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Like Shaking Hands with God

book by Kurt Vonnegut

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ6547133 ↗
Source-derived summary

Like Shaking Hands with God: A Conversation about Writing is a book which consists of two conversations between Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer with Ross Klavan as moderator and containing a foreword by Daniel Simon. It was published in 1999. The first conversation occurred on October 1, 1998, at a book store on Union Square in Manhattan, and the second occurred the following evening at a cafe.

Like Shaking Hands With God was meant to be a conversation about writing but turned into much more. As The Hartford Advocate said, it is "...a book that is more about being than writing." In Like Shaking Hands With God the authors touch on the subject of writing, how to write, how a writer should view their audience and what the ultimate goal of writing should be.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Like Shaking Hands with God” as book by Kurt Vonnegut. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Like, Shaking and Hands.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1999, 1998—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1999-10-05. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Like, Shaking and Hands providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Like Shaking Hands with God”, the useful work is to connect “book by Kurt Vonnegut” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6547133. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1999 and 1998.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Like Shaking Hands with God”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Like Shaking Hands with God primary sources, Like Shaking Hands with God archive and Like research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Like Shaking Hands with God”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Like Shaking Hands with God” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.