Basic Training
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Narrated by:
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Colin Hanks
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By:
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Kurt Vonnegut
About this listen
Written to be sold under the pseudonym of "Mark Harvey", this 20,000-word novella was never published in Vonnegut’s lifetime. It appears (from the address on the manuscript, a suburb of Schenectady, New York, and from the style and slant) to have been written in the late 1940s. Vonnegut was working at that time in public relations for General Electric and used pseudonyms to protect himself from the charge of moonlighting. He was trying to sell to the so-called slick magazines of the time, like The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s, while resisting the lure of science fiction - a tension throughout his professional career.
Basic Training 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 thirtyish author were no friends of the milieu to which the slick magazines’ advertisers were pitching their products.
Another unexpected writer’s influence underlies this story: J.D. Salinger. Throughout the ’40s and before his move to New York, Salinger had produced short stories whose confused or slightly deranged young protagonists (most of them around the age of Haley Brandon) stumbled through pre- and postwar Manhattan and military service, experiencing mild disaffection, alienation, and then terrible anger. All of them came to learn that the people who ran the show were as crazy and dangerous as those nominally on the other side. Shortly after these semi-whimsical social portraits were published, Salinger, like Vonnegut, was drafted, shipped into combat and involved in the Battle of the Bulge.
In this audio edition, performed for the first time by Colin Hanks (Band of Brothers, Orange County), exist not only Vonnegut’s influences and what later became his voice but Vonnegut’s grand themes: trust no one, trust nothing; the only constants are absurdity and resignation, which themselves cannot protect us from the void but might divert.
©2012 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Literary Trust, by arrangement with RosettaBooks (P)2012 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Alice's journey begins as all good journeys do: hitting on the sales guy at REI. After a tumultuous breakup, a quick career transition, family upheaval, and a sobriety journey that didn't fix her life quite as much as she expected it to, Alice decides that the only way to solve all her problems is to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. But as she begins preparing for the months-long quest, she realizes the answers she's seeking might not be on top of a snow-covered mountain. Especially since she just learned there was snow in California.
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Chuck full of laughs to lift anyone's spirits.
- By Laura Boogaert on 09-22-24
By: Ginny Hogan
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The New York Times best seller from the author of Slaughterhouse-Five—a “gripping” posthumous collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s previously unpublished work on the subject of war and peace. A fitting tribute to a literary legend and a profoundly humane humorist, Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of 12 previously unpublished writings. Imbued with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humor and outraged moral sense.
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Vonnegut should get the nobel peace prize
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Galapagos takes the listener back one million years to AD 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, totally different human race. Kurt Vonnegut, America's master satirist, looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry - and all that is worth saving.
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The survival of the human race is a total bore!
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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.
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Not a place to start.
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Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.
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Classic Vonnegut
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By: Kurt Vonnegut
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God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
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Eliot Rosewater, a drunk volunteer fireman and president of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation, is about to attempt a noble experiment with human nature, with a little help from writer Kilgore Trout. The result is Kurt Vonnegut's funniest satire, an etched-in-acid portrayal of the greed, hypocrisy, and follies of the flesh we are all heir to.
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Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth.
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Available to listeners for the first time, Sucker’s Portfolio showcases a collection of seven never-before-published works from Kurt Vonnegut, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Short, sardonic, and dark, these six brief fiction stories and one non-fiction piece are consummate Vonnegut with piercing satire and an eye for life’s obscene inanity. Also available for the first time is an unfinished science-fiction short story, included in the appendix.
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Hit or Miss, For Completists Only
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Pity the Reader
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Here is an entirely new side of Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut as a teacher of writing. Of course he's given us glimpses before, with aphorisms and short essays and articles and in his speeches. But never before has an entire book been devoted to Kurt Vonnegut the teacher. Here is pretty much everything Vonnegut ever said or wrote having to do with the writing art and craft, altogether a healing, a nourishing expedition.
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Unlistenable
- By Grant Swalwell on 01-06-20
By: Kurt Vonnegut, and others
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Player Piano
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Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
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A Genuine 5-Stars
- By R.A. on 06-07-19
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Mother Night
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
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- Unabridged
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American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Kurt Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of grey with a verdict that will haunt us all. Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense.
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“We are what we pretend to be”
- By Robert on 09-04-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
What listeners say about Basic Training
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kindle Customer
- 09-18-12
Interesting story
The story was interesting and gave an insight to early Vonnegut. Presentation of material was very good.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Matthew C Conlan
- 09-19-22
Discipline, mistakes and redemption
4 of 5 stars.
I thought "Basic Training" would be a throw-away story since it wasn't published during Kurt Vonnegut's lifetime. I was wrong. A teenager from Manhattan loses his parents and goes to live with his taskmaster uncle and cousins on a midwestern farm. As to be expected, his early days on the farm are difficult and do not go well. This story went from a 3 to a 4-star novella with the payoff ending.
Colin Hanks is a solid narrator and seems appropriate voicing a youthful protagonist.
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- Holly Justice
- 02-20-23
So disappointed
I really expected better from Colin Hanks. Proper pronunciation of the words is important for a narrator. Unfortunately, this one was apparently not taught that lesson.
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- Darwin8u
- 06-30-12
A Quaint Vonnegut Bildungsroman
A previously unpublished novella by Vonnegut. Basic Training is not nearly as absurdist or fanciful as his later novels. The plot/setting/characters are all structurally congruous and reasonable. Basic Training is basically a quaint bildungsroman that deals with issues of love, authoritarianism, family and heroism. It reminded me a lot of J.D. Salinger's and Carson McCuller's novellas, and wouldn't feel too overshadowed by those authors or out of place in the pages of Harpers, the New Yorker, or the Saturday Evening Post of the 1940s and 1950s.
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16 people found this helpful
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- Barry
- 08-04-12
Short Coming of Age Slice of Life
What did you love best about Basic Training?
My first Vonnegut. Slow start but well worth the patience. The characters in ensemble are clearly drawn with each one showing growth and clear change.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Basic Training?
I was quite moved in the final scene, when the General shows his strength of character by admitting his need for change of heart and expresses clearly with great difficulty that this indeed has happened. Then he is able to speak directly to his family with emotion no longer a threat to his authority, speaking of love with a balance of discipline.
What about Colin Hanks’s performance did you like?
Colin Hanks presented the characters clearly and consistently. He did a fine job.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
I listened with interest as long as I could before breaking off for other required activities
Any additional comments?
It was a slow starting book for me, but I'm glad I hung in there rather than giving up. It was a great experience and I needed to learn not to quit too soon.
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2 people found this helpful
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- fenario
- 01-21-23
Wonderful
Great story and narration! Hanks was perfect! Highly recommend this book! I love how compelling Vonnegut’s short stories are - so satisfying!
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- Big John
- 10-16-24
I can see wwhy Vonnegut didn't publish this
this story has little to none of the vast subtext, and hidden meanings I have come to expect from Vonnegut.
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