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Called “our finest black-humorist” by The Atlantic Monthly, Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Now his first and last works come together for the first time in print, in a collection aptly titled after his famous phrase, We Are What We Pretend To Be.
Written to be sold under the pseudonym of “Mark Harvey,” Basic Training was never published in Vonnegut’s lifetime. It appears to have been written in the late 1940s and is therefore Vonnegut’s first ever novella. It is a bitter, profoundly disenchanted story that satirizes the military, authoritarianism, gender relationships, parenthood, and most of the assumed mid-century myths of the family. Haley Brandon, the adolescent protagonist, comes to the farm of his relative, the old crazy who insists upon being called The General, to learn to be a straight-shooting American. Haley’s only means of survival will lead him to unflagging defiance of the General’s deranged (but oh so American, oh so military) values. This story and its 30ish author were no friends of the milieu to which the slick magazines’ advertisers were pitching their products.
When Vonnegut passed away in 2007, he left his last novel unfinished. Entitled If God Were Alive Today, this last work is a brutal satire on societal ignorance and carefree denial of the world’s major problems. Protagonist Gil Berman is a middle-aged college lecturer and self-declared stand-up comedian who enjoys cracking jokes in front of a college audience while societal dependence on fossil fuels has led to the apocalypse. Described by Vonnegut as, “the stand-up comedian on Doomsday,” Gil is a character formed from Vonnegut’s own rich experiences living in a reality Vonnegut himself considered inevitable.
Along with the two works of fiction, Vonnegut’s daughter, Nanette shares reminiscences about her father and commentary on these two works―both exclusive to this edition. In this fiction collection, exist Vonnegut’s grand themes: trust no one, trust nothing; and the only constants are absurdity and resignation, which themselves cannot protect us from the void but might divert.
- Sales Rank: #5151501 in Books
- Published on: 2015-09-29
- Released on: 2015-09-22
- Formats: Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.75" h x .50" w x 5.25" l,
- Running time: 4 Hours
- Binding: MP3 CD
Review
Nature, 10/24/13
“Vonnegut’s first and last pieces are pervaded by his trademark dark humour.”
Hudson Valley News, 10/16/13
“Written forty years apart, these two pieces share the typical Vonnegut voice. And if you love his work, you will want to add this book to your collection.”
John Shelton Ivany Top 21, Issue #434
“Turn off the electronics and put aside your contemporary crises, for what stands before us is a truly transhistorical story teller that deserves at least one read. This book should be our first, and our last, concern.”
About the Author
Kurt Vonnegut was an American science fiction and humour writer. Born in Indianapolis in 1922, Vonnegut studied chemistry in University while serving as an editor of his school's newspaper. The outbreak of the Second World War interrupted his post-secondary education, and Vonnegut served as a mechanical engineer in the army. Vonnegut's war experience, particularly his survival of the firebombing of Dresden in an underground meat locker in a building called "Slaughterhouse Five," vastly influenced his later writing, as well as his turn to pacifism and humanism. His most famous works include Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions. Vonnegut died in 2007 at the age of 84.
Oliver Wyman, a native New Yorker, has appeared on stage as well as in film, and television. He is one of the founders of New York City's Collective Unconscious theater, and his performances include the award-winning reality play "Charlie Victor Romeo" and A.R. McElhinney's cult classic film "A Chronicle of Corpses". He also lent his voice to several episodes of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Oliver's work as a narrator extends to over 150 audiobooks and has won many him awards, including Audie awards for his reading of Lance Armstrong's autobiography, "It's Not About the Bike", and Thomas L. Friedman's "The World is Flat". He also read James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces", Tim Dorsey's "Atomic Lobster", and David Weber's "By Schism Rent Asunder". Oliver has won five Audie Awards from the Audio Publisher's Association, fourteen Earphone Awards from "AudioFile" "Magazine", and two Listen Up Awards from "Publisher's Weekly. "Oliver was named a 2008 Best Voice in Nonfiction & Culture by "AudioFile Magazine".
Suzanne Toren has recorded over nine hundred audiobooks. She has performed on Broadway and in regional theaters in works penned by Shakespeare, Moliere, and Arthur Miller. She has also appeared on Law & Order and in various soap operas. She was awarded the Narrator of the Year Award for her audiobook recordings for the Library of Congress and has earned more than two dozen Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine.
Most helpful customer reviews
25 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
Basic Training as a coming of age story.
By Richard E Murphy
I am 75 years old and have never read a Vonnegut book before. I only did this one because it was free on my Kindle Lending Library. I loved it, it was a charming coming of age story. It was not an anti-military satire as the leftist writer of the called it. Always keep in mind that when Estates publish books, they are trying to make money from books that the author didn't think were good enough to publish during their lifetime. In any event it was a great little book and it has encouraged me to read more Vonnegut.
26 of 30 people found the following review helpful.
Welcome to Ardennes Farm: trust no one, trust nothing...
