SOURCE: "Novelist on the Half Shell," in Washington Post Book World, September 21, 1997, p. X01.

In the following review, Disch argues that Timequake discloses much information about Vonnegut himself.

Timequake is a novel by, and starring, Kurt Vonnegut. His co-star, and virtually the only other "character" in the book, is his alter ego, Kilgore Trout, who figured in two earlier Vonnegut novels, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) and Breakfast of Champions (1973). Trout has also published his own novel, Venus on the Half Shell (1975), but since it was written, without Vonnegut's consent, by Philip Jose Farmer, that book cannot legally be accounted part of the Trout oeuvre, though it enjoys its own peculiar and illegitimate glory as one of the few novels published by a non-entity.

It may be that the concept for Timequake is a steal from Thorton Wilder's Our Town. (Vonnegut discreetly acknowledges as much.) In a nutshell...