“The master at his quirky, provocative best.”— Cosmopolitan Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut’s funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors—a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb—Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe . . . and who we say we are. Praise for Deadeye Dick “A moving fable . . . Vonnegut, sweet cynic and ugly duckling, continues to write gentle swan songs for our uncivil society.” — Playboy    “A brilliantly unconventional novel . . . a must for all Vonnegut fans.” —Worcester Sunday Telegram   “Hits the bull’s-eye . . . dolefully celebrates the randomness of life, treating private and public disasters with a kind of reckless whimsy. . . . You don’t read Kurt Vonnegut for meaning exactly. You read him for the sad-funny attitude of mind, the kind of weirdness that can interpret the world’s weirdness.” — USA Today   “Vonnegut is beguiling as ever . . . Incredible plot constructions and inventive language continue to leap from his typewriter . . . the humor is natural and inborn; the insight usually purchased by his characters at painfully high cost. Funny how life turns out. Even funnier how Mr. Vonnegut turns life’s insanities into funny, profound sense. That takes a master’s touch. Mr. Vonnegut still has it.” — Kansas City Star    “Playful and imaginative . . . On finishing the novel, the kitchen of your mind is a cleaner and more well-lighted place than it was before.” — Houston Chronicle   “Endearing and enchanting . . . a wise and charming book . . . very full of life.” — Glamour “A moving fable . . . Vonnegut, sweet cynic and ugly duckling, continues to write gentle swan songs for our uncivil society.” — Playboy    “The master at his quirky, provocative best.” — Cosmopolitan   “A brilliantly unconventional novel . . . a must for all Vonnegut fans.” —Worcester Sunday Telegram   “Hits the bull’s-eye . . . dolefully celebrates the randomness of life, treating private and public disasters with a kind of reckless whimsy. . . . You don’t read Kurt Vonnegut for meaning exactly. You read him for the sad-funny attitude of mind, the kind of weirdness that can interpret the world’s weirdness.” — USA Today   “Vonnegut is beguiling as ever . . . Incredible plot constructions and inventive language continue to leap from his typewriter . . . the humor is natural and inborn; the insight usually purchased by his characters at painfully high cost. Funny how life turns out. Even funnier how Mr. Vonnegut turns life’s insanities into funny, profound sense. That takes a master’s touch. Mr. Vonnegut still has it.” — Kansas City Star   “Good news for an American public which can pretty obviously use much of Vonnegut’s honesty, moral vision, and revulsion for mankind’s stupidities it can get. . . . In Deadeye Dick, the Vonnegut trademark with language—the simple, childlike rhetoric which has the effect of unmasking the absurdity of so much that we take for granted—remains in fine working order.” — San Diego Union   “Playful and imaginative . . . On finishing the novel, the kitchen of your mind is a cleaner and more well-lighted place than it was before.” — Houston Chronicle   “Endearing and enchanting . . . a wise and charming book . . . very full of life.” — Glamour Kurt Vonnegut ’s humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America’s attention in  The Sirens of Titan  in 1959 and established him as “a true artist” ( The New York Times ) with  Cat’s Cradle  in 1963. He was, as Graham Greene declared, “one of the best living American writers.” Mr. Vonnegut passed away in April 2007. To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life. I have caught life. I have come down with life. I was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness, and then a little peephole opened quite suddenly. Light and sound poured in. Voices began to describe me and my surroundings. Nothing they said could be appealed. They said I was a boy named Rudolph Waltz, and that was that. They said the year was 1932, and that was that. They said I was in Midland City, Ohio, and that was that. They never shut up. Year after year they piled detail upon detail. They do it still. You know what they say now? They say the year is 1982, and that I am fifty years old. Blah blah blah. My father was Otto Waltz, whose peephole opened in 1892, and he was told, among other things, that he was the heir to a fortune earned principally by a quack medicine known as "Saint Elmo's Remedy." It was grain alcohol dyed purple, flavored with cloves and sarsaparilla root, and laced with opium and cocaine. As the joke goes: It was absolutely harmless unless discontinued. He, too, was a Midland City native. He was an only child, and h