Kurt Vonnegut RIP
posted by Don Z on April 12, 2007 at 1:55 pm in Celebs
(Not gonna say So it goes, not gonna say So it goes…) Well, sad news today as Kurt Vonnegut has died. He was 84.
Like many people, Kurt Vonnegut’s writing makes me extremely happy. My friends gave me a hardcover copy of “Slaughterhouse-Five” for my 21st birthday and it is something I will always cherish. I would love nothing so much as to see a movie of “Cat’s Cradle,” even if it sucked.
You can read that book, which I don’t believe I’ve ever stated before is my favorite novel, for free here.
Comment by Fred Schroeder posted April 12, 2007 at 2:44 pm:
Poo-too-weet.
Comment by Jim posted April 12, 2007 at 4:33 pm:
when i was a sophmore in high school my buddy mike mcclaren gave me slaughterhouse five to read. two years later i read catch 22. these two books - dark, funny, righteous, absurd, one of a kind - doomed me to books.
Comment by Peter posted April 12, 2007 at 9:48 pm:
I read Cat’s Cradle the same summer that I read Salinger’s Nine Stories and Algren’s The Man With The Golden Arm. Needless to say, I wasn’t getting laid much at the time.
I remember Cradle fell out of my hands when I read the final passage. I think Jim said that he had the same experience. Busy, busy, busy.
Comment by Don posted April 12, 2007 at 11:03 pm:
I was thinking about KV just now and I remembered when I realized that Kilgore Trout was probably a fictional version of Theodore Sturgeon, the author of “KILLDOZER,” a story about a bulldozer in space that kills people, and then I remembered that Fred still has my copy of KILLDOZER. Give it back!
Comment by Fred Schroeder posted April 12, 2007 at 11:34 pm:
What others are saying:
The defining moment of Mr Vonnegut’s life was the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by Allied forces in 1945, an event he witnessed firsthand as a young prisoner of war. Thousands of civilians were killed in the raids, many of them burned to death or asphyxiated. “The firebombing of Dresden,” Mr Vonnegut wrote, “was a work of art.” It was, he added, “a tower of smoke and flame to commemorate the rage and heartbreak of so many who had had their lives warped or ruined by the indescribable greed and vanity and cruelty of Germany.”
His experience in Dresden was the basis of Slaughterhouse-Five, which was published in 1969 against the backdrop of war in Vietnam, racial unrest and cultural and social upheaval.
–Dinita Smith NYTimes.
“There was never a kinder and, at the same time, wittier writer to be with personally,” author Tom Wolfe, a friend and admirer of Vonnegut’s, told [the Los Angeles Times]. “He was just a gem in that respect. And as a writer, I guess he’s the closest thing we had to a Voltaire. He could be extremely funny, but there was a vein of iron always underneath it, which made him quite remarkable.
“He was never funny just to be funny,” Wolfe added….
He is “together with John Hawkes and Günter Grass… the most stubbornly imaginative” of writers, novelist John Irving once wrote of Vonnegut. “He is not anybody else, or even a version of anybody else, and he is a writer with a cause.”
–Elaine Woo LATimes
“[R]eading his work for the first time gives one the sense that everything else is rank hypocrisy,” writes Time’s Lev Grossman.
Finally, in an interview Philip K. Dick was asked what he thought of “Breakfast of Champions”
What did you think of Vonnegut’s attitude towards his characters?
PKD : Disgusting and an abomination. I think that that book is an incredible drying up of the liquid sack of life in the veins of a person like a dead tree…that’s what I think. I also love Kurt Vonnegut.
Comment by Uncle Meatball posted May 2, 2007 at 7:06 pm:
The cinematic rendering of Slaughter House Five features the best scene segues ever, IMHO.
From my good friend Brad, passed this on as a timely reminder, upon hearing about the death of the old surveyor:
God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!”
“See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.”
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all
the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.
I will go to heaven now.
I can hardly wait…
To find out for certain what my wampeter was…
And who was in my karass…
And all the good things our karass did for you.
Amen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokononism