Brilliant writer. Great stylist, funny as hell, and, earlier in his career, a very interesting sci-fi writer… But of late, well—let’s just say he’s been politically nostalgic.
His death is a tremendous loss to the world of literature. As for his politics, they died sometime in the mid-seventies—though their ghosts seem to have found a gig haunting Nancy Pelosi and Jack Murtha of late.
(h/t JWebb)
He was too brilliant for me, I guess. :(
The best observation on his politics I’ve seen so far is from commenter Dave S. at Blair’s.
I loved his writing … when I was 14.
When you grow up, sometimes you have to leave your idols behind.
RIP Mr. Trout.
I need to reread Player Piano, I guess.
His stuff is kind of like Chinese food – lots of interesting ingredients, but it all ends up having the same flavor. In the end, generally less than satisfying. But he was not a bad guy, not at all.
I have a hardcover with three of his novels, and in all honesty I wasn’t impressed. Pretty bleak stuff, without having any real emotional impact. He wrote cogent sentences that built linear thought progressions up to a climax of sorts, but by the time I got there I didn’t feel any connection to either the characters or the world he’d created. Maybe that’s what he was shooting for.
I would much rather read this blog than anything Vonnegut wrote. And of course I mean that as a compliment to you Jeff, and not as a put down for him.
My favorite pessimist.
I never got all the way through one of his books. Always got to a certain point and thought, “What an asshole.” and threw or gave it away.
I wasn’t a big fan of Slaughterhouse Five. It seems to be pretty aggressive about ignoring causality.
I wasn’t a big fan of Slaughterhouse Five. It seems to be pretty aggressive about ignoring causality.
See, if you’d read it when you were 14 (if you were immature as I was) , that probably wouldn’t have bothered you.
What a strange community you gather, Jeff.
Anyway, what a glorious man and great writer. His disdain for authority, authoritarianism, religion, and his contempt for the foibles of mankind made his politics the one thing about him that was real.
He will be missed.
His work indeed shines like diamonds if you put it on your shelf next to something by Richard Bach.
Which explains the tone, tenor and lack of critical thinking in your rants.
Irony, thy name is timmyb.
Cheers! The Lisbon Assassin.
Back in the day, my tapes of Kurt Vonnegut’s Monkey House–his short-lived Ray Bradbury Theater-alike TV show–inspired the jealousy of many a dork. The show is crap, but it’s fun to watch him try to Rod Serling the thing. Doesn’t work. Huge dork.
Vonnegut’s one of those authors I like, but whose books, when I’m asked if I’ve read them, I pretend I haven’t, just so I don’t have to talk about them with his fans. Who are all dorks.
Except for you dorks, of course.
Or, it seems to note that 135,000 people were incinerated by the “good” guys, which makes you question what “good” is. Is good defeating the Nazis? Sure is. Is good bombing Germany…..in service of defeating the Germans, yes. Is bombing civilians defensible? Probably not, but accidents happen. is the intentional destruction of a city filled with families, architecture and not much else solely as exercise in revenge a good thing? No. No it wasn’t.
You shouldn’t need to be anything other than a thinking feeling human being to decry the unnecessary murder of children, whose “sin” against America and Britain was being born at the wrong place and time. And, if you can’t decry that, then you must admit it’s a strange world where one is consigned to death because the accident of his/her birth. Might cause you to question the whole enchilada.
Oh, hold it, we’re “mature enough” to accept utilitarianism now. More rubble, less trouble.
Major Harris and Curtis LeMay, meet America c. 2007. We’ve finally “evolved” to catch up to you
Funny as hell is right…he made me laugh out loud on many occasions despite my disagreements with his politics, rabid pacifism, and social commentary. I attribute this to his delivery (style) and bare bones honest way of saying what was on his mind.
The problem with Vonnegut’s politics is that they moved away from anti-authoritarianism into a kind of authoritarianism of their own—aimed, ironically, at those who didn’t agree with his politics.
I used to teach Breakfast of Champions, which I still find quite enjoyable. The problem with Vonnegut’s later work, I think, is that he became too cognizant of who his fans were, and began writing toward their expectations of social commentary (the specifics of which he may have agreed with, but the final products he churned out as a result seemed immensely strained).
But his voice resonated with the counterculture—and it is highly representative of an era and a philosophical outlook shared by many intellectuals and artists of the WWII generation.
It is difficult to discuss the literature of the 60s and 70s without mentioning Vonnegut, Roth, Updike, or Pynchon.
In fact, I often thought of Vonnegut as Holden Caufield grown up and hardened in his disillusion. Sure, you sometimes wished he’d just get over himself, but he was at least interesting in his post-romantic malaise.
Vonnegut is one of the leaders of the “We’re not the good guys, unless we’re perfect” brigade. An America hater.
I find it interesting, that individuals who are flawed themselves (as we all are) find the flaws of our country unacceptable and on par with the worst humanity has to offer.
