Saturday, June 23, 2018

Kurt Vonnegut: The Last Interview and Other Conversations edited by Tom McCartan


(hb; 2011: nonfiction)

From the back cover

One of the great American iconoclasts holds forth on politics, war, books and writers, and his personal life in a series of conversations, including his last published interview.

“During his long career Kurt Vonnegut won international praise for his novels, plays, and essays. In this new anthology of conversations with Vonnegut—which collects interviews from throughout his career—we learn much about what drove Vonnegut to write and how he viewed his work at the end.


Review

This collection of magazine interviews, spanning from 1977 to 2007, is a good, witty and provocative read if you are a Kurt Vonnegut fan. If you read A Man Without a Country, some of what Vonnegut says will likely be familiar. My favorite interview is “The Joe & Kurt Show”, from Playboy, May 1992. It is especially fun to see Joseph Heller and Vonnegut, friends, colleagues and neighbors verbally play off and support each other, even as they make thoughtful points about war, politics, society and personal relationships.

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