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Deadeye Dick  By  cover art

Deadeye Dick

By: Kurt Vonnegut
Narrated by: Sean Runnette
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Publisher's summary

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.

©1982 The Ramjac Corporation (P)2015 Audible Studios

Featured Article: 70+ Unforgettable Kurt Vonnegut Quotes


Kurt Vonnegut had an extremely productive career, penning everything from plays to short stories to full-length nonfiction. Drawing on his experiences of war, life, and love, Vonnegut’s powerful messages were delivered so creatively—and often quite satirically—ensuring that they stood the test of time. This assortment of Kurt Vonnegut quotes is just a glimpse of the gems found throughout the works of this great author.

What listeners say about Deadeye Dick

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

If I aimed at nothing..nothing is what I would hit

"Human beings always treat blizzards as though they were the end of the world," he said. "They're like Birds when the sun go down. Birds think the sun is never going to come up again. Sometimes, just listen to the birds when the sun goes down."
--Kurt Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick

This is one of those Vonnegut novels, I'll probably hold off giving to my son to read. Not yet son. You aren't quite ready for this depth of existentialist Vonnegut despair. The world is sometimes a rotten place, it really is, but I don't want to step on all his hope too early. Once when I was young, and I said something cynical and sarcastic in front of my father, he rebuked me and said, "Son, leave sarcasm, cynicism, and Depend® undergarments to men above the age of 50. It isn't becoming in a kid so young." I now get what he meant. This is Vonnegut for old, cynical Vonnegut fans wearing a comfortable pair of Depends®. This is for those of us in our Epilogue years.

There is always a darkness to Vonnegut that is masked by his humor and his nonchalance. You often forget that there is an actual 1000 foot canyon beneath Vonnegut as his prose dances on the line of absurdism, death, and inhumanity. In this novel, you don't forget. That is part of the act, see? Vonnegut is pointing out the bodies on the rocks below and blaming the audience a bit. Still, it is pretty d@mn good stuff.

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27 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

the narrator has a lisp

I have a sensitivity to lisps. It is like nails on a chalkboard for me. This narrator has a lisp and I found it difficult to ignore. Other than that it was a perfectly fine reading, but I found his lisp painfully distracting.

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2 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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Unlistenable

Unlistenable audio quality. I wish someone would re-record all the Vonnegut books. Don't buy this.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A sneaky KV classic

Vonnegut knocks it out of the park with this humorous tale about a misfortunate man who accidentally shoots and kills a woman. Thus Deadeye Dick is born. Enjoy!

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

One of my favorite Vonnegut books

Classic Vonnegut. The first writer to make me fall in love with literature. I don't know what it is that he's truly saying, but I feel like I get it, all the same. And it is always hilariously funny, and wistfully melancholic at the same time. He straddles the line between hope and despair with trenchant sarcasm that never quite becomes cynicism. I don't know. I'm just smart enough to know there's something there and enjoy it, but not smart enough to know what it is or why it is important.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

I love Vonnegut but...

I love Vonnegut. I am actually reading through all of his novels to gear up for a Vonnegut tattoo. This book was a dud. They can’t all be great but this book wasn’t engaging and what made it worst— the narration. This was a downright bad narration. It was difficult to listen to and if I didn’t make a promise to myself to read all of his novels, I would have definitely returned it.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Story

A story. T h e S t o r y. Life is complicated. Life is consequence.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Not a fan of the book or the narrator

I found the voice of the narrator extremely grating. He has a way of pronouncing his S that sounds like the air is whistling past his teeth. The rest of the time it sounds like he’s restraining his voice to keep his teeth from whistling. I don’t think this man should be a narrator and I wished I had sampled this before buying.

As far as the story. I am now one book away from reading everything KVJR has ever written. What I have read I’ve liked so much that I’ve read them more than once. He’s probably my favorite author because I find him insightful and usually take a couple of nuggets from one of his books, whether they are humorous or humanitarian.

This book started off entertainingly enough about the father, but after it switched to the son it was kind of a bore. It had the randomness of other works like Breakfast of Champions but none of the charm or humor or insight. It became a chore to get through. The great Vonnegut novels have a central theme or message like religion or war or loneliness or automation, but this had no central theme, it felt like mostly an inferior hodgepodge of other works. I feel this book’s topics would have been better served by putting them in Palm Sunday, but as he’d just written it, I suppose he decided not to.

Probably my least favorite Vonnegut book. So it goes.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

MrV weaving

Everyone belongs somewhere, Skoo be do be whap de do baaaaa. And so on . . . the end.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Someday your peephole is gonna be closed for good.

If you really get a good chuckle out of our lethal ineptitudes presented as dour absurdity, why, then, you are in for a screaming good time. This interminable screed of self-sabotage, droning mediocrity, misery and accidental murders will have you rolling on the floor and roaring with paroxysms of uncontrollable belly laughs. Or something.

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