Sucker's Portfolio
A Collection of Previously Unpublished Writing
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Narrated by:
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Luke Daniels
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By:
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Kurt Vonnegut
About this listen
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.
These stories trace trivial human lives and mundane desires, which is precisely where Vonnegut’s inimitable perspective as a humanist shines, illuminating his alternating hopeful and dismal outlook, although undoubtedly focusing on the latter. Here as in his greatest novels, Vonnegut’s writing takes us to the darkest corners of the human soul and with wit and humor, manages to remind us of our potential to be something greater.
©2012 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Copyright Trust (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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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.
- By Robert on 11-02-12
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Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons
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With cutting wit, fierce conviction, and surprising empathy, Vonnegut explores a diverse range of topics including society, politics, sex, literature, and mortality. Fans who believe they've read all of Vonnegut's work will be delighted to find the author speaking frankly about timely and relevant new topics - with an amusing yet insightful style that's instantly recognizable.
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Vonnegut At His Best
- By Peter W. Kalnin on 12-09-23
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Slapstick
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Perhaps the most autobiographical (and deliberately least disciplined) of Vonnegut's novels, Slapstick (1976) is in the form of a broken family odyssey and is surely a demonstration of its eponymous title. The story centers on brother and sister twins, children of Wilbur Swain, who are in sympathetic and (possibly) telepathic communication and who represent Vonnegut's relationship with his own sister who died young of cancer almost two decades before the book's publication.
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Lonely No More!
- By Darwin8u on 11-16-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Deadeye Dick
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors - a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb - Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe...and who we say we are.
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If I aimed at nothing..nothing is what I would hit
- By Darwin8u on 11-28-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
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- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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.
- By Darwin8u on 03-27-14
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Palm Sunday
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth.
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Incredible
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-20
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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We Are What We Pretend to Be
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- By: Kurt Vonnegut
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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.
- By Robert on 11-02-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons
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- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
With cutting wit, fierce conviction, and surprising empathy, Vonnegut explores a diverse range of topics including society, politics, sex, literature, and mortality. Fans who believe they've read all of Vonnegut's work will be delighted to find the author speaking frankly about timely and relevant new topics - with an amusing yet insightful style that's instantly recognizable.
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Vonnegut At His Best
- By Peter W. Kalnin on 12-09-23
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Slapstick
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Perhaps the most autobiographical (and deliberately least disciplined) of Vonnegut's novels, Slapstick (1976) is in the form of a broken family odyssey and is surely a demonstration of its eponymous title. The story centers on brother and sister twins, children of Wilbur Swain, who are in sympathetic and (possibly) telepathic communication and who represent Vonnegut's relationship with his own sister who died young of cancer almost two decades before the book's publication.
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-
Lonely No More!
- By Darwin8u on 11-16-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Deadeye Dick
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors - a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb - Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe...and who we say we are.
-
-
If I aimed at nothing..nothing is what I would hit
- By Darwin8u on 11-28-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth.
- By Darwin8u on 03-27-14
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Palm Sunday
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth.
-
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Incredible
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-20
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Timequake
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Arthur Bishop
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
According to Kurt Vonnegut's alter ego, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a global timequake will occur on February 13, 2001, at 2:27 p.m. It will be the moment when the universe suffers a crisis of conscience: Should it go on expanding indefinitely or collapse and make another great big BANG? For its own cosmic reasons, it decides to back up a decade to 1991, giving the world a 10-year case of deja vu, making everybody and everything do exactly what they'd done during the past decade.
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Arias only make hopeless situations worse
- By Darwin8u on 12-28-17
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Fates Worse Than Death
- An Autobiographical Collage
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Richard Davidson
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Kurt Vonnegut presents in Fates Worse than Death a veritable cornucopia of his thoughts on what could perhaps best be summed up as "anti-theology", a manifesto for atheism that details Vonnegut's drift from conventional religion, even a tract evidencing belief in the divine held within each individual self--the deity within each individual person present in a universe that otherwise lacks any real order.