By John Williamson
"Haley Brandon arranged his three white shirts in one corner of a deep bureau drawer, and nodded absently at the end of each of Annie's sentences. He was tired after a fitful night aboard a railroad coach, and glad that Annie was content to talk on and on without calling upon him to contribute to the conversation. She was a complete stranger to him, and not a very interesting-looking one at that."
From that second paragraph on the first page of the late Kurt Vonnegut's Basic Training, one can see that the author's signature attention to detail was already developed in this previously unpublished novella, released about 60 years after it was written. According to publisher RosettaBooks, "Basic Training" was a work rejected by the Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940's, long before the late author had become famous through works such as his absurdist 1969 classic Slaughterhouse-Five and his 1963 satirical science fiction favorite Cat's Cradle.
Haley Brandon, the teenage protagonist, ventures from New York City to the Midwest farm of his relative, retired Brigadier General William Cooley, an old loon who insists upon being called "The General." Haley wants to go to Chicago to resume his music studies; The General promises to be the enabler, though he's "as tone deaf as a sparrow." Haley is there to do earn his way, with some "good, old-fashioned work," to learn to be a good straight-shooting American under the tutelage of his older, somewhat unstable relative. He moves into the farm with Anne Cooley, his cousin in her mid-twenties, along with her younger sisters, Kitty and Hope. And there's Mr. Banghart, the farm hand in his thirties, a courtly man with vocal capabilities and with a face "shaved and scrubbed to the luster of wax apples." We have the colorful Roy Flemming, who is Kitty's suitor and wants to take her away on his "nuptial motorcycle."
The descriptions of the settings and characters will not disappoint Vonnegut fans, as they're going to be familiar, from Hope, who "walked turtle-slow to the foot of the stairs," to Mr. Banghart, whose "lungs swelled like blacksmiths' bellows" as he began to sing. This novella is filled with such rich images. But as the story move on, like a rich descriptive tapestry being woven, it becomes clear that The General's promises may not what they appear to be. Haley's only method of survival will lead him to tenacious defiance of The General's increasingly delusional and authoritarian principles. There are surprises and there are secrets, and some of those are dark.
Vonnegut's "Basic Training" is a fascinating yet intensely disheartened story, one that derides authoritarianism, military values, relationships, parental rules and most of the expected traditions of the family from that era. The late author was good at that, and one can see from this early work that he had already honed his skills of which fans or his work are familiar.
As the book description noted, this work was penned to be sold under the author's alias of Mark Harvey yet it was never published in Vonnegut's lifetime. A little online research reveals that in the late 1940s, the author was working at GE in Schenectady, New York, and he was freelancing short stories to various popular magazines of that time, such as Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post. He was using the pseudonyms of David Harris and Mark Harvey to keep from being caught moonlighting.
Kurt Vonnegut died in 2007, and a good number of his unpublished works remained in Indiana, where he was born. RosettaBooks picked this novella from hundreds of other works that this author's literary executor had made available, and fans can only hope that they will soon release more of them.
2/23/2012
32 of 42 people found the following review helpful.
Humiliating & Unnecessary
By amazoncustomer115
Let me begin this review by listing my favourite Vonnegut novels---that way you can see what my standards are.
The Sirens of Titan
Mother Night
Cat's Cradle
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Slaughterhouse 5
Breakfast of Champions
Kurt Vonnegut had at least 2 phases in his career as an author. The first was when he was writing safe, careful fiction for magazines, and the second was when he wrote irreverent, novel-length narratives in his flagrantly subjective style.
This book, We Are What We Pretend to Be, offers 2 items: The first, Basic Training, written in the 1940s, is a long story of about 80 pages. It was written during his magazine phase. From a technical point of view, it was written well. The sentences are constructed nicely and the story flows at a good pace. But there is nothing irreverent about the story and we do not "hear" Vonnegut's voice. It is not the least bit funny or clever. It's just a run of the mill story which he was unable to get published---and rightly so.
The second item, If God Were Alive Today, written in 2000, is presented as a NOVELLA, when in fact it is nothing more than a 1st draft of a tentative novel that Vonnegut abandoned long before he was even close to finishing it. It is appallingly stupid, lame, and not the least bit funny, and there is no way whatsoever that Vonnegut would have approved of releasing it to the public. It was clearly just a helpless, sputtering emission from a machine that couldn't stop itself from going through the motions---even though 5 of its 8 cylinders no longer worked. It was only a writer's exercise; something to do rather than watch television. He didn't have any intention of finishing it---or publishing it.
In the Foreword, written by Nanette Vonnegut, it talks about If God Were Alive Today and it says, "...there is hilarity, wisdom, and redemption along the way."
No there isn't.
Not at all.
Nanette should be red-faced with shame. From here on forward she shall be known as Tomato Vonnegut.
Talk about a rip-off...and scraping the bottom of the barrel...
And the worst thing about this book is that a brilliant title was wasted on it!
Shame on you, Tomato Vonnegut---and Vanguard Press---and all the ignorant sycophants who praise this graveyard robbery.
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