Hear Kurt Vonnegut Read Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle & Other Novels

Many of us grade the books we read, but Kurt Von­negut grad­ed the books he wrote. Let­ters of Note once tweet­ed out a list of the thir­teen grades he applied to thir­teen of his nov­els, pref­aced with his dis­claimer that “the grades I hand out to myself do not place me in lit­er­ary his­to­ry. I am com­par­ing myself with myself.” With that out of the way, he gives 1969’s Slaugh­ter­house-Five, his sixth nov­el and best-known work, an A‑plus, and puts his fourth nov­el, Cat’s Cra­dle from 1963, in the very same league.

But you don’t have to take Vonnegut’s word for it. You can, of course, read these books your­self — or you can hear them read aloud, at least in abridged ver­sions, for free on Spo­ti­fy. What’s more, you can hear Von­negut, clear­ly not a man to dis­tance him­self from his fin­ished work, read them aloud in his own voice. The record­ings come from the label Caed­mon, pio­neers of the vinyl-album pro­to-audio­book begin­ning in the 1950s with a record of Dylan Thomas read­ing his poet­ry. Their Von­negut-read­ing-Von­negut releas­es came out through the 1970s.

You might as well begin by lis­ten­ing to the read­ings of Cat’s Cra­dle and Slaugh­ter­house-Five, Vonnegut’s “A‑plus” books. They also put out audio ver­sions of Wel­come to the Mon­key House, which the author grad­ed a bit more harsh­ly with a B‑minus, and Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons, which, with a C, he ranked down among what he con­sid­ered his less­er works. But that dis­dain doesn’t affect his char­ac­ter­is­tic rich­ly weary deliv­ery of the text, and besides, some of his fans love Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons best of all. Bonus: Sto­ries from Wel­come to the Mon­key House is also an option.

If you don’t yet have the free soft­ware need­ed to play these or oth­er record­ings on Spo­ti­fy, down­load it here, start lis­ten­ing to these clas­si­cal­ly satir­i­cal, inven­tive, and cyn­i­cal mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can nov­els, and pre­pare to hand out some grades of your own.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? For exam­ple, John Malkovich read­ing Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons? Or James Fran­co read­ing Slaugh­ter­house-Five? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Maps Out the Uni­ver­sal Shapes of Our Favorite Sto­ries

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut Explains “How to Write With Style”

Kurt Von­negut Urges Young Peo­ple to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

Hear Hem­ing­way Read Hem­ing­way, and Faulkn­er Read Faulkn­er (90 Min­utes of Clas­sic Audio)

Lis­ten to 60+ Free, High-Qual­i­ty Audio­Books of Clas­sic Lit­er­a­ture on Spo­ti­fy: Austen, Dick­ens, Tol­stoy & More

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.