibly hard to hold to his convictions to be a coward and stay alive. Heller is amazing — when an interviewer told him he never wrote a book as good as Catch-22 afterwards, he said, “To be fair, neither has anyone else.”

Chuck Palahniuk

There are two writers who can make me sick to the stomach: Vonnegut and Palahniuk. Chuck Palahniuk is best known for his excellent book Fight Club, which remains one of the most misunderstood books of all time (it has been adopted by Men’s Rights Activists and alt-right types who do not realize that the book is mocking them), but he’s written a handful of other amazing satires as well, like Invisible Monsters, Lullaby, and Choke.

JaretT Kobek

Jarett Kobek hates being compared to Vonnegut. He prefers to be compared to Celine (which is weird, because Kobek is left-wing, not a Nazi). Regardless, there are similarities: Kobek relies on repeated phrases, short paragraphs, constant black humor, and he repeatedly writes himself into his stories. If you like Vonnegut but want his material updated for the 21st century, you could do worse than Kobek’s I Hate the Internet or Only Americans Burn in Hell.

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