So shitting on everything makes one great? By that standard, pigeons are the greatest and most prolific thinkers on all the earth.
SQUAWK! SQUAWK! POOP!
Pure genius right there….
How does believing in nothing make you a judge of people who believe in something?
Timmah!, what the fuck are you talking about? Please, for the love of God, tell me that it isn’t Dresden, and that you don’t think it was bombed solely as an exercise in revenge.
Because that would make you an absolute moron. King of the Morons, even.
timmy: Dresden was a strategic target as much as anything else. Calling it “solely […] revenge” doesn’t make it so.
(“RAF Air Staff documents state that it was their intention to use RAF bomber command to “destroy communications” to hinder the eastward deployment of German troops, and to hamper evacuation, not to kill the evacuees.”, “Soviet military intelligence asserted that trains stuck in the main station were troop trains passing through Dresden to the front.”)
Try to assimilate this historical information, and re-evaluate your received beliefs about the Dresden bombing, please.
…
Anyway, back on topic, I’ve never read any Vonnegut except for a short story or two. His rabid fans and the “immature schlock” assessments of pretty much everyone else, have made me feel no need whatsoever to do so.
Wtf? How could it be otherwise?
I like some of his work. Harrison Bergeron and Mother Night are classics. Other stuff, particularly his later work, not so much.
Complications from a fall? So it goes.
Ah, Pynchon.
Hey, I got yer Bergeron right here.
I think KV was a great writer and it’s a pity that people want to use the occasion of his death to recap the now moribund argument about the morality of bombing civilians (if the argument still had any merit, we wouldn’t have spent billions developing smart weaponry since Vietnam.)
The more legit point of departure would be that Slaughterhouse 5 was “really” about (in a political sense) the morality of bombing North Vietnam, and the futility of the Vietnam War, just as the meta-theme of the entire novel was not the “rightness” or “wrongness” of killing x-types of people in whatever quantity but rather a kind of theodicy, in the sense that death and pain are inevitable and pointless, and how do you create a meaningful existence out of that? A serious question still.
I wonder if some people will ever get tired of re-fighting WW2. Maybe not: I remember being surprised in a nature preserve in the Northeast by a squad of Civil War Re-enactors who came jumping out of the bushes ……
Steve, I agree with you, except that some people took Vonnegut’s message and applied it to World War II anyway. So what do you do, let them apply their argument successfully?
It’s been a long while since I’ve read (and loved) Vonnegut’s work, but I must still take except to that “great loss to literature” line. It’s cliche. Vonnegut had decided to quit writing years ago, so his actual impact these days is minimal.
As a public speaker, that would be different. But he and literature parted ways a long time ago.
I liked “Slaughterhouse Five,” “The Sirens of Titan,” “Player Piano,” “Galapagos,” etc. Kilgore Trout was an interesting creation.
My Vonnegut number is 2. My ex-wife’s father used to hang out with Vonnegut back in the 60’s.
Just sayin’.
Add Brautigan, perhaps, to cover the west coast. Trout Fishing is a classic of course but I particularly liked The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western. Very Twilight Zone -ish.
My personal fave of Vonnegut’s was Deadeye Dick. The title alone made me laugh, but then I read the first few paragraphs.
My college roomate’s lit professor (how’s that for a credentialled reference?) considered Galapagos the modern day Moby Dick.
Re: Dresden. Recognizing that an　act may be necessary should not prevent us from recognizing the horror of said action.
Ah c’mon lighten up. Cat’s Cradle, Sirens of Titan, Breakfast of Champions to name a few were a hoot. His last few stunk and are just too slight to mention but hey he was in his dottage. If you can’t laugh at stuff because you can’t quite figure out if your politics allow you to, you’re in a sad state. Who DO you find amusing? If I drew a line at people who agree with me, I wouldn’t listen to very much music or watch many movies, that’s for sure.
Sorry if I came across as trite, Bill. I just didn’t feel like thinking up another way to say that his death, in my opinion, is a great loss to literature. He is one of the last of that generation—and it so happens that I happen to find that period in American lit one of the richest ever.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned “Harrison Bergeron”, one of the great conservative short-stories of the 20th century:
http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html
Oops, sorry, someone did. Well, get over there and read “Harrison Bergeron” already.
Vonnegut was a rookie when he was captured at the Battle of the Bulge. Not a good way to be introduced to the Second World War. Next he’s a guest of the Third reich in an urban moonscape piling German stiffs, to numerous to be buried, so they can be torched with flamethrowers. Coming from a family of suicides and depressives, he was now well equipped to paint his portraits limited to human peculiarites. But politics? He had no chance.
About the time of the publication of “Slapstick,” I tried to convince my father, Borden Deal, and his friend, Kurt Vonnegut, of Thomas Pynchon’s greatness. They were both dismissive of his ornate but silly style, and KV addended the following note to his inscription in Dad’s copy of “Slapstick”: “Fuck Pynchon.”
Naturally, I cherish this association item, despite my disagreement with KV’s assessment.