New Documentary Displays Young-Adult Appeal of Kurt Vonnegut

You discover him when you’re 15 or 16, when you have just realized that all adults are numbskulls and that the solutions to the world’s problems lie in whimsical, simple slogans. Peace is better than war! Love beats hate! Corporations are destroying our souls! Money is evil! We should all be like family! Nobody more expertly harnessed those adolescent impulses than Kurt Vonnegut, the greatest young-adult writer of his time. Vonnegut combined silly sci-fi comedy with even sillier oversimplifications to such meretricious effect that his true peer was not another novelist but Dr. Seuss.

Back in high school, the film and TV director Robert Weide, who is today best known for directing many episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, launched a Kurt Vonnegut book club and later struck up a correspondence that led to a decades-spanning friendship and many filmed interviews with the writer. Vonnegut died 14 years ago, so I award Weide no points for swiftness, but he has finally completed a 40-year project with the release of the smart documentary Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time.

About the Author

Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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You discover him when you’re 15 or 16, when you have just realized that all adults are numbskulls and that the solutions to the world’s problems lie in whimsical, simple slogans. Peace is better than war! Love beats hate! Corporations are destroying our souls! Money is evil! We should all be like family! Nobody more expertly harnessed those adolescent impulses than Kurt Vonnegut, the greatest young-adult writer of his time. Vonnegut combined silly sci-fi comedy with even sillier oversimplifications to such meretricious effect that his true peer was not another novelist but Dr. Seuss.

Back in high school, the film and TV director Robert Weide, who is today best known for directing many episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, launched a Kurt Vonnegut book club and later struck up a correspondence that led to a decades-spanning friendship and many filmed interviews with the writer. Vonnegut died 14 years ago, so I award Weide no points for swiftness, but he has finally completed a 40-year project with the release of the smart documentary Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time.