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Carregando... Basic Training (2012)de Kurt Vonnegut
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Registre-se no LibraryThing tpara descobrir se gostará deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. For Vonnegut fans, it's interesting to read his early work. He hasn't quite found the short, punchy style that made him famous, and the characters aren't quite as zany as those in his later work. Hey, the man is still developing his sarcasm. Structurally, it feels a bit like a play -- with two major set pieces, loud actors and a clear middle to the book. And as a novella (Kindle single) it's also pretty short. But it's fun while it lasts. If you haven't read Vonnegut, you'd be better to start with Slaughterhouse-Five or Cat's Cradle. But if you can't get enough, this one is definitely worth the couple bucks on Amazon. sem resenhas | adicionar uma resenha
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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. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — Carregando... GênerosClassificação decimal de Dewey (CDD)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos E.U.A. (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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A new old Vonnegut. I'm not sure you can go wrong with a novella by Kurt Vonnegut that's narrated by Colin Hanks! This is one of Vonnegut's unpublished stories, likely written in the 1940s, it seems. I haven't come across it before today and was in the mood for a Vonnegut story. It's a good novella, and follows a teenager named Haley Brandon when he comes to stay with a man who insists upon calling himself the General. I saw a few Salinger comparisons and I can see it. If you've read Salinger's shorts, I totally get the same vibe.
I recommend the audiobook for sure! Colin Hanks is a great narrator and really brings Vonnegut's words to life ♥ ( )