Kurt Vonnegut Drawings

From a novelist "tired of having to hit home runs all the time as a writer," according to his daughter, the artist Nanette Vonnegut, who introduces the collection, Vonnegut's absurd, curious, and absorbing "doodles" lend "another perspective on [the] restless imagination" which produced such classics as Slaughterhouse Five. Dating mostly from 1985-87, and hitherto unseen in exhibition or print, the drawings riff on cubism, "geometric abstracts," "simplified realism," and the human face with the same kind of satiric wit that characterizes his fiction. The "wildly various" works include the caricatures of the "Self-Portraits," the bright whimsy of "Abstraction," and the playful "Letters" with their curving, bubbly lines. "Lines," "Things," and "Looking at Things" invite yet defy insights into Vonnegut's fiction, and the last "Words" seem to mock the whole enterprise of creation, the concluding image a canopied staircase inscribed with: "There is a ceiling on human thoughts." Perhaps so, but the refreshing images featured here "illustrate beautifully a creative mind at play," and will delight Vonnegut fans. 145 color illus. (May)