Vonnegut wrote a Foreword in Kurt Vonnegut: Images and Representation, a collection of essays about his work edited by Peter J. Reed and Marc Leeds, published in 2000. It is dated September 3, 1999.
Summary[]
When he was middle-aged, as are six of his seven children now, Vonnegut said he wanted his epitaph to be "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt", from his novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Now almost 77, having lived five years longer than his father and twenty-five years longer his mother, he still does. When asked recently by a reporter why, he replied "Because I got off so light". This books is made up of essays about works Vonnegut says he could not help himself from writing. Five are by close friends—Reed, Leeds, Robert Weide, Loree Rackstraw, and Jerome Klinkowitz—while the rest are by strangers. To have a book like this exist about his novels, all of which are still in print, surprises him. When he went to work at the Writers' Workshop at the University of Indiana thirty-four years ago, he was completely out of print. He reflects: "If this isn't nice, what is?"[1]
- ↑ "Foreword", Kurt Vonnegut: Images and Representation, pg. ix.