NationStates Jolt Archive

Story here (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/books/11cnd-vonnegut.html?_r=2&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1176347214-mANKS76Y1K7vZ8BY77edKw&oref=slogin).

He was a tremendous on me as a teenager--part of the reason I decided to try to be a writer.

Your thoughts?

Damn.

It always sucks to know for sure, that someone will not be producing any more of his or her fantastic work...

I love his books, he'll be missed.

"Pretend to be good all the time, and even God will be fooled."
Rest in Peace, Mr. Trout :(

Wow, that's terrible. First I find out that Ryszard Kapuściński died, and now Kurt Vonegut. I'm losing more and more of my favorite writers...

He will most definitely be missed. Writers of his caliber are rare things.

i recently read his collection of short stories...AMAZING. i'll be moving on to his novels whenever i find the time.

Alas. So it goes. :(

Wow. I haven't been this upset at the death of a writer since Isaac Asimov kicked it back in 92.

i recently read his collection of short stories...AMAZING. i'll be moving on to his novels whenever i find the time.

You won't be disappointed.

Wow. I haven't been this upset at the death of a writer since Isaac Asimov kicked it back in 92.

Oh, God, I wept like a baby when Asimov passed away. Truly great writers just shouldn't be allowed to die...

"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."

- Kurt Vonnegut -








*cries*

It's sad to see one of the best contemporary American authors die. I've only read some of his work, but what I did read was touching and impressive.

Wow. After they burn through his notes and manuscripts there will never be another book by one of the best authors of the 20th century. Really sad.

May he rest in peace.

I've been reading his stuff lately. Considering his age not too surprising, but still a sad day for sci-fi afficionados.
What's ur favourite Vonnegut read?
I really like 'Sirens of Titan' myself.


been dreading waking to hear Jack Vance has died. I love his work. He's 90 this year, so it can't be too long now before he shuffles off. Poor guy's been blind last 20 years - surely one of the worse afflictions to beset a writer. Still writes though.

Wow, that's terrible. First I find out that Ryszard Kapuściński died, and now Kurt Vonegut. I'm losing more and more of my favorite writers...

Interestingly enough, I'm reading one of his books now (Kapuściński, that is): The Emperor. Ever read that one?

I'm doing my research paper on him right now. dang

I'm doing my research paper on him right now. dang

Look at it this way--you have a very interesting factoid to add in. Impress your teacher. ;)

Meh, sad loss, but I still think he hadn't written a decent novel in the last twenty-five years.

Story here (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/books/11cnd-vonnegut.html?_r=2&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1176347214-mANKS76Y1K7vZ8BY77edKw&oref=slogin).

He was a tremendous on me as a teenager--part of the reason I decided to try to be a writer.

Your thoughts?

Poo-tee-weet?

Interestingly enough, I'm reading one of his books now (Kapuściński, that is): The Emperor. Ever read that one?

That's the one about Haile Selassie, isn't it? I haven't read that one yet, although I'll definitely buy it when I get the chance.

I've read The Shadow of the Sun more times than I can remember; it's easily the most well-worn of the books I own. Imperium is also one of my favorites, especially after I read a few other books about the rise and fall of the USSR and Eastern Bloc.

Meh, sad loss, but I still think he hadn't written a decent novel in the last twenty-five years.

come on man, he is much more than a novelist. :upyours:

come on man, he is much more than a novelist. :upyours:

Okay. He hadn't written a half-decent book in the last twenty-five years. Happy now?

Well, this has fucked my day up.

This man deserved the nobel prize, but his time on earth ran out.

So it goes.

RIP

The year was 2007, and every body was finally equal...

Pun intended. I can't help but think mr. Vonnegut would like to go on a dark humor line of one of his dystopian (and magnificent) short stories.

RIP, mr. Vonnegut. And know that you left your mark on the English language itself, with "Ice-9" being now a part of it.

From Harrisson Bergeron:

“Even as I stand here – crippled, hobbled, sickened – I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!”

Oh well you old fucker, the Nobel ain't what it used to be...

"for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power."

