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This is part two in a continuing series of articles all of which are designed to inform and guide anyone who might want to know a little bit more about the rich tradition of art, letters and philosophy we have inherited from those who came before us. This article looks specifically at some of the best and most important works of 20th Century American Postmodernism. It discusses authors such as Joseph Heller, John Barth, Kurt Vonnegut, Don DeLilo, and David Foster Wallace.

When Kurt Vonnegut published his first novel, "Player Piano," in 1952, he wrote about corporate culture taking over in America. It was the end of WWII and Vonnegut, as a young novelist, wrote about a distant future where the corporate powers that were beginning to dominate the American landscape seized the opportunities presented by the fragile post-war economy. Today, 57 years later, Vonnegut's vision is much closer to reality than anyone browsing the "new fiction" section in 1952 would accept. Vonnegut is a visionary. This article examines the lasting value and effect of Vonnegut's ever-true vision and work.

Kurt Vonnegut, one of the most prolific if not best American writers of the second half of the twentieth century, first earned a reputation for himself as a science-fictionist with his early works, The Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle. This reputation, however much it vastly underestimates and misunderstands Vonnegut's work and its significance to the modern era, has been difficult for Vonnegut to escape. It does, however, provide insight into the aspects of the modern situation that Vonnegut sees as central and meaningful. Bluebeard, which trades a more traditionally Vonnegut mad scientist for a retired, eccentric expressionist painter, the same painter from Breakfast of Champions, tackles the issues which have traditionally blurred Vonnegut's role in the literary and popular fiction traditions. This article explores these issues within Vonnegut's version of the fairytale, Bluebeard.