Nu le-aș numi esențiale ori fundamentale, însă mi-a făcut plăcere să ascult interviurile, fie ele și fragmentate. Sunt discuții care au avut loc pe parcursul a trei decenii și selecția implică și o oarecare pierdere a contextului.

Kurt Vonnegut este unul dintre autorii mei preferați, așa că e o bucurie să-l ascult vorbind despre cărțile lui, despre arta de a scrie simplu și direct (în comparație cu scriitura voit complicată pentru a părea mai inteligentă) și tendința criticilor de a subaprecia sau chiar ignora lucrările care par prea simple în exprimare, cum erau și ale lui.

Am găsit o anume familiaritate în opiniile lui despre război și politică, știute și simțite întâi în paginile cărților sale. Poate cei care-i îndrăgesc cărțile și sunt familiarizați și cu autorul (l-au mai ascultat / văzut în interviuri) nu vor descoperi ceva ieșit din comun în această selecție. Însă poate fi o reîntâlnire binevenită, într-o pauză de lectură. :)

Loved hearing this genius talk about his current times and how his books parallel his present and ours.

In no way was this ‘essential’. It felt like.it was just three random interviews from this one guy.

I’m a big fan of KV, but this didn’t do much for me. Not really much content here, and the interviewer is pretty charmed by himself.

I miss Vonnegut. His voice would help us make it through this election.

Vonnegut's wit and simple, yet profound and timeless statements of truth never fail to impress me. In one of these interviews, Kurt discusses his book "A Man With No Country" which I read a few years ago. I had forgotten that he stated that most of our country's leadership are "psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences."

I wish I could disagree with him on this, but I can't.

He goes on to say, "What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reasons that they don't give a fuck what happens next."

A part of me wants to read Vonnegut every day - but I don't - because his writing is something that shouldn't be consumed greedily - it should sipped over time and allowed to soak in so it stays in your conscience for a good, long while.

“Essential Vonnegut Interviews” is comprised of three fine (albeit short) talks with the author, conducted by Walter James Miller over the course of more than three decades. The first interview focuses largely on Vonnegut's 1969 novel “Slaughterhouse-Five,” while the second (and best) is on his autobiographical “Palm Sunday,” from 1981, and the last is on “A Man Without a Country,” his political manifesto from 2005. Miller comes off as a bit pompous at times – I hardly think Vonnegut needs his own work interpreted for him, especially by someone who insists on dropping the term Jungian into his interpretations – but that shortcoming is offset by the two men's obvious camaraderie.

Vonnegut makes several interesting points about the art of the writing in the first two interviews. He castigates critics for dismissing his work as too simple and straightforward, saying that some authors write in an unnecessarily complicated way to sound smarter than they are. He also notes that each of the best-loved writers of the 20th century – Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner among them – ultimately included an extra character in each of their books: the writer himself. Readers eventually demand that presence, he argues, and that's why, starting with “Slaughterhouse-Five,” Vonnegut began including himself in his books. (None of the movies made from Hemingway's books was a success on the screen, Vonnegut says, because each was missing the presence of Hemingway himself.) Miller, unfortunately, misses an opportunity in the second interview: Vonnegut says male writers, to be remembered, need to include themselves in their books, implying that female writers do not. While I'm sure Vonnegut had an interesting explanation for his reasoning, Miller never follows up.

By the time of the last interview, recorded during the George W. Bush administration and after the start of the Iraq War, Vonnegut's concerns were primarily political, and the talk is almost solely about the state of the country and not about fiction. Anyone familiar with Vonnegut's writings in the last several years of his life will find few surprises in this talk. His most interesting comments concern his disappointment, as an old man, to find America lacking an intelligentsia – a thinking class that doesn't merely describe how the country is, but rather what it can and should be. (Also, one odd piece of trivia emerges from this interview: Vonnegut was a big fan of the television show "Law and Order." Who knew?)

Even casual fans of Vonnegut would likely enjoy these interviews, while ardent admirers will wish them much longer.

Vonnegut's a delight and here we get him casual and straightforward yet still insightful. The same goes for Miller, who comes into each interview warm, sharp, and supportive, yet prepared with so many of his own insights into Vonnegut's work. They converse like old friends and it makes for a breezy exploration of great minds at ease and perceptive.

Really, this was just a tease. They have 30 years worth of interviews and they only gave me one disc? I've not read a ton of Vonnegut and much of what they discussed I hadn't but it didn't matter. This man is just plain fascinating to listen to. I can't give it the 5th star because I just didn't really care for the interviewer. I don't really know him and I'm sure he's quite impressive in his own right but he came across as sort of pathetic and fawning.