Unstuck in Time

In Unstuck in Time, Gregory Sumner guides us, with insight and passion, through a biography of fifteen of Kurtandamp;#160;Vonnegut's best-known works--his fourteen novels starting with Player Pianoandamp;#160;(1952) all the way to an epilogueandamp;#160;on his last book, A Man Without a Country (2005)--to illustrate the quintessential American writer's profoundandamp;#160;engagement with the "American Dream" in its various forms. Sumner gives us a poignant portrait of Vonnegut and his resistance to celebrating the traditional valuesandamp;#160;associated with the American Dream: grandiose ambition, unbridled material success, rugged individualism,andamp;#160;and "winners" over "losers." Instead of a celebration of these values, we read and share Vonnegut's outrage,andamp;#160;his brokenhearted empathy for those who struggle under the ethos of survival-of-the-fittest in the frontierandamp;#160;mentality--something he once memorably described as "an impossibly tough-minded experiment in loneliness." Heroic and tragic, Vonnegut's novels reflect the pain of his own life's experiences, relieved by small acts ofandamp;#160;kindness, friendship, and love that exemplify another way of living, another sort of human utopia, anandamp;#160;alternative American Dream, and the reason we always return to his books.