SOURCE: "So It Still Goes with the Sermonettist," in Observer Review, December 22, 1991, p. 43.

In the following review of Fates Worse than Death, Cunningham praises Vonnegut's wit in addressing the problems of modern American society.

Kurt Vonnegut is the conscience of Middle America. The fates picked out an ordinary GI kid prisoner-of-war, one of us, one man out of the whole US, to endure and miraculously survive the fire-bombing of Dresden. Thus Vonnegut became a unique witness against the human awfulness Dresden symbolised.

He chose to do his testifying by playing Huck Finn, a Holy Fool, a zany and practical joker with a canny touch for textual transgression—mixing up the genres, defying distinctions between high and low modes, straight fic and Sci Fi, novels and sermons. No wonder he became the preacher of post-Holocaust righteousness Americans hate to love and love to hate. They ban his books from...