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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780385334174
ISBN number: 0385334176
Label: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Manufacturer: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: May 11, 1999
Publishing house: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Release Date: May 11, 1999
Sale Popularity Level: 173316
Studio: Dial Press Trade Paperback
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Deadeye Dick is 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, a.k.a. 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.
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Rated by buyers 
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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.
Rated by buyers -
The story of Rudy Waltz lacks a traditional plot but contains a very palpable mood of depression and sadness, setting the tone for what Vonnegut seems to have had in mind -- one man's simple recollections of a life that wasn't much worth living in the very first place.
Rudy Waltz becomes Deadeye Dick when he accidentally shoots and kills a pregnant woman, and for the rest of the story, characters are haunted -- some moreso than others -- by how the outside world perceives them, and how the relations they've had and the decisions they've made come to define them. Waltz is forever known as Deadeye Dick by the people of Midland City, a label he can only shake when he leaves Ohio for New York City. Only then does he realize that Deadeye Dick has become who he is, and he doesn't know how to operate otherwise.
Meanwhile, Rudy's father can never escape his past friendship with Hitler and his innocent support of Nazism, as well as his reputation as a failed painter devoid of talent. Rudy's brother is defined by the booming voice that carried him to the top of his industry and crashing back down to the bottom, as well as his penchant for divorce. He eventually reveals the loveless disconnect he's felt with his parents throughout his life. Most tragically, Celia Hoover, the pretty girl pursued throughout life because of her looks, wishes she never came to be known for her beauty and prefers a face that would better match how rotten she feels on the inside.
Without a real plot supporting it, Deadeye Dick comes to a rather quiet ending. Considering how Rudy Waltz described life as nothingness interrupted by sounds and light before disappearing into nothingness again, such a lifeless conclusion by Vonnegut symbolized Rudy Waltz most effectively.
Rated by buyers -
I am a big Vonnegut fan and I absolutely loved this book. The development of the main character, Rudy Waltz, is superb. When the book ended I felt as though I understood him better than some of my real life friends. The insights, the stories, and the memories which are described throughout the story are so personal that you can't help but truly understand Rudy as a person - as screwed up as he may be. As usual, Vonnegut does it all through perfect insight, beautiful words, and an excellent mix of dark humor, absurdity, and realism.
I read some of the other reviews on this site and cannot believe that people had so many negative things to say about this book. The tidbits of adding recipes and switching into "play mode" (complete with stage direction) were great techniques that further brought you into the mind of a "nobody" from a "nowhere" town. If you want a book that starts with "once upon a time" and finishes with "the end" then you may want to avoid this one; it's a little more cerebral than your average tale.
Rated by buyers -
Vonnegut rips into many things he sees wrong with America. He talks about guilt and waste and how some people never learn because they were too stupid and full of themselves to begin with. Ego as a disease of the brain. The dad in Deadeye Dick has no business walking the earth. None. Vonnegut saves his most scathing satire in Deadeye Dick for the American pastime of gunlove. We are taught guns are sexy and cool and we treat them as museum pieces and toys and treat them with no more care than the television remote. If we are to keep and bear arms, a la the 2nd amendment, then we have a responsibility to do so responsibly. The tragedy in Deadeye Dick is all the more affecting because we've all read similar horror stories over our toast and coffee. True story: A childhood friend of mine accidentally shot his little sister in the forehead when he was in junior high. He had found his father's automatic handgun and had removed the clip and not known there was a bullet in the chamber. They were playing with the gun, he pointed it at her and, thinking it was empty, pulled the trigger. The hospital unplugged her life support 3 days later. So it goes. Her life was over and his life was ruined and their parents' lives were ruined through their own carelessness and stupidity. Vonnegut had seen his share of suffering and waste and his preoccupation with those two societal ills runs like a vein through all his writing.
Rated by buyers -
Classic Vonnegut mix of humor, pathos, satire and social criticism. From 1979's Jailbird to present, he's been on a string of winners. They're not all stone cold classics, but every one is worthwhile read and has much to recommend. This is no exception.
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