Kurt Vonnegut anyone?

[malayang-diwa]

Hey there everyone! I'm new here and all so I dunno what to discuss yet so maybe I'll just open a thread about one of my favorite American writers.

Anyway, I noticed that Kurt Vonnegut isn't in the author's list. So I just wanted to know if there are any fans or readers of his works. :D

[G L Wilson]

Vonnegut was a nihilist but he had his good points.

[malayang-diwa]

Vonnegut was a nihilist but he had his good points.

true, true. but when I read Slaughterhouse-5, I felt his burden for wars. I guess that still shows his compassion for others.

[The Comedian]

I really enjoy most of Vonnegut's work. His sardonic humor is hard to match in American writing. Of the many novels of his that I've read, I think I like Cat's Cradle best because the premise is so simple, yet demoralizing: that if there was a way to end all life on the planet, mankind would stop at nothing to get it. Now that I think of it, I had hard time getting through Cat's Cradle when I first read it, but after several years, it's the one whose ideas and language still pop into my mind from time to time. I recall scenes from the book. And sometimes things I see or hear in my lived experience recall images and ideas from that book.

[Dodo25]

I love his writings. My favorite book by him is Galápagos. When I read it, I felt like a child in a candy store, as if the book had been specifically written for me. Evolution, the pursuit of knowledge, and human nature -- how awesome is that?! (But most people would probably just find the book weird, haha.)

Cat's Cradle is pretty good too, and Slaughterhouse-5 is really thought-provoking. He also wrote some cool short stories.

[itstito]

Sirens of Titan was one surprisingly good read. Its probably one of his earliest 'science-fiction' novels. I'm certain Douglas Adams was influenced by it.

[Des Essientes]

Kurt Vonnegut was an extremely clever and compassionate writer. My favorite anecdote of his is in his book of family history called "Palm Sunday" in which he recounts how his ancestors, anticlerical freethinkers from Germany, immigrated to the USA to escape their native land's pious frauds and almost immediately found themselves conscripted into the Union Army, to fight in the Civil War, and they had to listen to their evangelical comanding officer explain to them how God had decreed the war and that it was their sacred duty as Christians to fight bravely in it.
The only problem with Vonnegut's books is that they are such quick reads one feels a bit cheated if one is purchasing them. I eventually stopped doing so and finished reading his body of work for free by finding a seat in the bookstore.

[PeterL]

Vonnegut isn't on the author list, because he was very recent.

He was a strongbeliever in predestination. He certainly was not a nihilist. I haven't reread any of his wwiting recently, but I thought highly of him for a period. I should reread some of his novels.

[larryF]

Vonnegut was the first author I really 'got into'. Of the books Ive read:

Sirens of Titan - Easily my favorite. Its sci-fi at the surface but underneath its a very touching, humanist story.
Slaughterhouse-Five - Obviously enough has been said about this book.
Cat's Cradle - One that I need to reread. I didnt like it at the time, thought it was kind of scatterbrained, it lost me.
Jailbird - The only Vonnegut I disliked. I got the point about 50 pages in, the rest of it just seemed superfluous.
Breakfast of Champions - Real underrated. Kept me entertained the whole way through and another story that seems wacky but in the end reveals a much deeper message.
Slapstick - I thought this was a very touching book about VOnnegut's relationship with his sister and with humanism as a whole.
Deadeye Dick - I enjoyed it but the story wasnt one of his stronger ones,
Galapagos - Like alot of other of his books, its kind of told in reverse order but its an interesting look at the human condition and evolution.

[malayang-diwa]

Vonnegut was the first author I really 'got into'. Of the books Ive read:

Sirens of Titan - Easily my favorite. Its sci-fi at the surface but underneath its a very touching, humanist story.
Slaughterhouse-Five - Obviously enough has been said about this book.
Cat's Cradle - One that I need to reread. I didnt like it at the time, thought it was kind of scatterbrained, it lost me.
Jailbird - The only Vonnegut I disliked. I got the point about 50 pages in, the rest of it just seemed superfluous.
Breakfast of Champions - Real underrated. Kept me entertained the whole way through and another story that seems wacky but in the end reveals a much deeper message.
Slapstick - I thought this was a very touching book about VOnnegut's relationship with his sister and with humanism as a whole.
Deadeye Dick - I enjoyed it but the story wasnt one of his stronger ones,
Galapagos - Like alot of other of his books, its kind of told in reverse order but its an interesting look at the human condition and evolution.

