Unstuck in Time

Sumner gives us a poignant portrait of Vonnegut and his resistance to celebrating the traditional values associated with the American Dream- grandiose ambition, unbridled material success, rugged individualism, and 'winners' over 'losers.' Instead of a celebration of these values, we read and share Vonnegut's outrage, his brokenhearted empathy for those who struggle under the ethos of survival-of-the-fittest in the frontier 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 of kindness, friendship, and love that exemplify another way of living, another sort of human utopia, an alternative American Dream, and the reason we always return to his books. Unstuck in Time is delightful, essential reading for those who remain enchanted by one of the giants of C20th American fiction. 'Engaging, almost spellbinding . . . the Grand Old Man would have liked this book and I can sense his blessing on it.' Professor Jermone Klinkowitz, author of Vonnegut in Fact, The Vonnegut Effect, and Kurt's Vonnegut's America 'Unstuck in Time is an achievement of scholarship illuminated by a fan's contagious enthusiasm.' Sidney Offit, author of Memoir of the Bookie's Son 'Sumner's biography straddles the artistic and the personal to deliver a biography that skilfully contextualizes Vonnegut's body of work. First and foremost, however, it is an effortless embodiment of the author's anti-establishment spirit.' AnOther Magazine