Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).

Richard Brautigan's world is one of gentle magic and marvelous laughter, of the incredibly beautiful and the beautifully incredible. Trout Fishing in America is a pseudonym for the miraculous. A journey that begins at the foot of the Benjamin Franklin statue in San Francisco's Washington Square, that wanders through the wonders of America's rural waterways, and that ends, inevitably, with mayonnaise. Funny, wild, and sweet, Trout Fishing in America is an incomparable guidebook to the delights of exploration.

Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.

With cutting wit, fierce conviction, and surprising empathy, Vonnegut explores a diverse range of topics including society, politics, sex, literature, and mortality. Fans who believe they've read all of Vonnegut's work will be delighted to find the author speaking frankly about timely and relevant new topics - with an amusing yet insightful style that's instantly recognizable.

In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth.

iDEATH is a place where the sun shines a different color every day and where people travel to the length of their dreams. Rejecting the violence and hate of the old gang at the Forgotten Works, they lead gentle lives in watermelon sugar. In this book, Richard Brautigan discovers and expresses the mood of the counterculture generation.

Eugene Debs Hartke 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. Employing his characteristic narrative device - a retrospective diary in which the protagonist retraces his life at its end, a desperate and disconnected series of events here in Hocus Pocus show Vonnegut with his mask off and his rhetorical devices unshielded.

Kurt Vonnegut presents in Fates Worse than Death a veritable cornucopia of his thoughts on what could perhaps best be summed up as "anti-theology", a manifesto for atheism that details Vonnegut's drift from conventional religion, even a tract evidencing belief in the divine held within each individual self--the deity within each individual person present in a universe that otherwise lacks any real order.

Isabel Gibson has all but perfected the art of forgetting. She’s a New Yorker now, with nothing left to tie her to Brinkley’s Island, Maine. Her parents are gone, the family bookstore is all but bankrupt, and her sister, Sophie, will probably never speak to her again. But when a mysterious letter arrives in her mailbox, Isabel feels herself drawn to the past. After years of fighting for her independence, she dreads the thought of going back to the island.

I had an uncle who left his hometown and the family business there to become a fine actor. His talent was a minor one, but a pretty one. It lasted for 15 years and was gone. He came home with the ashes of it and died 20 years later, poor and, as it happened, drunk.

Born a Parsi in Bombay, sent to university and medical school in Vienna, Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla is a 59-year-old orthopedic surgeon and a Canadian citizen who lives in Toronto. Once, 20 years ago, Dr. Daruwalla was the examining physician of two murder victims in Goa, India. Now, 20 years later, he will be reacquainted with the murderer.

Here is an entirely new side of Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut as a teacher of writing. Of course he's given us glimpses before, with aphorisms and short essays and articles and in his speeches. But never before has an entire book been devoted to Kurt Vonnegut the teacher. Here is pretty much everything Vonnegut ever said or wrote having to do with the writing art and craft, altogether a healing, a nourishing expedition.

Trying to Save Piggy Sneed contains a dozen short works by John Irving, beginning with three memoirs, including an account of Mr. Irving’s dinner with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. The longest of the memoirs, The Imaginary Girlfriend,” is the core of this collection.

今の社会は、年金制度ひとつを取ってみても、若者が虐げられ、老人を優遇している面があるのではないでしょうか。社会全体の活力を増すためにも、子育て支援を拡充するなど、もう少し若い世代に再分配すべきだと思うのですが。 少し前、ＮＨＫのテレビで「ニッポンのジレンマ」という番組をやっていました。30～40代の若手知識人を集めた円卓会議のようなもので、格差の問題、そしてご質問にもある「世代間対立」のことが論じられていました。最初は面白く見ていたのですが、途中でなんだかうんざりして消してしまいました。 その少しあとに、友人の平川克美君とその話題になりました。平川君もこの番組を見ていて、僕と同じように、途中でうんざりして消してしまったそうです。何でうんざりしちゃったんだろうね、というところから話が始まりました。 「金の話しかしてないからじゃないかな」というのが二人の合意点でした。格差の問題、年金の問題は、今、「世代間における社会的資源の分配の不公平」という枠組みで論じられています。（本文より） 内田樹＆平川克美「大人の条件」はこちらから→http://yakan-hiko.com/uchida.html

It is 1979, and a man is recalling the events of his 12th summer, when he bought bullets for his gun instead of a hamburger. Through the eyes, ears, and voice of Brautigan's youthful protagonist, the listener is gently led into a small-town tale where the narrator accidentally shoots and kills his best friend. The novel deals with the repercussions of this tragedy and its recurring theme of "what if", which fuels anguish, regret, and self-blame, as well as some darkly comic passages of bittersweet romance and despair.