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Vonnegut is profound
- By Sarah on 02-03-20
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Breakfast of Champions
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: John Malkovich
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.
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Kurt Was Right to Grade This a C
- By Dubi on 01-10-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Jailbird
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Walter Starbuck, a career humanist and eventual low-level aide in the Nixon White House, is implicated in Watergate and jailed, after which he (like Howard Campbell in Mother Night) works on his memoirs. Starbuck is innocent (his office was used as a base for the Watergate shenanigans of which he had no knowledge), and yet he is not innocent (he has collaborated with power unquestioningly and served societal order all his life). He represents another Vonnegut Everyman caught amongst forces he neither understands nor can defend.
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a fool and his self respect are soon parted
- By Darwin8u on 11-18-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Hocus Pocus
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Eugene Debs Hartke describes an odyssey from college professor to prison inmate to prison warden back again to prisoner in another of Vonnegut's bitter satirical explorations of how and where (and why) the American dream begins to die. Employing his characteristic narrative device - a retrospective diary in which the protagonist retraces his life at its end, a desperate and disconnected series of events here in Hocus Pocus show Vonnegut with his mask off and his rhetorical devices unshielded.
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Vonnegut Imitating Vonnegut
- By Joe Kraus on 08-06-18
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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The Sirens of Titan
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course, there's a catch to the invitation....
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Absolutely Outstanding
- By Robert on 01-07-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Bluebeard
- The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988)
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist painter who we meet late in life and see struggling (like all of Vonnegut's key characters) with the dregs of unresolved pain and the consequences of brutality. Loosely based on the legend of Bluebeard (best realized in Bela Bartok's one-act opera), the novel follows Karabekian through the last events in his life that is heavy with women, painting, artistic ambition, artistic fraudulence, and as of yet unknown consequence.
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Kurt Vonnegut explores the arts
- By Darwin8u on 12-28-17
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Player Piano
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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
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Galapagos
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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!
- By Darwin8u on 12-13-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Armageddon in Retrospect
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Rip Torn
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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
- By CHARLES on 05-07-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Cat's Cradle
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Tony Roberts
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Cat's Cradle is Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a little person as the protagonist; a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny.
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KV at his best.
- By Robert on 06-22-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Welcome to the Monkey House
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: David Strathairn, Maria Tucci, Bill Irwin, and others
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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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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
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Before the A-Team, there was Travis McGee
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Peyton Place
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In 1956, when this novel was first published, communities all over New England snapped up copies to see if they were the town portrayed in the book. Peyton Place is the story of a repressive New England town known for its high standards of public morality, and the steamy sexual activities that take place behind its bedroom doors.
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Best book I've read to date!
- By Crusader on 11-07-11
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The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
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Duddy - the third generation of a Jewish immigrant family in Montreal - is combative, amoral, scheming, a liar, and totally hilarious. From his street days tormenting teachers at the Jewish academy to his time hustling four jobs at once in a grand plan to "be somebody", Duddy learns about living - and the lesson is an outrageous roller-coaster ride through the human comedy.
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OK but a bit disappointing; weak narration
- By Merlin on 05-12-17
By: Mordecai Richler
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Humboldt's Gift
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For years, they were the best of friends: the grand, erratic Humboldt and the ambitious young Charlie. But now Humboldt has died a failure, and Charlie's success-ridden life has taken various turns for the worse. Then Humboldt acts from the grave to change Charlie's life: he has left Charlie something in his will.
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Great Book, Great Reader
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By: Saul Bellow
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Before the A-Team, there was Travis McGee
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Peyton Place
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Seize the Day
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Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his forties, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos: he is separated from his wife and children; at odds with his vain, successful father; failed in his acting career (a Hollywood agent once placed him as “the type that loses the girl”); and in a financial mess.
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Why?
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Mr. Fox
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Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty - the opposite of the life she' s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she' d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy' s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white.
