The novels of Kurt Vonnegut depict a profoundly absurd and distinctly postmodern world. But in this critical study, Robert Tally argues that Vonnegut himself is actually a modernist, who is less interested in indulging in the free play of signifiers than in attempting to construct a model that could encompass the American experience at the end of the twentieth century. As a modernist wrestling with a postmodern condition, Vonnegut makes use of diverse and sometimes eccentric narrative techniques (such as metafiction, collage, and temporal slippages) to project a comprehensive vision of life in the United States. Vonnegut's novels thus become experiments in making sense of the radical transformations of self and society during that curious, unstable period called, perhaps ironically, the 'American Century.' An untimely figure, Vonnegut develops a postmodern iconography of American civilization while simultaneously acknowledging the impossibility of a truly comprehensive representation.

Robert T. Tally Jr. is Professor of English at Texas State University. He is the author of many books, including The Critical Situation: Vexed Perspectives in Postmodern Literary Studies (2023); For a Ruthless Critique of All That Exists (2022); J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit: Realizing History Through Fantasy (2022); Topophrenia: Place, Narrative, and the Spatial Imagination (2019); Fredric Jameson: The Project of Dialectic Criticism (2014); Poe and the Subversion of American Literature (2014); Spatiality (2013); Utopia in the Age of Globalization (2013); Kurt Vonnegut and the American Novel (2011); and Melville, Mapping, and Globalization (2009). The translator of Bertrand Westphal's Geocriticism: Real and Fictional Spaces (2011), Tally is also the editor or co-editor of Affective Geographies and Narratives of Chinese Diaspora (2022); Spatial Literary Studies in China (2022); Spatial Literary Studies (2020); Teaching Space, Place, and Literature (2018); The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space (2017); Ecocriticism and Geocriticism (2016); The Geocritical Legacies of Edward W. Said (2015); Literary Cartographies (2014); Kurt Vonnegut: Critical Insights (2013); and Geocritical Explorations (2011). Tally is the general editor of "Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies," a Palgrave Macmillan book series.

Acknowledgements \ Preface \ 1. A Postmodern Iconography \ 2. Misanthropic Humanism: Player Piano and The Sirens of Titan \ 3. Anxiety and the Jargon of Authenticity: Mother Night \ 4. Dialectic of American Enlightenment: Cat's Cradle and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater \ 5. Eternal Returns, or Tralfamadorian Ethics: Slaughterhouse-Five \ 6. Anti-Oedipus of the Heartland: Breakfast of Champions \ 7. Imaginary Communities, or the Ends of the Political: Slapstick and Jailbird \ 8. Abstract Idealism: Deadeye Dick and Bluebeard \ 9. Apocalypse in the Optative Mood: Galápagos \ 10. Twilight of the Icons: Hocus Pocus and Timequake \Bibliography \ Index