Kurt Vonnegut Drawings

Nanette Vonnegut, a painter and writer, is the daughter of Kurt Vonnegut. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Peter Reed is an emeritus professor of English at the University of Minnesota. A longtime friend of Vonnegut, he has written extensively on the author s work.

"Kurt Vonnegut is known less for his graphic art than for satiric masterpieces like Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions. But as a writer who draws, he s not alone Victor Hugo, Tom Wolfe, Günter Grass and John Updike have all sketched and doodled. In Kurt Vonnegut Drawings, with an introduction by his daughter Nanette Vonnegut and an essay by the critic Peter Reed, the drawings witty and Paul Klee-inspired are referred to as doodles, as if to distinguish them from the art of Saul Steinberg, his neighbor and friend (who Vonnegut admitted made him feel stupid). But Vonnegut liked to play with color and ideas too. 'Had my father been granted two lifetimes,' Nanette writes, 'I have no doubt he would have mastered some aspect of the visual arts. And he would have cursed it and wished he had chosen to be a poet instead.'"
The New York Times Book Review

"There's a little Cubism, and a Ben Shahn-like linear quality, to novelist Kurt Vonnegut's drawings, but 1960s psychedelics seem to be more essential to understanding these (often colored) drawings. More than doodles, they have a precision that might surprise even his fans, and of course a sense of humor. The introduction by Vonnegut's daughter Nanette and essay by his friend, Peter Reed, reveal just how important visuals were to the visionary writer." 
The Star-Ledger (Newark)

The wildly various works include the caricatures of the 'Self-Portraits,' the bright whimsy of 'Abstraction,' and the playful 'Letters' with their curving, bubbly lines. 'Lines,' 'Things,' and 'Looking at Things' invite yet defy insights into Vonnegut's fiction, and the last 'Words' seem to mock the whole enterprise of creation, the concluding image a canopied staircase inscribed with: 'There is a ceiling on human thoughts.' Perhaps so, but the refreshing images featured here 'illustrate beautifully a creative mind at play,' and will delight Vonnegut fans."
Publishers Weekly