Makes me want to throw up

so it goes, so it goes, so it goes

That's the one about Haile Selassie, isn't it?

It is.

I haven't read that one yet, although I'll definitely buy it when I get the chance.

I highly recommend it. :)

God Bless You Mr. Vonnegut.

I was trying to find the requiem he wrote but couldn't, and I don't have the time to transcribe it.

He was a tremendous on me as a teenager--part of the reason I decided to try to be a writer.

That makes at least two of us, then. I wouldn't list him as the greatest influence on me or my writing, but he's up there. If nothing else, he showed what good writing could do, how it could expose the world. How he managed to be funny, cynical, and utterly humanistic at the same time was definitely an admirable feat. Not good times, his dying.

At least there are some current writers out there that don't completely suck. No Vonneguts, really, but maybe something close enough.

god bless you mr vonnegut


so it goes


oit is an understagment to say i drank too much because of this

Kurt Vonnegut's passing recalls a playful reading club a group of my friends had about 25 years ago. In Cat's Cradle Vonnegut wrote of the Bokononists, a religious sect we wished actually existed. In honor of both Vonnegut's wry humor and our mutual appreciation of him we created a Bokononist sect named The Holy Monks of Carrollton (for the New Orleans neighborhood we had our communal house in, or as Vonnegut might have termed, our karass).

One's standing in the sect was determined by the number of Vonnegut books one read. One would age five years for each. Of course when he wrote a new one, we would be faced with the subtraction of five years from our "ages".

Reflecting upon that time seems especially apt now. The wry fatalism of Vonnegut's work fits our world as we rush towards post-modern oblivion. As I drove through my old neighborhood of our Temple to Bokonon, the building which once housed us remains in ruins nearly two years post Hurricane Katrina. I recall a Bokonon parable recollecting his marooning on the rocks of San Lorenzo, "absolutely naked, managed to swim to shore":

A fish pitched up
By the angry sea,
I gasped on land,
And I became me.

Blessed be the memory of Kurt Vonnegut and everyone who has been smitten by his words

The only thing by Kurt Vonnegut I've read so far is that short story he did about absolute equality, and I remember while I liked the idea of it, the absurdity of the two main characters put me off severely. Now I'll have to find something else of his, to remedy this situation. Any recommendations on where to start?

The only thing by Kurt Vonnegut I've read so far is that short story he did about absolute equality, and I remember while I liked the idea of it, the absurdity of the two main characters put me off severely. Now I'll have to find something else of his, to remedy this situation. Any recommendations on where to start?

Most any one of his novels, really. Mother Night, Slaughterhouse Five, Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, Player Piano. Any of those would be good. As would any others, really. I've never read a bad one by him.

Makes me sad, definitely one of the best writers ever.

He was a great writer. Slaughterhouse Five was my favourite. He will be missed.

...

He was still alive? I'm sorry...I thought he died back in the seventies...I had no idea he was this contemporary...

"Jesus-if Kilgore Trout could only write!" Rosewater exclaimed. He had a point: Kilgore Trout's unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good.From Slaughterhouse Five

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ” - Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

I'm sure truer words have been spoken, but these stand out. Vale, Mr Vonnegut, may you entertain all in the Summerlands, and return to us in love and joy. Or, you know, whatever afterlife you may or may not have believed in...

So it goes.

NO!!!!!! He was my favorite author!!!!! The times I spent reading and sometimes rereading his books were some of the best times of my life. He was such an awesome writer. I think my favorite book was Galapogos. I loved the part where some middle school students watched a documentary on birds and mating dances of birds. The one annonymous student wrote a poem inspired by watching the mating dance that went like this:


Of course I love you.
So let's have a kid.
Who will say exactly
What its parents did,

Of course I love you.
So let's have a kid.
Who will say exactly
What it's parents did,

Of course I love you.
So let's have a kid.
Who will say exactly
What its parents did.

Ad infinitum.

I also loved the recurring character of Kilgore Trout. In one of those books KT was approached by a fan who asked KT if he was in fact KT the writer. KT said "No." not because he was trying to be dishonest or humble, but merely because he thought he was so obscure that nobody would refer to him as a writer.

