Kurt Vonnegut Dies

[Mike Teacher]

Hope its not a duplicate, But a radio host just informed me of the death of Kurt Vonnegut

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 New York. He was 84 and had homes in New York and in Sagaponack on Long Island.

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LINK (http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/12/arts/web-0412obit.php)

[JPMNICK]

cats cradle is one of my fav books of alltime. although it is sad he died, it will be cool when I am older and have kids to let them know he was alive during my lifetime. It is kind of like how i ask my grandfather all the time about living when albery einstein was alive

[TheMojoPin]

Wow. I've got like a zillion things I want to say about this, but I can't get anything together.

RIP. One of the greatest writers of this or any time.

[weekapaugjz]

that is sad news. vonnegut has always been one of my favorite authors. he was the commencement speaker at my graduation in '04. i couldn't have thought of a person i more would have wanted to speak at that event.

[PapaBear]

Aw, man. That sucks! Pall Malls (Pell Mell) for everyone.

I think I've read about 13 of his books.

[Marc with a c]

damn.

funny guy. loved some of his work

[DonInNC]

RIP Kilgore Trout

[El Mudo]

Wow...that's nuts....sorry to hear it



I always was very interested in his tales and his experiences from WW2 (I believe he was at Dresden to clean up after he was captured by the Germans at the Bulge)

[PapaBear]

I believe he was at Dresden to clean up after he was captured by the Germans at the Bulge)
Slaughterhouse Five

[Mike Teacher]

Wow. I've got like a zillion things I want to say about this, but I can't get anything together.

RIP. One of the greatest writers of this or any time.

I'm reaching for 'The Making of The Atomic Bomb' which won the Pulitzer Prize, and includes an incredible, fascinating, horrific description of the bombing of Dresden including one from Vonnegut, where he was a POW, living in a Slaughterhouse, hence the title of his book.

Surreally horrific.

[drjoek]

I grew up reading everything by Vonnegut. I always thought he was nice and subversive plus easy to read so I seemed so cutting edge.

He was also the author of

Welcome to the MONKEY HOUSE !!!!!!

[SinA]

That's sad. Wow, and I heard it here first. Somehow that makes me a little happier, in a strange way.

I read "Player Piano" in college, and re-read it recently. I thought it was good, although it got pretty messy at the end. Kind of like the world.

[El Mudo]

I've never really read any of his books, but I will certainly try to pick up some in the next few days

[suggums]

when i still worked at barnes and noble, i bought the black and white postcards of kurt vonnegut jr. and che guevara. they've sat on the driver's side of my dashboard for a couple years, as they are two of my heroes. RIP kurt, we lost a great one. for those who are not familiar, one of my favorite passages from Slaughterhouse Five:

"Billy looked at the clock on the gas stove. He had an hour to kill
before the saucer came. He went into the living room, swinging the bottle
like a dinner bell, turned on the television. He came slightly unstuck in
time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. It was a movie
about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who
flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took
off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France a few German
fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments
from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked
American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join
the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in
flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous
magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel
containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The
containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous
devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck
more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few
wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair.
Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and
everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were
taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America,
where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders,
separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly
women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in
remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground., to hide
them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school
kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't
in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and
all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two
perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed."

[Badinia]

(Said softly, and through tears)

Welcome to the...Monkeyhouuuuuse.

[Wallower]

RIP Kurt. Long live Rudy Waltz.

[patsopinion]

that article (first post on thread) was really well written

[patsopinion]

He has stalled finishing his highly anticipated novel If God Were Alive Today - or so he claims. "I've given up on it ... It won't happen. ... The Army kept me on because I could type, so I was typing other people's discharges and stuff. And my feeling was, 'Please, I've done everything I was supposed to do. Can I go home now?' That's what I feel right now. I've written books. Lots of them. Please, I've done everything I'm supposed to do. Can I go home now?"[4]

[patsopinion]

RIP Kilgore Trout

Kilgore Trout (based on real-life science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon

sorry for 3 posts inna row

[cowbell_killer]

well first the story,

www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1609502,00.html (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1609502,00.html)

I have been a fan of Kurt Vonnegut ever since the first time i picked up one of his books in my 9th grade English class. As far as i was concerned he was the greatest American author since Mark Twain. He themes on loneliness and and love gave some of my first true glimpses of the heartbreaking world of the "adults". His experience in Dresden during his time as a POW in WWII shaped his life and he poured every bit of it into the strange worlds his characters lived in. I will miss him being in my world. Mr. Vonnegut, even though you and i would never agree that it mattered.....My god protect and guard your sleep.

Long Live Kilgore Trout!

[PapaBear]

Fuck it. He deserves at least three threads.

[Kilgores Feet]

Sadness fills me.
I actually held off on reading the whole of Hocus Pocus and Player Piano (although I bought them and started them a number of times) knowing that he would die in my lifetime. I want to be surprised by him again.


edit: I completely forgot about this but I picked my Ronfez.net name from Breakfast of Champions.

[Hottub]

Threads merged by Hottub.

[Kilgores Feet]

Forgot this as well...the obligatory
"So it goes..."

[Bob Impact]

Forgot this as well...the obligatory
"So it goes..."

So it goes...
One of the greatest writers of all time, RIP.

[Freakshow]

He should have worn sunscreen (lame I know, but I am almost speechless).

from the wikipedia:

Death
Vonnegut died at the age of 84 on April 11, 2007, in Manhattan, NY, after a fall at his Manhattan home several weeks prior resulted in irreversible brain injuries.[1][14][15] So it goes.