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Five stars with a Caveat
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A Flash of Green
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Overall
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A classic novel by John D. MacDonald with an exclusive introduction written and read by Dean Koontz. A Flash of Green tells the gripping story of small-town corruption and two people brave enough to fight back, featuring many of the themes John D. MacDonald explored better than anyone in his legendary career as a leading crime novelist. The opportunists have taken over Palm City. Silent and deadly, like the snakes that infest the nearby swamps, they lay hidden from view, waiting for the right moment to strike. Political subterfuge has already eased the residents toward selling out.
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Disjointed depressing
- By Carol I. Meeds on 11-18-22
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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The Early Ayn Rand
- A Selection from Her Unpublished Fiction (Revised Edition)
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 19 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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This remarkable, newly revised collection of Ayn Rand's early fiction ranges from beginner's exercises to excerpts from early versions of We the Living and The Fountainhead. Arranged chronologically, from 1926 through 1940, these works allow readers to follow the extraordinary trajectory of Rand's literary and intellectual growth, from a 21-year-old Russian immigrant struggling to master English to the brilliant prose stylist and sophisticated philosopher she was to become in her mature work.
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Want more Rand? Here it is.
- By John on 12-03-11
By: Ayn Rand
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Marjorie Morningstar
- By: Herman Wouk
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 28 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Marjorie Morningstar is a love story. It presents one of the greatest characters in modern fiction: Marjorie, the pretty 17-year-old who left the respectability of New York's Central Park West to join the theater, live in the teeming streets of Greenwich Village, and seek love in the arms of a brilliant, enigmatic writer.
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Great story with really cheesy narration
- By James on 05-05-12
By: Herman Wouk
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Young Hearts Crying
- By: Richard Yates
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Yates movingly portrays a man and a woman from their courtship in the 1950s to their divorce in the '70s, chronicling their heartbreaking attempts to reach their highest ambitions. Michael Davenport dreams of being a poet after returning home from World War II, and at first he and his new wife, Lucy, enjoy their life together. But as the decades pass and the success of others creates a fear of failure in both Michael and Lucy, their once bright future gives way to a life of adultery and isolation.
By: Richard Yates
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Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
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Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
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Disturbing the Peace
- By: Richard Yates
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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To all appearances, John Wilder has all the trappings of success, circa 1960: a promising career in advertising, a loving family, a beautiful apartment, even a country home. John's evenings are spent with associates at quiet Manhattan lounges and his weekends with friends at glittering cocktail parties. But something deep within this seemingly perfect life has long since gone wrong.
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7 hours and 27 minutes pure blisd
- By Mia on 01-05-13
By: Richard Yates
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Mildred Pierce
- By: James M. Cain
- Narrated by: Christine Williams
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness and determination. She used those attributes to survive a divorce in 1940s America with two children and to claw her way out of poverty, becoming a successful businesswoman. But Mildred also had two weaknesses: a yen for shiftless men and an unreasoning devotion to her monstrous daughter.
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Mildred -- you pierce my heart
- By P. Giorgio on 03-11-11
By: James M. Cain
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A Genuine 5-Stars
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Welcome to the Monkey House
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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
- By Michael Carrato on 08-17-06
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Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons
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With cutting wit, fierce conviction, and surprising empathy, Vonnegut explores a diverse range of topics including society, politics, sex, literature, and mortality. Fans who believe they've read all of Vonnegut's work will be delighted to find the author speaking frankly about timely and relevant new topics - with an amusing yet insightful style that's instantly recognizable.
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Vonnegut At His Best
- By Peter W. Kalnin on 12-09-23
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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While Mortals Sleep
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Kurt Vonnegut made his mark as one of America’s most influential writers with novels such as Slaughterhouse Five, named one of the 100 best English-language novels by Time. Published posthumously, While Mortals Sleep is a collection of 16 short stories, written early in Vonnegut’s career, that further cements his status as an American literary icon.
