not my favorite of kurt’s but it was interesting to see how his usual voice translates into play format. the ending felt a little rushed to me but I guess you have more unusual restraints when writing is meant to be performed and monetized. cool quick read.

Probably the strangest play I’ve read

Happy Birthday, Wanda June is one of the few works of Kurt Vonnegut that I haven't read. Honestly, I didn't know about this play until I found it on the shelf of a second-hand book store.

Oh boy! Am I glad I picked it up!

Vonnegut turns his clever insights and sharp whit on another legendary writer - Ernest Hemingway. Although I am a fan of Hemingway, I freely admit that his macho bullshit can be a bit too much.

In many ways, Hemingway is the antithesis of Vonnegut. Hemingway was big and loud. He was a hunter who never missed an opportunity to go to war. He was a braggart who prioritized bravado over intellectualism. Vonnegut was a humanist who was an open pacifist. He was an intellectual who originally studied anthropology before becoming a writer.

In Happy Birthday, Wanda June, Vonnegut uses the braggadocious Harold Ryan as a stand-in for Hemingway. At the beginning of the play, Ryan has been lost in the Amazon Rain Forest for eight years and is presumed dead. He left behind a wife and young son. His wife has moved on. She's not engaged to a pacifist doctor named Norbert Woodly.

It's not a stretch to assume Woodly is a stand-in for Vonnegut.

Of course, Ryan returns - bursting back into his wife and son's lives with all the elegance of a bull in a china shop. Ryan's return leads to a confrontation with Woodly. As I read the climactic scene, I couldn't help but picture Hemingway in a heated argument with Vonnegut. As far as I know, this scene is as close to a moralistic debate as Hemingway and Vonnegut ever came.

I thoroughly enjoyed Happy Birthday, Wanda June, and devoured it in a single sitting. If you're a fan of Vonnegut (or Hemingway, for that matter) Happy Birthday, Wanda June is worth your time.

It put us in a haze--a honey-colored haze which was lavender around the edge. We laughed, we sang, we snoozed. When a bird called, we answered back. Every living thing was our brother or our sister, we thought.

Vonnegut describes heaven in this book, but it isn't the shuffleboard playing lethargy pit Wanda June finds herself in.

one of my favorite things about Vonnegut is this: for a majority of each body of work, he presents himself so unseriously. he opens so many storylines all at once, and elaborates using skillful metaphors that don’t make sense at first. until you get to the very end. the final act of Happy Birthday, Wanda June is poignant. all at once, what Vonnegut himself has described as a take on Odysseus’ return, becomes symbolic of the men returning from WW2 and more than that, it becomes commentary on human nature itself. war is brutal, adventures in foreign lands are brutal, but Vonnegut tells us that spending enough time in that brutality makes us yearn for it. whether it’s right or wrong.

Not one of Vonnegut's best, but still entertaining. As with most Vonnegut books, I'm guessing on the read date. I went on a bender and read most of his books available to me in the library in the mid/late 1980s.

Dialogue never was Vonnegut's strong point. His brilliance came about in his descriptions of oddities and his simple, one-sentence life truths. So a play is less than ideal for ol' Kurt - it's just harder for him to convey what he's best at conveying in this format.

That having been said, this is reasonably funny and reasonably interesting and reasonably strange. It's just not the greatest play I've ever read, and not the greatest Vonnegut. Plus a copy is a bitch to rustle up.

I like reading dramas and I like Vonnegut but this is not one of his better efforts.

Vonnegut's only play. A satire of a modern Odysseus, some of the language is dated in a stereotypical way for 1971 when it was written. However, the message of questioning whether killing things with guns isn't what makes you a "real man", that a "real man" can be peace-loving and openly affectionate with other males, is still relevant today. Particularly with the gun violence problem in the U.S. The introduction written by Vonnegut is some of the most interesting writing of the book with Vonnegut's telltale humor and self-deprecation.

What an odd, quick read. Vonnegut wrote only one play (thank goodness!) and set it as a retelling of Odysseus's return home from war set in the mid 20th century. Like the Odyssey, Penelope has several suitors and a son who lamely attempts to fight them off. The role of the returning war hero is Penelope's brutish husband, Harold, an older, gruffy, rude man who's been missing for 8 years while diamond hunting. A lover of big game, guns and "traditional" masculinity, he revels in his surprise return and emotional control over his family.

Frequently the play reads like something from The Theater of the Absurd. The stilted dialogue, particularly at the end, lends to this affect. In true Vonnegut fashion, Happy Birthday, Wanda June is a commentary on heroism, war, and death. So it goes.

One funny note: I noticed the original Off-Broadway cast (1970-71) included Dianne Wiest (In Treatment, Law & Order, Edward Scissorhands, etc.) as the female understudy.

Wandering hero comes home, only to find that his wife Penelope has outgrown him. He doesn't take it well.

Themes: anti war; anti "heroic" masculinity.

An exaggeration of masculine caricatures

As well as women’s sense of helplessness and using the way they’re being perceived by men to their advantage. But can we blame her? Who shall we blame in this story. I might say Harold Ryan but he was made to be this way by other men. Leaders of War (play takes place in the 70). His example of manhood was hitler and the ideals of his sheer survival. He acts this way off of instinct. Which is why I think he still decided to pull the trigger at the end. Setting his pride aside means dying. Showing weakness means dying. Getting killed shows honor and strength in how you fought till the very end. You battled for your life. that’s honor. Lacking that sense of control over yourself and others. That’s dying.