Peter Freese Books

The unique career of Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - 2007), America's first major writer to emerge from the paperback industry, spanned over half a century, establishing him as a key figure in post-World War II American literature. His works, from 'Player Piano' (1952), a dystopian vision of tyranny through technology, to 'Timequake' (1997), which blends fiction and autobiography, include fourteen notable novels. Among these, 'Slaughterhouse-Five' (1969) stands out as a groundbreaking classic. This study begins by tracing Vonnegut's evolution from an overlooked writer to an international sensation, alongside a history of the mixed reception of his work. It highlights his unique style, which combines a naïve tone appealing to general readers with innovative metafictional techniques that engage literary connoisseurs. A dedicated chapter analyzes all fourteen novels, detailing their critical reception and interconnections through recurring characters, settings, themes, and motifs. This comprehensive reading synthesizes textual analysis and previous scholarship, presenting each novel as a distinct piece of literary art. Ultimately, the study affirms Vonnegut's significance as a major voice in post-World War II American fiction.

Die Bedeutung des 'amerikanischen Traums' für die ganze Welt - im positiven wie im negativen Sinne - wird hier vor dem Hintergrund der kulturellen, politischen und wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung der USA anhand von Texten aufgezeigt, deren Themen von den ersten Einwanderern bis zur Wahl A. Schwarzeneggers zum kalifornischen Gouverneur reichen. Informationen zum Lehrwerk - Themenhefte für den Einsatz in Grund- und Leistungskursen der gymnasialen Oberstufe. Die bewährten Viewfinder Topics für die gymnasiale Oberstufe in erweiterter und neu gestalteter Form. Zahlreiche zusätzliche Texte, Bilder und Info Boxes führen die erörterten Themen bis in die unmittelbare Gegenwart fort. Die Texte und die vielfältigen Zusätze und Erläuterungen werden durch ein neues Layout enger zusammengerückt und in noch ansprechenderer Optik präsentiert. Anmerkungen und Aufgaben folgen.

Fascinating insights into the characteristic aspects of a city of contradictions. The collection features works by renowned authors (Cheever, Malamud, Purdy) alongside pieces from lesser-known contemporary writers and poems by Whitman, Hughes, and others.

The papers collected in this volume were presented at a conference on „The Journey of Life“ which took place at Paderborn University in October 2013. They focus on a perennially recurring archetype of the human imagination which, for obvious reasons, is especially influential in the U. S. The articles offer exemplary insights into the manifestations and functions of the 'journey of life' concept in both American life and literature. Some contributions deal with 'real' journeys ranging from the westward travels of pioneer women physicians in the nineteenth century through Jack London's 'journeys of life' to the attempts at tinkering with the human journey of life in the age of biotechnology. Other contributions present a taxonomy of journey types in American fiction, and they analyze literary journeys from the omnipresent journeys in Thomas Pynchon's novels and the post-apocalyptic journey in Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' through the journey plot in Robert Kirkman's serial comic 'The Walking Dead' and the various kinds of journeys in Western films to the journeys of initiation in Sherman Alexie's 'The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian' and José Antonio Villarréal's 'Pocho'.

Subject: Twenty-one essays by distinguished scholars from Germany and the United States offer an informative tour d’horizon of the complex interrelations between science and literature and demonstrate that contemporary American fictions provide numerous bridges which link what, half a century ago, C. P. Snow could still diagnose as ”Two Cultures” separated by mutual ignorance and hostility. The broad spectrum of topics ranges from a Hegelian reading of speed in recent U. S. fiction to the relation between performative code and figurative language in American literature, from literary explorations of network theory to fictional comments on risk assessment, from tales of an intelligent materialism in the age of artificial life to an exploration of technoromanticism and the limits of representationalism, and from versions of ground zero literature to the autopoiesis of American fiction. Among the authors whose texts are discussed in detail are Kurt Vonnegut, William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Robert Coover, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, Richard Powers, Stephen Wright, Steven Millhauser, Carl Djerassi, and Colson Whitehead.

This monograph investigates the two competing paradigms of ‘The End’ in American literature, the Biblical apocalypse and the thermodynamic ‘heat-death’, in historical surveys and close readings of representative texts. Opening with an overview of apocalyptic motifs in American fiction and a detailed reading of Bernard Malamud’s ‘post-apocalyptic’ novel ‘God’s Grace’, the book then reconstructs the development of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and its changing cultural contexts from Carnot and Clausius through Boltzmann and Shannon to Prigogine’s ‘dissipative structures’ and the finding of chaos theory. Having established the necessary background, it traces the function of the entropy notion in literary criticism, analyzes its widely neglected role in selected novels from Updike and Kesey through Pynchon and Gaddis to DeLillo and Bowden, and closes with a detailed reading of Thomas Pynchon’s ‘The Crying of Lot 49’. As the first comprehensive treatment of the cultural metaphorization of the crucially important entropy concept, the monograph sheds new light on the interaction between science and literature and thus contributes to the interaction between science and literature and thus contributes to the overdue closing of the gap between C. P. Snow’s ‘two cultures’.