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old stories before he got to be the KV I've loved
- By Don Singletary on 10-29-11
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Fates Worse Than Death
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- By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Kurt Vonnegut presents in Fates Worse than Death a veritable cornucopia of his thoughts on what could perhaps best be summed up as "anti-theology", a manifesto for atheism that details Vonnegut's drift from conventional religion, even a tract evidencing belief in the divine held within each individual self--the deity within each individual person present in a universe that otherwise lacks any real order.
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Vonnegut is profound
- By Sarah on 02-03-20
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Pity the Reader
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Unlistenable
- By Grant Swalwell on 01-06-20
By: Kurt Vonnegut, and others
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- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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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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- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: David Strathairn, Maria Tucci, Bill Irwin, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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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
- By Michael Carrato on 08-17-06
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- By Peter W. Kalnin on 12-09-23
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old stories before he got to be the KV I've loved
- By Don Singletary on 10-29-11
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Fates Worse Than Death
- An Autobiographical Collage
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Richard Davidson
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- Unabridged
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Kurt Vonnegut presents in Fates Worse than Death a veritable cornucopia of his thoughts on what could perhaps best be summed up as "anti-theology", a manifesto for atheism that details Vonnegut's drift from conventional religion, even a tract evidencing belief in the divine held within each individual self--the deity within each individual person present in a universe that otherwise lacks any real order.
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Vonnegut is profound
- By Sarah on 02-03-20
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Timequake
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
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- Unabridged
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According to Kurt Vonnegut's alter ego, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a global timequake will occur on February 13, 2001, at 2:27 p.m. It will be the moment when the universe suffers a crisis of conscience: Should it go on expanding indefinitely or collapse and make another great big BANG? For its own cosmic reasons, it decides to back up a decade to 1991, giving the world a 10-year case of deja vu, making everybody and everything do exactly what they'd done during the past decade.
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Arias only make hopeless situations worse
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One of the greatest minds in American writing, Kurt Vonnegut shares his often hilarious and always insightful reflections on America, art, politics and life in general. No matter the subject, Vonnegut will have you considering perspectives you may never have regarded. On the creative process: "If you want to really hurt your parents...the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding."
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Good but uneven collection of essays
- By J. S. Koehler on 01-28-06
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Look at the Birdie
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- Unabridged
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American literary icon Kurt Vonnegut enjoys immense popularity - and an equally immense amount of critical praise - for such works as his absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five. A must-have for readers everywhere, Look at the Birdie adds further insight into the author's body of work with a riveting collection of his previously unpublished short fiction.
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Great stories and performances to match
- By Jeff Lacy on 05-30-17
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Bagombo Snuff Box
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- Abridged
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From the author of such classics as Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle comes this collection of unabridged short fiction originally published in some of America's most popular magazines of the 1950s and 60s. Vonnegut himself selected his best early works for this collection, and he reads the preface and afterword to boot!
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Vonnegut rediscovered
- By Douglas on 03-21-03
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
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- Unabridged
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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.
- By Darwin8u on 03-27-14
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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The Sirens of Titan
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course, there's a catch to the invitation....
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Absolutely Outstanding
- By Robert on 01-07-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
What listeners say about Sucker's Portfolio
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Elaine Schenck
- 08-10-22
Everything was beautiful
The performance was a little different than what I would have imagined, but a great listen. The essay excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I just wish I knew how it ended.
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- Mel S.
- 02-04-16
Not my favorite thing, but I would read more
Based on content, I would give this a 3 stars. I liked it, and the stories are masterfully crafted, but short stories rarely land with me. This is my first Vonnegut experience, and I definitely think I would pick up more of his full length work, based on what I saw here. The first two short stories were rather depressing and intriguingly strange, and my contentment with the stories went up as the book progressed. My favorite was the penultimate work, a nonfiction essay Vonnegut wrote in 1992 that I might briefly label as Vonnegut's take on "white guilt", but that is far from an all-encompassing description. If I were to rate it as an audiobook, I would bump it up to 4 stars! The narrator, Luke Daniels, is supremely talented! And as I said, short stories aren't really my cup of tea, so I probably would not have finished this without how much I liked this as an audiobook. Plus, the short stories are each between 20 and maybe 45 minutes for the most part, which made it great for listening to basically a whole story on my 25 minute commute to work.
