RIP Kurt Vonnegut

[shmokes]

 

[pointdablame]

Just read this...  damn shame.

RIP

[KenToad]

Our family was proud to have known Vonnegut through my Grandfather, who met Vonnegut as Vonnegut was seeking an abstract artist to play a minor role in the novel Deadeye Dick.  I don't know why he wanted "real" characters to appear in his novels.  Anyway, my grandfather, Cliff McCarthy, is very briefly mentioned in both that novel and in Timequake as one of the guests at the clambake.  Vonnegut was kind enough to call when Cliff passed away two years ago. 

The old masters are passing, I guess. 

[boykster]

Ouch......what a shame.  I grew up on Kilgore Trout books....

[ChadTower]

One of my favorite movie scenes ever:

teacher:  "Thornton, I don't know who did your work, but whoever wrote that report doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut."

...


Thornton:  (into the phone)  "And another thing, Vonnegut, I'm stopping the payment on that check!"

[KenToad]

Well, if you haven't read Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse Five, then you haven't read his best stuff.

[DrumAnBass]

Definitely one of my all time favorite writers... Genius in my opinion. Certainly left a legacy of great work.

[boykster]

Literature is very subjective, but in my and many others minds, Kurt Vonnegut was a living legend of contemporary literature.  Sure, his topics were not always mainstream, but isn't that part of life?  Pushing things into an uncomfortable or foreign territory and watching to see how we react?

One of my favorite authors of all time is Philip K. Dick.  His novels were often simply nothing more than near stream of consciousness from his drug and paranoia fueled fear and contempt for society, but many of his novels were groundbreaking and have influenced if not fueled much of what we consider canon of science fiction today.

Like him or not, Kurt Vonnegut was an influential author and will be missed.

 

[boykster]

the comparison was to illustrate that topics outside of "normal" are relevant, no matter who the author is.  Heck, it's probably been 20 years since I've read anything by Vonnegut, but to dismiss his body of work because he wrote about drugs and mental illness...often pseudo-fictional accounts of personal experiences.

PKD also wrote about similar drug and mental illness topics, mostly fueled by his own life.  Valis is a near autobiographical novel that explores PKD's own encounters with what he terms a divine presence.  He followed that up with 3 other novels exploring his experiences in a fictional realm.

And you're right, I wouldn't put PKD and Vonnegut in the same league at all.  PKD, as revolutionary and insightful as his work was, can't even touch the number of literature students and authors that Vonnegut did.

I'm not trying to convince you to <like> Vonnegut's work, that's totally up to you.

 

[shmokes]

Breakfast of Champions movie was awful.  Absolutely terrible.  Mother Night and Slaughterhouse 5 on the other hand were both quite good.

And, I'd tend to agree.  The fact that his books might incorporate drugs and alcohol (though, generally, drugs and/or alcohol are not the central theme) is irrelevant.  A good writer can write about swamp sludge if he's got something good to say about it.  Hell, read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas if you want something that you can aptly apply your "look at me, I'm so high/drunk right now" bit to (and that's a pretty great book, too, BTW).

I'm going through my head, and it's been a while, but I'm ticking off his books I've read, B of C, Cat's Cradle, Sirens of Titan, Slaughterhouse 5, Mother Night, Hocus Pocus, Time Quake . . . definitely others that just don't immediately come to mind.  He's probably my favorite author so I've read most of his stuff.  I've never come away from any of his books feeling like drugs or alcohol were glorified.  If anything chacters like the alcoholic Dwayne Hoover show the destructive qualities of substance abuse.  Come to think of it, I'm not sure he was an alcoholic . . . maybe he was just insane.  Anyway . . . I think that you can't be right or wrong about whether you enjoy Vonnegut, but it sounds like you didn't pay very close attention when you read him.

[shmokes]

Utter nonsense.  A #1, I doubt there's anyone in this thread under 25.  I didn't even read my first Vonnegut until I was in college (under 25, sure, but I'm over 25 now and he's still brilliant).  And, FWIW, I find almost everything Kevin Smith has made unwatchable.  Not just mediocre, but total crap.  I mean, I don't know why I'm defending myself, like you're going to say, "Oh, well, if shmokes meets such-and-such criteria, but still likes Vonnegut, maybe I should give him another chance."  But I will say that you're idea that only kids like Vonnegut is based solely on a gut feeling that is just plain wrong.  Hell, Easton Press (a luxury book manufactuer that makes only beautifully leatherbound copies of books with satin end sheets and sewn pages with guilded edges, etc.) has most of his work for sale.  These books range between $40 - $80 apiece and are not the type of thing that gets purchased by <25 year-olds.

Don't worry.  You can just say, "I don't enjoy his books."  They can simply not appeal to you, or have a writing style that rubs you the wrong way.  You don't need to get anyone behind you to legitimize your opinion . . . 

. . . Just say you have bad taste in lliterature and leave it at that 

[KenToad]

It's so tempting to try to smack down something generally, rather than just saying that you don't like it. 

My grandfather and many people in my family loved Vonnegut's stuff.  I'm not really a Vonnegut lover, but I did enjoy a couple of the novels.  Anyway, he survived the firebombing of Dresden (in other words, the madness of war ... and maybe that's where he gets his peculiar sense of humor), and I think it's a testament to his genius that he is so broadly appreciated, from punks to hipsters to Grandpas and Grandmas.

I'm not a fan of PKD, but I wouldn't doubt his genius just because I can't read his stuff without thinking he could have done so much more without the pidgeonholing of the sci-fi genre, which luckily Vonnegut escaped, after Sirens of Titan.

[Arcadiac]

So it goes.   

Author of one my favorites, SlaughterHouse Five, read by choice as a teen in the 70's.  Rest in Peace Billy Pilgrim.


"Requiem"

When the last living thing

has died on account of us,

how poetical it would be

if Earth could say,

in a voice floating up

perhaps

from the floor

of the Grand Canyon,

"It is done."

People did not like it here.


  Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

So it goes.