Deadeye Dick

Vonnegut does his fans a service with this satirical parable packaged with original food recipes. DEADEYE DICK starts strong and ends the same way all good novels end, leaving you looking at the world in a different light. Again Vonnegut questions the motives of the human race, its follies, and bleak fate. However, there are still bright nuggets of optimism buried in cleverly constructed metaphors. It is easy to empathize with Rudy Waltz as he dances through the long string of bad luck that makes his life. After being labeled "Deadeye Dick", he lives the rest of his life missing out on love and trying to make up for his misdeed. For me reading this book is like wandering through a junky antique shop. The writing is full of interesting tidbits. Some are fake but still entertaining to examine. In America's overmedicated landscape, Vonnegut offers us a chance to feel guilty for all the things we should feel guilty for and to enjoy the shinier things in life. Deadeye Dick offers reading in an antihero fashion, reminding us that everyone contains good and evil. Although arch types--heroes, villains --rarely exist in reality, Vonnegut cast the closest thing, young struggling artist Adolf Hitler. I recommend this story for anyone who enjoys a dark comedic style in writing.

To my way of thinking Kurt Vonnegut is one of the greatest writers of all time, end of story. I've yet to read anything bad by him -- and even a subpar offering from him is leaps and bounds better than most other books out there. This is great for Vonnegut and the reader, but is most fortunate for Deadeye Dick because while it falls (just barely) into the category of lesser Vonnegut it is still a truly great book and a tour de force of creative writing. In its pages you will meet Rudy Waltz, a pharmacist and so-called neuter who has been hiding away from the world ever since he accidentally shot and killed a pregnant woman at twelve years old and became a double murderer known in town as Deadeye Dick. In typical Vonnegut style Waltz has a fascinating and unique way of looking at the world and telling his story, and is backed up with an endearingly eccentric cast of characters. His outrageous father is one of Vonnegut's best creations: a self-proclaimed artist with no talent or artwork, an utter narcissist and onetime friend of Hitler's who becomes a laughingstock after the outbreak of WWII because he had so ardently supported his friend without actually paying attention to his politics. So why does Deadeye Dick fail to join the pantheon of Vonnegut's greats like Slaughterhouse Five, Mother Night, and Breakfast of Champions? Because those three have a moral urgency to them that Deadeye Dick is just slightly lacking in some key parts. While it is certainly not difficult to get involved in Waltz's saga I couldn't help but wish that he had come to more definitive conclusions in the end. But it does have a killer last line, and I would highly recommend this novel to anyone familiar with Vonnegut or, especially, to anyone who has yet to experience his divine fiction.

Deadeye Dick grabbed me by the scruff and brought me into a world that i belived was real. Few authors are capable of such mastery. This novel has a powerful theme which is unique in many ways, and could not be realized in the same manner by anyone but Vonnegut himself. Don't just read this book, savor it like a literary delicasy.

Many reviewers have indicated that Deadeye Dick was their first Vonnegut. To get a better (if that's possible) experience from reading this book you should now read Breakfast of Champions, if you haven't already. One of Vonnegut's motifs through the years has been to bring up certain characters and plot lines in several books--Kilgore Trout being one of them. He does this most successfully in Deadeye Dick tying up many threads and characters from BOC. If you have not read either book read BOC first and follow it immediately with Deadeye Dick. While both books are excellent on their own, you will enhance the experience of both by reading them back to back. Although I read BOC almost twenty years ago, I was taken right back to it while reading Deadeye Dick. I enjoyed it more with each turn of the page. These two together are a knockout!

Whether it is the average human individual who should not be allowed to possess a gun, or nations of humans who should not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons, Kurt Vonnegut champions the theme that man is too immature a beast too handle technology. In Deadeye Dick he is more successful in developing this theme than in the more famous Cat's Cradle, perhaps because Deadeye Dick is more serious. Unfortunately Vonnegut doesn't brook the question: Who is to deny humans the power they know how to create? He leaves no solution and if there is none, Deadeye Dick stands as a lament over hopeless humanity