American literature of the second half of 20 century

Kurt, Jr. Vonnegut

• His first novel, Player Piano (1952), depicts a society controlled by large corporations and machines. Vonnegut was branded a science-fiction writer after his second novel, The Sirens of Titan (1959), which features a bizarre, futuristic plot. He began to receive favorable critical reception starting with his third book, Mother Night (1962), which concerns a man who becomes a pro-German propagandist to conceal his work as an American spy during World War II. The man ends up being tried as a war criminal, and the moral of the story, according to the author, is that “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”
• Vonnegut won increasing critical praise with Cat’s Cradle (1963), a novel about an invention that brings about the end of the world, and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965), about an idealistic but naive philanthropist. In this book Vonnegut introduces one of his recurring characters, Kilgore Trout, a hack science-fiction writer who is often thought to be the author’s alter ego. A collection of Vonnegut’s short stories, Welcome to the Monkey House, was published in 1968.
• Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), often considered Vonnegut’s greatest work, is a fictionalized account of his war experiences. The phrase “So it goes” is repeated almost as a refrain throughout the novel and is characteristic of Vonnegut’s use of simple language to deal with complex emotions and ideas. In the book the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, copes with the traumas of the war by mentally removing himself to a fantasy world. Slaughterhouse-Five vaulted Vonnegut to national and international fame and was later made into a prize-winning motion picture.