Just reading Vonnegut's Man Without a Country. In it he quotes Karl Marx: "Religion is the opium of the people", and points out that at the time (1844), opium and opium derivatives were the only available painkillers. Therefore, he argues, this is "a casual truism, not a dictum." Fascinating. We've been ever-so-slightly misquoting Marx forever, the result being that ...

... earlier in the alphabetic registry. Austen, Barrie, Bronte, Byatt, Dickens, Dumas, Fitzgerald, Jacques, Kerouac. In recent years, I've dabbled in the McEwans and McCarthys, Pearsons and Vonneguts. So to now have a Viewegh in the bunch is not necessarily new, but it's fresh. I only wish the translation was better. It's got some great humor, parody, parody of parody, pastiche. On one ...

These are good rules. The only one I disagree with is the last one, which I don't always agree is the best thing. Some short stories benefit from being mysterious, like one of my all time favorites, "The Most Dangerous Game," by Richard Connell. Anyway, check out the rules below, which come from his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction. 1. Use the time of a total ...

After writing my now legendary (ha!) literary post a few weeks ago, I finished another Peter Carey and a couple of Kurt Vonneguts. Now I'm all out. To complete their collections, I'll have to go to a library or bookstore. Instead, I thought I'd "slum it" for a bit. (But not so much that I would wait in line outside Barnes & Noble at the Woodland Mall to get Sarah Palin&# ...

As a private with the 106th Infantry Division, Kurt Vonnegut, along with five other battalion scouts, wandered behind enemy lines for several days during the Rhineland Campaign and became cut off from their battalion. They were captured by Wehrmacht troops on December 14, 1944 and imprisoned in Dresden, Germany. While a prisoner, he witnessed the controversial fire bombing of Dresden in February ...

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president. But, when you stop to think about it, only a nut case would want to be a human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous, untrustworthy, lying and greedy animals we are! Gobble, gobble...