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- Jeff L. Keehr
- 08-12-15
Not worthy of Vonnegut.
He should not have published the unfinished science-fiction piece. It is really bad. The long, rambling opinion piece is also not ready for publication. But I enjoyed the short fiction. Funny stuff.
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- Dubi
- 06-11-14
Hit or Miss, For Completists Only
We don't know why Kurt Vonnegut chose to leave these stories (and one essay) unpublished during his lifetime. The facile explanation is that he didn't think they were good enough to publish. Some reviewers have dismissed them based on that assumption.
But we also don't know when Vonnegut wrote them (the essay was written in 1992). We know he gave up on the short story as a literary form quite some time ago, so we can surmise that these are from the same era as those found in the two collections published while he was alive.
We also know that three of the stories in Bagombo Snuff Box were rewritten by Vonnegut for its 1999 publication because he was dissatisfied with them, even though they had already been published elsewhere. The stories in Sucker's Portfolio were never published. Maybe they were rejected, maybe Vonnegut didn't even submit them, maybe he was still working on them, even though all but one are complete as is.
But I can't dismiss them out of hand based solely on the fact that they were never published before. That's because there is some good stuff here -- there is only one story that I didn't like and didn't get at all. But the stories are uneven, some more so than others. They are also too O Henrian, clearly crafted to set up the ironic final reveal, which harks back to Vonnegut's explanation of why he gave up on the form, because it was "too cute".
The bottom line: if you haven't already read all of Vonnegut's novels -- especially his first seven novels -- and the Welcome to the Monkey House collection of stories, that's where you should be going right now. But if you're a completist like me who has already read everything else, there is definitely enough here to keep you interested.
Unfortunately, the narration doesn't enhance the experience. Especially the voices -- most especially the female voices, who all come off with the same mousy, scared tone that is borderline offensive.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Whitney A. Price
- 07-27-17
Superb
Vonneguts stories come to life with the help of this voice actor!! I could listen to these over and over and over....
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Grandma G
- 09-11-16
Future Firetold
"4" for presentation. Being distinct short stories, an intro to each would help the transition. The stories, particularly the 1st and last are so appropriate to today. KV - a brilliant mind and vision. Always an enjoyable experience, reading or listening.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Adriane H
- 03-12-19
just ok
I didn't enjoy this as much as I do other works by Vonnegut, maybe the stories were too short to make an impact, maybe they weren't surreal enough, they just seemed mundane and boring compared to his usual fare
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1 person found this helpful
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- Gregory
- 04-19-15
The voice of vanquished reason
Kurt Vonnegut died in 2007. Like Samuel Clemens, he had a better than average grasp of human history, and like Samuel he used humor to point out our failings as a species. Unfortunately, while people appeared to like his humor, his message largely falls on deaf ears. If you read this book, be aware that, despite maintaining his sense of humor. And while he despairs of any hope that humanity will ever throw off our illusion of sanity and begin to remember our past, and see our present with loathing, he always maintained that we are what we pretend to be. Much of this book is a plea that we pretend to be something better.
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- MMCPT
- 03-11-16
Couldn't get into it :(
Couldn't get into it :( The stories were semi all over the place which i expected but didn't hold my attention
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- Kindle Customer
- 06-20-14
unpublished
What disappointed you about Sucker's Portfolio?
Chaos
Has Sucker's Portfolio turned you off from other books in this genre?
Yes
What do you think the narrator could have done better?
It would have been better not to have tried this work.
If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Sucker's Portfolio?
Return to sender.
Any additional comments?
There's a good reason these haven't been published before.
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