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The Writer’s Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse-Five Audiobook
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The story of Kurt Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse-Five, an enduring masterpiece on trauma and memory
Kurt Vonnegut was twenty years old when he enlisted in the United States Army. Less than two years later, he was captured by the Germans in the single deadliest US engagement of the war, the Battle of the Bulge. He was taken to a POW camp, then transferred to a work camp near Dresden, and held in a slaughterhouse called Schlachthof Fünf where he survived the horrific firebombing that killed thousands and destroyed the city.
To the millions of fans of Vonnegut’s great novel Slaughterhouse-Five, these details are familiar. They’re told by the book’s author/narrator, and experienced by his enduring character Billy Pilgrim, a war veteran who “has come unstuck in time.” Writing during the tumultuous days of the Vietnam conflict, with the novel, Vonnegut had, after more than two decades of struggle, taken trauma and created a work of art, one that still resonates today.
In The Writer’s Crusade, author Tom Roston examines the connection between Vonnegut’s life and Slaughterhouse-Five through his work, his personal history, and discarded drafts of the novel, as well as original interviews with the writer’s family, friends, scholars, psychologists, and other novelists including Karl Marlantes, Kevin Powers, and Tim O’Brien. The Writer’s Crusade is a literary and biographical journey that probes fundamental questions about trauma, creativity, and the power of storytelling.
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“Part biography, part literary interpretation, and part fan notes, The Writer’s Crusade is a spellbinding reexamination of both Slaughterhouse-Five and its author, Kurt Vonnegut. Although the emphasis of this marvelous book is on PTSD, Tom Roston never loses sight of the intuitive, imaginative genius of a boldly original prose stylist. Any Vonnegut enthusiast, and anyone interested in the sources of fine literature, will find pleasure in these pages.”
— Tim O’Brien, National Book Award–winning author
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“[Roston’s] passion for Vonnegut’s writing is contagious. Vonnegut’s fans will find in this survey a fresh take on a classic.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“New wars, and more recent fiction about them, may have overshadowed Slaughterhouse-Five, but Roston persuasively shows how the novel speaks both to Vonnegut’s moment and to our own.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“I absolutely loved The Writer’s Crusade. As soon as I finished it, I picked up Slaughterhouse-Five again. Tom Roston’s excellent book has given me the great gift of getting to read Vonnegut’s masterpiece as though it were my first time.”
— Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds -
“I read Slaughterhouse-Five when I had just returned from my war in Vietnam. I didn’t understand it until I read The Writer’s Crusade. Tom Roston’s insightful exploration of Vonnegut’s struggle to write the novel, and its significant place in our ongoing task of better understanding and treating the trauma of war should be read by all fans of Vonnegut, and all who suffer from trauma, no matter what the source.”
— Karl Marlantes, New York Times bestselling author
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About Tom Roston
Tom Roston has been a journalist for over twenty years, working at The Nation and Vanity Fair, and was a senior editor at Premiere for a decade. His work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, and more. Roston writes about documentary films for PBS.org. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
About Jim Frangione
Jim Frangione is an actor and audiobook narrator who won AudioFile magazine’s 2011 Best Voice in Mystery and Suspense for his reading of Philip Carter’s The Altar of Bones and Spencer Quinn’s To Fetch a Thief. He has won numerous Earphones Awards and has been was a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award. His theater credits include the off-Broadway production of Scrambled Eggs and the New York premiere of David Mamet’s plays The Old Neighborhood, Romance, and Oleanna, in which he also performed with the national tour. His film and television appearances include Joy, Transamerica, Spartan, Heist, Brotherhood, The Unit, and Law & Order.