Word: authorly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Newcomers to the 75-year-old author's work will most likely be amused, but more confused, by the book, and even Vonnegut veterans may be caught off guard if they are expecting anything resembling a conventional story. The kind of wildly imaginative plotline that characterized his earlier and best-known satirical novels (such as the absurd, apocalyptic masterpiece, Cat's Cradle makes no appearance here. Fimequake is not so much wildly imaginative as wildly cantankerous, not so much a great read as a great rant...
...over the book, absurd little litanies such as "something the cat drug in" (what people, especially scientists, like to make each other feel like) or "a dog's breakfast" (Kilgore Trout's expression for the human brain) establish a familiarity that helps the reader adjust to the author's inexhaustible outrage at the evils of the modern world...
...this the end of the literary line for Vonnegut? "I'm 75 years old," he answered gruffly, "You can ask an insurance agent." According to the author, he will put down his pen for good and take up painting silk-screens, which he gleefully calls, "a terribly impractical process...
...attack this 1970's innovation. Louisiana's new law creates something called "covenant marriage." Couples who choose a covenant marriage undergo counseling before they marry and can divorce only with fault, defined as abandonment, physical abuse, adultery or conviction of a capital crime. State legislator Tony Perkins, the author of the law (and an active member in PK), expects covenant marriages will soon account for half of all new marriages in Louisiana. Many states are expected to follow Louisiana's lead...
After reviewing police documents, interviewing school officials and peers of both students, the author travelled to Ethiopia in her search to understand Tadesse, because she discovered that "no one in America knew...