March 2022
If you believe in LOA’s mission and would like to support our activities in a substantial way, nothing is more helpful than endowing a volume in the series to keep it permanently in print. Your gift will have prominent recognition in the book, and as a Guardian of American Letters you will make a lasting contribution to American culture.
To mark Kurt Vonnegut’s centenary in 2022, this month’s featured candidate for adoption captures at the height of his powers the author who set the tone and embodied the spirit of the counterculture. Kurt Vonnegut: Novels 1963–1973 includes his breakthrough work, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), based on the author’s firsthand experience of the firebombing of Dresden in World War II, and Breakfast of Champions (1973), Vonnegut’s wildly imaginative, funny, sweeping satirical vision of modern America that centers on the fateful meeting between an aging science-fiction writer and a Midwestern car dealer losing his grip on sanity. Three remarkable short stories and moving autobiographical accounts of Vonnegut’s war experience round out the volume.
(Director Robert Weide, whose documentary Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time was released in November, joined LOA LIVE recently to offer an entertaining and insightful take on these two novels and on his friend Kurt Vonnegut’s lasting impact on American writing.)
A companion volume, Kurt Vonnegut: Novels & Stories 1950–1962, is kept in print by a gift from LOA Trustee Matthew McLennan, made in honor of his daughter Emilia McLennan. A fully tax-deductible contribution of $75,000 to the Guardians of American Letters Fund will ensure that this volume—an essential part of the American literary heritage—is always available for current and future generations of readers, a lasting testimony to Vonnegut’s genius and to your generosity.
Learn more about becoming a Guardian of American Letters.
• Donors to the Guardians of American Letters Fund
• Complete list of titles available for adoption