What was that one book where all the people in a small town lived in huge mansions but they would only do maintenance on a small part of their mansions? I always thought that was sort of neat.

And now I'm officially really down about the fact that I couldn't get in to his lecture at OSU last spring. The bookends of his college speaking career he told the students. Alas, I waited outdoors for nearly two and a half hours to see him, and just as I was almost to the door, they told us they were full up.

I loved the part in Slaughterhouse 5 where the main character learned from the Traflamadorians that there were many sexes needed to make a baby and not just the man and the woman.

I still remember arguing with my one barely literate friend. He insisted that the main character in Slaughterhouse 5 was suffering from Alzheimer's and Traflamadorians and all that jumping back and forth in time stuff were just figments of his dementia. I always thought and still do that it is a story of a guy who really was captured by Traflamadorians, but I do not think it matters who was right and who was wrong.

...I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.

But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut.

And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.

When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any more of those. Cold turkey.

Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like TV news, is it?

Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.

And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.
he knew a lot

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures rose early Thursday, drawing support from the greater-than-expected decline in gasoline supplies reported by the Energy Department in the previous session.
A Thursday report from the International Energy Agency on the decline in global oil output also underpinned prices.

kurt vonnegut was the first writer that i ever loved. i read slaughterhouse 5 and ran out and got everything else he wrote.

he was on the daily show last year, still kicking ass.


glorious freedonia: we read slaughterhouse 5 in one of my college classes (i had already read it in highschool of course) and the TA, who had some kind of specialization in vonnegut, suggested that billy pilgrim wasnt unstuck in time but INSANE.

i hated that guy.

Meh, sad loss, but I still think he hadn't written a decent novel in the last twenty-five years.

Considering he deliberately stopped writing novels 25 years ago, that's not surprising.

I wept when I heard last night. Vonnegut was a great voice, who said many great things that are just plain common sense. Jack Vance and Ray Bradbury are the last living Grand Masters. Andre' Norton, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov...all gone.

For those who have not read Slaughterhouse-5, I strongly recommend it.

Story here (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/books/11cnd-vonnegut.html?_r=2&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1176347214-mANKS76Y1K7vZ8BY77edKw&oref=slogin).

He was a tremendous on me as a teenager--part of the reason I decided to try to be a writer.

Your thoughts?
I still think his best work was Cat's Cradle.

I do not think it matters who was right and who was wrong.

Bingo.

kurt vonnegut was the first writer that i ever loved. i read slaughterhouse 5 and ran out and got everything else he wrote.

he was on the daily show last year, still kicking ass.


glorious freedonia: we read slaughterhouse 5 in one of my college classes (i had already read it in highschool of course) and the TA, who had some kind of specialization in vonnegut, suggested that billy pilgrim wasnt unstuck in time but INSANE.

i hated that guy.

As a literature minor, I can tell you that it doesn't matter whether or not the guy was insane. The points the character makes in the story remain regardless of his sanity.

The year was 2007, and every body was finally equal...

Pun intended. I can't help but think mr. Vonnegut would like to go on a dark humor line of one of his dystopian (and magnificent) short stories.

RIP, mr. Vonnegut. And know that you left your mark on the English language itself, with "Ice-9" being now a part of it.

From Harrisson Bergeron:

“Even as I stand here – crippled, hobbled, sickened – I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!”

Meh, I never liked that story, myself. It always struck me as a strawman attack on egalitarianism that hinged on the caricature of the wishy-washy ultra-PC liberal that exists in the minds of conservative pundits. No liberal, leftist, or socialist that I am aware of has ever actually proposed anything like this and it comes off to me as some kind of hyperbolic paranoia about liberal leveling.

But since I haven't read his other stories, I will refrain from passing judgment on him just yet. And it is sad to see a well-respected writer go.

Very sad day. His books and stories were a tremendous influence on me when I was a kid.

Heard him speak once in Washington. Great storyteller.