[Furtherman]

Terrible news. If you haven't read him, be sure to pick up one of his classics soon.

He also wrote a great paper about himself in Back To School (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090685/)!

Couldn't find any screenshots of that.

[Alice S. Fuzzybutt]

OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

That's all I can get out right now.

[jetdog]

I hold this man above all others in the literary field...ting-a-ling.

[guttersnipe]

This makes a grand total of two famous people who I have cried over at the news of their passing. (The first was John Lennon.) Mad genius, writing with brutal honesty straight from the soul, whatever that is. Entertaining and deep at the exact same time. I was in love with his brain.

Long live Kilgore Trout indeed.
:sad:

[badorties]

He should have worn sunscreen (lame I know, but I am almost speechless).

wasn't him ...

one of those author's whose work greatly influenced how you look at the world, really loved an interview from rolling stone late last year ... always brutally honest, earnest and poignant

one of my greatest regrets in life: 1997, i was at dinner with a friend and while waiting for the bathroom, kurt vonnegut comes out -- i had a copy of cat's cradle on me, and i didn't want to bother him while he ate

i also tried to see him at a reading at the union square B&N, and the place was too packed to get in

great loss

[Freakshow]

Yeah. I know--hence the lame comment.

My brother says that Kilgore Trout died at 84. Crazy.

[jetdog]

http://www.vonnegut.com/images/mem/birdcage.jpg

[Landblast]

Cats Cradle definitely in my top 5.

[dirt weed reed]

Kurt is up in Heaven now.

That's a pretty hilarious joke if you're a Humanist.

[bobrobot]

Bye Bye Kurt, I'm gonna miss ya!!!

It's painful to lose the guy who's like the Crazy Uncle ya WISH ya had, & kinda DID have thanx to his wonderful books!!!

"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." -K.V.

http://contact.wlu.edu/images/2003S_Vonnegut1.jpg

Great Man, Great Writer, Great Mustache!!!

[cougarjake13]

ive only read Schlachthof Fünf in school

[midwestjeff]

read monkeyhouse a few years ago. I found about ten of his books in the basement of my apartment when i moved in last august. it was too perfect. i am about five in and can't wait for more. Thanks for the stories, and god bless you, Mr. Vonnegut.

[Neurality]

First R.A. Wilson then Kurt...these are sad times.

[PD]

Wow...that's nuts....sorry to hear it
I always was very interested in his tales and his experiences from WW2 (I believe he was at Dresden to clean up after he was captured by the Germans at the Bulge)

Slaughterhouse Five

I don't know if you realized this, but Slaughterhouse Five is based on his real experiences - He was a prisoner of War in Dresden, and his mother committed suicide while he was there.

I should have posted in this thread yesterday. Like Ronnie, I was inconsolable about this.

I was one of those lucky enough to see him in person, while in college "so many years ago" and he left his mark upon me.

RIP Kurt.

[DonInNC]

Indulge me:

When I was younger, I spent hours writing. I filled notebooks in just a couple weeks. Poems, essays, short stories, I was all over the place. When I wasn't writing, I was reading. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Lewis, Joyce, Fitsgerald, Faulkner, on and on. I was seeking some sort of intellectual fullfillment. I had recurring dreams of trying to build a house. I had more than enough lumber and bricks to build it, but I didn't have any nails.

Then I read Breakfast of Champions. Great book. So I read Slaughterhouse Five. There, not only did I find what I had been looking for, but I found it all in one short phrase: "poo-tee-tweet". That said everything I had ever wanted to say. It described nature. It described humanity. It described my existance. I had found my nails.

Kurt Vonnegut was able to do something that very people are ever able to do: he heightened our collective consciousness. And his work was accessible to everyone. You don't need training as a literary critic to understand the profundity of it. Easy to read and easy to comprehend, even if it wasn't always easy to accept.

He accomplished much during his 84 years. He will be missed.

RIP

[PapaBear]

Indulge me:

When I was younger, I spent hours writing. I filled notebooks in just a couple weeks. Poems, essays, short stories, I was all over the place. When I wasn't writing, I was reading. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Lewis, Joyce, Fitsgerald, Faulkner, on and on. I was seeking some sort of intellectual fullfillment. I had recurring dreams of trying to build a house. I had more than enough lumber and bricks to build it, but I didn't have any nails.

Then I read Breakfast of Champions. Great book. So I read Slaughterhouse Five. There, not only did I find what I had been looking for, but I found it all in one short phrase: "poo-tee-tweet". That said everything I had ever wanted to say. It described nature. It described humanity. It described my existance. I had found my nails.

Kurt Vonnegut was able to do something that very people are ever able to do: he heightened our collective consciousness. And his work was accessible to everyone. You don't need training as a literary critic to understand the profundity of it. Easy to read and easy to comprehend, even if it wasn't always easy to accept.

He accomplished much during his 84 years. He will be missed.

RIP

Most of what I wrote was done between 1985-1987. I transcribed most of those writings into the blank pages of about 6 or 7 Vonnegut paperbacks to give to a waitress in Charlottesville, Va. I had only talked to her a few times, but when I did see her, I talked about Vonnegut. So... I wrote my shit on the blank pages. I bundled them in some twine.

I took the bundle to where she worked. I was told by another waitress that she didn't show up that day. I asked her to give the bundle to her the next day she came to work. I left town two days later. I hope she got them. She needed some Vonnegut.

My writing sucked, but I wish I still had it. I need it.