I agree with Breakfast of Champions. I'll admit, I haven't read Sirens of Titans yet but I've been wanting to read it ever since my brother bought the book.

How come you didn't put Mother Night, by the way?

[Gregory Samsa]

I always believed Kurt Vonnegut was science-fiction, well it is. But not that kind of science-fiction I was expected. I have just read Slaughterhouse-Five and it was absolutely brilliant, absurd, dark and funny. Billy Pilgrim is such great a character, I feel sorry for him. He is so kind to everybody, even when others are rude or accusatory towards him.

I wonder what I should read now by Kurt Vonnegut? Any suggestion? Slaughterhouse-Five seams to be his most famous book and maybe his best (?). I heard that the book was banned in some school in Missouri. That’s crazy.

So it goes.

[Rores28]

I'll third breakfast of champions. I laughed my *** off at this book. I think this is where Vonnegut perfected striking that chord that rings simultaneously of comedy and pathos. Its also a good synthesis of the philosophies he explores in his other books.

Slaughterhouse 5 is obviously a must, for any Vonnegut fan.

[MarkBastable]

He's much cleverer than he at first appears - both as a stylist and as a storyteller.

I'm very keen on a lot of his work, but my favourite is Mother Night, which is often seen as short of the very top-notch of his canon, but which I think deals with a complex aspect of humanity in a characteristically and deliberately ambivalent way.

[cafolini]

Being a postmodernist, it's been long since I have placed the circular ruins of the human/inhuman BS in the museum together with the infected globs of most classical literature (useful only to learn history and useless to take seriously as to learn anything else). It's long since I have viewed philosophy as a system of confusions fully overcomed together with the idea of wisdom. I am sad that Vonnegut never got the Nobel for he might have been the choice during his lifetime. But I just like to say that to me, regardless of the humor he always wheeled and dealed, his greatest humorous piece was live, to be in charge of a humanist society while putting humanity forever in the dynamic museum of modernist history. He is one of my choicest postmodern writers.

A few points regarding the accussation that he was a writer of science fiction. He was not, and he used fantasy more than anything else to create contrasts. He once said that regarding his so-called science fiction, the layman was not going to understand it, and the serious scientists would most likely laugh at it. He knew that for a fact, because he was a most inquisitive scientist of literature.

[Gregory Samsa]

In "The Sexual Revolution", Chapter 18 of his book Palm Sunday, Vonnegut grades his own works. He states that the grades "do not place me in literary history" and that he is comparing "myself with myself." The grades are as follows:

Player Piano: B
The Sirens of Titan: A
Mother Night: A
Cat's Cradle: A-plus
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A
Slaughterhouse-Five: A-plus
Welcome to the Monkey House: B-minus
Happy Birthday, Wanda June: D
Breakfast of Champions: C
Slapstick: D
Jailbird: A
Palm Sunday: C


Strange to give "Breakfast of Champions" such a low grade.

[PeterL]

I pretty much agree, but I would give the Sirens of Titan an A plus also.

[larryF]

I agree with Breakfast of Champions. I'll admit, I haven't read Sirens of Titans yet but I've been wanting to read it ever since my brother bought the book.

How come you didn't put Mother Night, by the way?

Just havent gotten to it yet, shamefully. That, Player Piano, Bluebeard, Hocus Pocus and Timequake are still in queue.

[thedeeperyougo]

I just joined this forum a couple minutes ago and decided to post in the Vonnegut thread because I was thinking about him for some reason as I waited for the streetcar this morning on my way to work. I used to read a lot of Vonnegut, and one comment he wrote (I can't remember which book it came out of actually!) has really stuck with me, and not in a good way. It was describing a female character who was a nurse, which Vonnegut wrote "is a lovely thing for a woman to be."
As a woman,that bothers me. I don't think it bothered me when I read it in high school but now, years later, it's stuck with me and strikes me as sexist and childish.

That being said, however, I respect Vonnegut's writing for the most part; 'Mother Night' is my favourite of his books. I also used to play in a band called 'Make Me Young'--named after Kilgore Trout's outburst at the end of Breakfast of Champions.