Meh, I never liked that story, myself. It always struck me as a strawman attack on egalitarianism that hinged on the caricature of the wishy-washy ultra-PC liberal that exists in the minds of conservative pundits. No liberal, leftist, or socialist that I am aware of has ever actually proposed anything like this and it comes off to me as some kind of hyperbolic paranoia about liberal leveling.

But since I haven't read his other stories, I will refrain from passing judgment on him just yet. And it is sad to see a well-respected writer go.

It is a hyperbolic attack on the concept of social levelling. Don't know how old you are, but back in the sixties and early seventies there were movements to get rid of advanced placement classes, competitive sports, and other "unequal" activities in schools. The (dumb freaking) idea was that by bringing everone to the same level, no one would get their precious feelings bruised.

It was a stupid idea. Partof growing up is learning that sometimes you are the slowest, or the worst at something, and coming to deal with that.

It is a hyperbolic attack on the concept of social levelling. Don't know how old you are, but back in the sixties and early seventies there were movements to get rid of advanced placement classes, competitive sports, and other "unequal" activities in schools. The (dumb freaking) idea was that by bringing everone to the same level, no one would get their precious feelings bruised.

It was a stupid idea. Partof growing up is learning that sometimes you are the slowest, or the worst at something, and coming to deal with that.

I guess that explains why some elementary schools have "graduation ceremonies" for each grade, so that we can all have another way to celebrate mediocrity.

It sort of seemed that Mark Twain's soul was equally reincarnated in the persons of Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. I am not sure what genre of literature Mark Twain's stuff was but I think you could put his works in the same category as Heller and Vonnegut. I think this is even more true in Vonnegut's case because Twain wrote a little science fiction. There was something I remember reading by Twain about some sea captain who sailed in the outer space and discovered that infinite worlds full of different aliens all had their own unique "Christ" savior who came to them in their own forms.

Story here (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/books/11cnd-vonnegut.html?_r=2&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1176347214-mANKS76Y1K7vZ8BY77edKw&oref=slogin).

He was a tremendous on me as a teenager--part of the reason I decided to try to be a writer.

Your thoughts?

I hope his dystopian futures won't come true.

I hope his dystopian futures won't come true.

Too late!

It sort of seemed that Mark Twain's soul was equally reincarnated in the persons of Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. I am not sure what genre of literature Mark Twain's stuff was but I think you could put his works in the same category as Heller and Vonnegut. I think this is even more true in Vonnegut's case because Twain wrote a little science fiction. There was something I remember reading by Twain about some sea captain who sailed in the outer space and discovered that infinite worlds full of different aliens all had their own unique "Christ" savior who came to them in their own forms.

You should check out Karel Capek. Start with War With the Newts, or for novelties sake, R.U.R.

Too late!

George Bush is comical. He's not dystopian yet, but he's coming in up from the outside.

You should check out Karel Capek. Start with War With the Newts, or for novelties sake, R.U.R.

I just bought R.U.R. I love it.

weird i just finished Slaughterhouse 5 two days ago.....wasn't bad, really different

I just bought R.U.R. I love it.

You are seriously seriously going to love War With the Newts, then. It's got to be one of my favorite books I've read in recent memory.

You are seriously seriously going to love War With the Newts, then. It's got to be one of my favorite books I've read in recent memory.

I'm on it.

Alas, the only book of his that I've read was "Deadeye Dick". Still, an excellent, excellent book, and I'm seriously considering picking up more of his works in the future. Fantastic writer, if that book was indicative of his other books.

Rest in peace.

Only thing of his I read was the short story The Lie, so obviously I have lots of reading to do. :p

You should check out Karel Capek. Start with War With the Newts, or for novelties sake, R.U.R.

Aye, The War With The Newts is definitely worth reading.

For some reason I've never read Cat's Cradle which the news reports say is one of his best books. I'll fix that.

I try to write like Vonnegut, every paragraph containing a distinct idea. But my ego carries me away into detail and elaboration. Why do I do that?

I'm not sad he's dead. We all die, and Kurt surely knew that. He's some guy who lived in the US, like millions of others, and I only know him by his books. The books are still there, so the Vonnegut I know is no more dead today than he was two days ago.

Well done Kurt.
*takes a drink*