God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by Kurt Vonnegut

From the Publisher

In what began as a series of quirkily characteristic ninety-second interludes for New York's public radio station, Kurt Vonnegut asks, on behalf of us all, the Big Questions. Could death be a quality? A place? Not an ending but an occurrence that changes those to whom it happens?

As a "reporter on the afterlife," Vonnegut bravely allows himself to be strapped to a gurney by his friend Jack Kevorkian and dispatched round-trip to the Pearly Gates. Or at least that's what he claims in the introduction to these thirty-odd comic and irreverent "interviews" with the likes of William Shakespeare, Adolf Hitler, and Clarence Darrow, bringing readers to an entirely new place—a place to which only Vonnegut could bring us.

Time Magazine

Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari, and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer....A zany but moral-mad scientist.

Providence Sunday Journal

Vonnegut devotees will love this little book, and I'm sure anyone else with a sense of humor and the desire to fulfill his or her "right to know" will enjoy it as well....A tidy smorgasbord of ficto-journalism and journo-fictionalism and various other forms of writing that deftly defy classification.

Publishers Weekly

As a "reporter on the afterlife," Kurt Vonnegut bravely allows himself to be strapped to a gurney by his friend Jack Kevorkian and dispatched--round-trip--to the Pearly Gates. Or at least that's what he claims in the introduction to this series of brief pieces originally read as 90-second interludes on WNYC, Manhattan's public radio station. Revised and rewritten for this slim volume, Vonnegut's "interviews" range from the gossamer-slight to the deliciously barbed. Among the dead people he is privileged to talk to are Salvatore Biagini, a retired construction worker who died of a heart attack while rescuing his schnauzer from a pit bull; John Brown, still smoldering 140 years after his death by hanging; William Shakespeare, who spouts quotations and rubs Vonnegut the wrong way; and one of Vonnegut's own personal heroes, socialist and labor leader Eugene Victor Debs. The tables are turned on Vonnegut when he runs into Sir Isaac Newton, who is lurking near the Heaven end of the "blue tunnel" of the Afterlife. Newton, tireless in his quest for knowledge, wants to find out what the tunnel is made of, and he takes over the interview, besieging Vonnegut with questions. Unfazed, the writer moves on, looking up Martin Luther King's assassin, James Earl Ray, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. It is only when Dr. Kevorkian is inconveniently convicted for murder that Vonnegut is forced to desist. This may be Vonnegut (or his publishers) scraping the bottom of the barrel, but no matter: there are few writers whose scrapings we'd rather have. (Jan.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

What People Are Saying

Graham Greene
Vonnegut is one of the best living American writers.

John Irving
Vonnegut is our strongest writer...the most stubbornly imaginative.

Product Details