and so it goes: rip kurt vonnegut
From the NY Times:
Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.
Mr. Vonnegut suffered irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago, according to his wife, Jill Krementz.
Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.
Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?
From the Washington Post.
His books were teenager books, really: To fully appreciate them, it probably helped to perceive yourself as an alien being, forced by Fate to survive on a completely demented planet. To be 16 years old, in other words.
Vonnegut knew that human beings had invented extraordinary techniques for visiting ruin and death upon their world. He didn’t have to read about it in a book: He had survived, as a prisoner of war, the firebombing of Dresden. He and his fellow prisoners had huddled in an underground meat locker. He’s quoted in the AP obit that appeared in The Post saying that event didn’t explain his life or his writing — but of course it did, in part. His characters were so often caught up in bizarre fates, so often wandering in places as alien and tragic as the landscape he saw when he emerged from what the German guards called Schlachthof-funf — Slaughterhouse Five.
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April 13th, 2007 at 5:33 am
America lost a great man, a literary genius. The book that he worte great books that always question our existance in the world. He was a humanist and deeply influence by the socialist labor leaders. RIP good man RIP.
‘”You know - we’ve had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that the wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. “My God, my God - ” I said to myself, “it’s the Children’s Crusade.”‘ (from Slaughterhouse Five)
April 13th, 2007 at 9:20 am
I read that book in high school. Fantastic. I’m supposed to read Breakfast of Champions this summer or a friend of mine will come after me.
From an interview a few years ago:
“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 fact cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re ‘hooked on.’”
April 13th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
I wasn’t much of a reader until my freshman year in college when I got introduced to Jack Kerouac. It was like it opened a new dimension to me. Then I fell in love with the whole beat generation, then other authors like Vonnegut, Orwell, etc. I have only read Slaughterhouse Five (though I still don’t understand the last chapter after reading it numerous times) and I own Time Quake that I bought a few years ago. There are many more that I want to read like Breakfast of Champions, Cat’s Cradel, Hopus Pocus, Sirens of Titan, Galapagos, and others. I still remember watch the movie “Back to School” with Rodney Dangerfield, where he hires Vonnegut to write a paper for him. I printed off a article off of Wikipedia aboot him…it was great to learn more aboot this great man.