I can’t think of Vonnegut’s works as just one body. The way I look at him, I feel he’s best divided into early and later, with the dividing line of his career being Breakfast of Champions.
That said, my favorite early Vonnegut was Cat’s Cradle, which I’ve read and reread. I never cared for Player Piano. Concerning the later Vonnegut, my favorite was Bluebeard, which had an ending that literally made me cry. I don’t know; maybe it’s what I needed at that point in my life, or maybe I was just so moved by the message of the book. Its point about what art means and how it would best serve us is one that I took to heart and still do, some twelve or so years later. My least favorite of the later works was Timequake.
I’m surprised at how many people have outright panned Mother Night. I thought that one had a painfully intriguing story to follow, and further, it had an agonizing political message to it. Mother Night was the last Vonnegut book I ever read, which means I’ve read all his books save Galápagos, which I’ll inevitably read, sooner or later. There is no writer whom I have read more thoroughly than Vonnegut, unless you count the likes of Harper Lee and John Kennedy Toole, who wrote one and two books, respectively.
Timequake for the worst, definitely. It’s the only one of his books (including Mother Night, which was, admittedly, weak) that I thought during the entire thing, “What? WHAT? WHO is writing this schlock?” Finished it, tossed it over my shoulder, haven’t picked it back up. It’s a bad, bad book that I don’t read at least a half-dozen times.
Favourites would be Galapagos, Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five. Pretty standard answers I see. I like all of his other stuff, too, barring said piece of obviously-the-rent-is-due-eh-Kurt tripe above.
lawoot—Toole’s first novel was called The Neon Bible, which was actually published while he was alive. It was nowhere nearly as remarkable as A Confederacy of Dunces, but it bears mentioning that he wrote it at the age of fourteen. It won some sort of local literary contest but never got much notice until after A Confederacy of Dunces was published. If you seek out The Neon Bible, don’t expect anything like A Confederacy of Dunces. The two books are drastically different, and this difference suggests that there had to be a huge body of work that Toole wrote and destroyed, since such remarkable development of writing ability (like you see in Confederacy) just doesn’t happen overnight, and is seldom something a writer is born with, if ever. TV time—Have I read Kocinski? Um… well… I don’t read. But you I like, because I like to watch.
Seriously, I have read Being There, but that’s the only Kocinski I’ve ever read. It’s a great book, and one of these days I’m going to have to look into more Kocinski.
Okay, folks. You may now return to your regularly-scheduled Vonnegut thread.
Breakfast of Champions, with Sirens of Titans, Slaughterhouse Five and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater close behind. My Vonnegut collection is complete and well-worn.
Well, except for Player Piano - I never enjoyed it that much - the “I love you too” stuff was pretty soapy, although it was representative of some of the short stuff he was writing at the same time.
I’ll go along with tpayne’s choices, though not necessarily in the same order. I’d throw Welcome To The Monkeyhouse in as a sentimental favourite, because it took my Vonnegut virginity.
I don’t know if it was hope (which is desire and expectation rolled into one, according to Ambrose Bierce), or respect, that let me get all the way through Bluebeard and Hocus Pocus. I kept thinking, “Vonnegut can’t write something this bad.”