Alright. I have a bunch of Kurt Vonnegut books and I’m too lazy to scan through all of them to find what I want. It was a short story about how the last days Hitler spent his life. It said that him and Eva played Monopoly and other games. Can someone tell me what book this is from?
Thanks!!!
I’m not entirely positive but it might be God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian… I remember him talking to Hitler in one of his controlled near death experiences.
Damn.
I think you are right ** tachyon **.
I’m bummed now because God Bless You, Dr Kevorkian is one Vonnegut book I never bought. I read the whole book at Borders and then didn’t buy it.
But thank you soooooooo much.
No, it’s not the Hitler story in God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian – that was my first thought too, and I looked it up in my copy. But the story says nothing about Monopoly or Hitler’s last days. So unless Vonnegut sneaked this info into one of the other stories in the collection, this book isn’t it. Sorry.
How about Happy Birthday, Wanda June - a play, where Heaven is such a nice place that all the Jews wear “Adolf Hitler Running Club” track-suits…?
My memory might be failing, because it’s been over 20 years since I read any of his crap, but wasn’t Happy Birthday, WJ the one about the woman whose macho adventurer ex-husband reappeared just as she was about to marry a peacenik? The main thing I remember about it was that the ex-husband showed up in the company of the guy who dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.
The play with Hitler in it was Between Time and Timbuktu, which was made into a telemovie around 1972 or so. It was about shooting the first poet into space (actually, through the chrono-synclastic infindibulum), and Bob and Ray played the teevee newscasters.
HBWJ (IIRC - it’s been a while since I read it) is the one where a little kid’s father has forgotten to buy him a birthday cake, so he persuades a bakery to sell him the last cake in the store, which hadn’t been collected because its original recipient, Wanda-June, had been run over by an ice-cream truck. The cake says “Happy Birthday Wanda June” on it. It’s full of pathos. Meanwhile, Wanda June is up in Heaven, having the time of her life (death?), and the pathos is reversed.
I’m almost certain the Hitler story was in Timequake, Vonnegut’s last book. But it’s been a while since I’ve read it, so I could be wrong.
OK, try Timequake, chapters 19 and 20. I only skimmed, but it appears that they are playing bingo with Goebbels. The story is being retold from from Kilgore Trout’s “Bunker Bingo Party.” Don’t know if that appeared or is mentioned anywhere else in the Vonnegut canon.
You might also check out Mother Night
But don’t bet the farm on this… its been almost 20 years since I read it!
Alright thanks everyone.
It was ** Timequake**.
For some reason I thought they played Monopoly but it was bingo.
I always thought that story was hilarious.