Any Vonnegut-arians out there?

I had a HUGE Vonnegut addiction years ago, beginning with Welcome to the Monkeyhouse ...
I just loved his wry sense of the world, they way you'd laugh at his words one minute, then almost cry the next. He was great!
I've been thinking about his books lately & remembering bits & pieces after a friend told me he was reading Slaughterhouse 5 again.
Our conversation reminded me of Kilgor Trout, Mr Rosewater, Billy Pilgrim, Diana Moon Glampers, etc, etc ...

One of his observations I liked: That it was good to be a fireman. (God Bless You Mr Rosewater) Afterall, they only did good things like come & rescue homes from fires. And if all else failed, they were the ones that got to console the new homeless people as they surveyed the ashes & remains of their home. You could be lots worse than a fireman!

"someday son, all this will be yours"
"chronosyncalasticinfidibula"

Could you freresh my memory a little, dyslexia? Sounds familiar but I've forgotten the context. (So it goes..)

Kurt Vonnegut?

I read one GREAT GREAT short story: "Harrison Bergeron", and a novel I didn't quite understand, I think it was "Breakfast of Champions" (the narrator has a very short, but absurdly wide penis, I recall). And that's about it.

Loved "Slaughter-house Five", the film.

"someday son, all this will be yours"
"chronosyncalasticinfidibula"
"if you really want to hurt your parents but don't have the nerve to become homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts."
"the two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats"
"before you kill someone, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected"

fbaezer

Very funny!

And what sort of problems did this condition cause for the narrator?

from the Guardian UK;


KURT VONNEGUT (1922-) " When you're dead, you're dead. Make love when you can. It's good for you."

Birthplace
Indianapolis, US

Education
Biochemistry, Cornell University; Anthropology, Chicago University

Other jobs
Served in US infantry in Europe during the second world war, taken prisoner (awarded Purple Heart); Chicago City News Bureau, police reporter (1946); General Electric Co., NY, public relations (1947-50); lecturer, Harvard University, (1971-72).

Did you know?
The lyrics of the recent worldwide hit 'Sunscreen' were attributed to Vonnegut, taken from the commencement address he made at M.I.T; the news spread like wildfire around the internet. Trouble was, Vonnegut has never spoken at M.I.T. (the real 1999 commencement address was made by Kofi Annan), and the lyrics came from a column in the Chicago Tribune.

Critical verdict
Graham Greene called Vonnegut "one of the best living American writers", and his huge and devoted fan base around the world wouldn't have it any other way. Widespread public recognition came with the ground-breaking semi-autobiographical Slaughterhouse 5, which welded the author's horrific experiences during the allied bombing of Dresden to a surreal, tragicomic sci-fi fatalism, but he had already honed his cosmic satire in the earlier Sirens Of Titan and Cat's Cradle. Vonnegut moved away from sci-fi but his humanism never left him; his "concern for society's more fallible specimens", as he puts it, shapes all his work, and he successfully mixes dark fatalism with both humour and hope.

Recommended works
Player Piano (1952), Cat's Cradle (1963), Slaughterhouse 5 (1969), Breakfast of Champions (1973), Slapstick (1976), Deadeye Dick (1985)

Influences
Eugene Debs, George Bernard Shaw, Upton Sinclair, Homer's Odyssey

Adaptations
Slaughterhouse 5 (dir George Roy Hill, 1972); Mother Night (dir Keith Gordon, 1996). Breakfast Of Champions and Sirens Of Titan are in production.



On this site
25 Jan 2003
Surviving Niagara
Kurt Vonnegut gives a highly personal version of how his son was stricken by mental illness


25 Jul 1998
A stitch in time
Review: Nicholas Lezard on Kurt Vonnegut's vision of 2001 - 'Timequake'


25 Jul 1998
A stitch in time
Review: Nicholas Lezard on Kurt Vonnegut's vision of 2001 - Timequake


22 Apr 1988
Scheming with a smile
Review of 'Bluebeard' by Kurt Vonnegut

Very good, dyslexia!
God, he sounds strangely SANE in these twisted times!

Ice-Nine. I remember Ice-9 and I remember karass, the idea that a small group of people are connected without realizing it.

msolga,

this Kilgore Trout character was very compulsive-obsessive, and had this thing about measuring men's genitals and women's breasts - a satire of America's obsessions, I guess.

I remember deciding I liked Sirens of Titan best.

No idea why, now.

So it goes, I have never gotten over that. Use it more in writing than in speech..

ossobuco i tend to agree but on the other hand Slaughterhouse 5 had a tremendous impact on me.

Yeah but I liked that toooooo.

fbaezer
I think Kilgor was Kurt! He actually gets set free in one on Vonnegut's later books, after having served so well in story after story ... A touching moment. <sniff>

Ice-9! Cat's Cradle! This was very potent stuff, able to freeze all liquid in the world from a tiny drop! Dangerous scientists!
But I can't remember karass, Piffka .... Was that from the same book?

Yes, osso & dyslexia, Slaughterhouse was terrific!
I remember a short passage where Lot's wife was told UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES to look back at the evil city she was escaping as it was being destroyed. But, being a kind, humane person who cared about others, she did look back ... & was turned into a pillar of salt! ... "And so it goes" ..

Sirens of Titan, music and lyrics by Al Stewart

I loved Vonnegut when I was in high school. Wonder what I would think of him now? Recently I sat behind him at the Philadelphia premiere of a terrible musical adaptation of CAT'S CRADLE. He is very tall, handsome, quite friendly. I suppose the poor man was suffering more than anyone at what was being done to his novel up there on the stage!