KURT VONNEGUT 1922-2007

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RIP

― lfam, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:16 (eighteen years ago)

i guess i should finally read one of your books

― lfam, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:16 (eighteen years ago)

really? link?

― Will M., Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:17 (eighteen years ago)

RIP (and yes I need to too xpost)

― Curt1s Stephens, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:17 (eighteen years ago)

really? shit

― stet, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:18 (eighteen years ago)

Ah shit. Was hoping he'd at least outlive this presidency. RIP you wonderful writer.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:18 (eighteen years ago)

nvm, got one...
:(

in case the linking doesn't work http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/books/11cnd-vonnegut.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

xpost

― Will M., Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:18 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/books/11cnd-vonnegut.html?hp

― lfam, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:19 (eighteen years ago)

oh man :(

― tehresa, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:21 (eighteen years ago)

This really fucks me up. I'm going to re-read Timequake tonight. RIP Kurt. Give God Hell.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:25 (eighteen years ago)

That sucks...What a brilliant writer

RIP

― Tape Store, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:27 (eighteen years ago)

RIP

― HI DERE, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:28 (eighteen years ago)

A great talent that will be greatly missed.

In high school, I read some of those books until the pages came loose. As an adult, I liked him in spite of myself even after his ACLU ad campaign.

RIP.

― Manalishi, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:28 (eighteen years ago)

Wow. I haven't read anything of his since junior high school and don't really intend to re-read him any time soon, but this is surprisingly sad. He was 84 and sick, so this was hardly a shock, but still...

― C0L1N B..., Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:29 (eighteen years ago)

I just pounded this out in a myspace bulletin -- the best thing I could think of to say:

"I honestly haven't felt so moved by a writer's passing since Octavia Butler; both Butler and Vonnegut in a way had strong similarities -- writers who didn't fully discover their voice and medium until having lived life a bit already, who were labelled science fiction but who transcended simple genre classification, who looked at the human species as a whole with an equally gimlet and loving eye. Both very American writers, I would say, but in the sense of 'America' as potentially reflective of the broader human condition, not the America of rah-rah stars and stripes but as experiment not guaranteed to succeed and stuck with loaded dice from the start. Individual voices often capture this better than any collective effort, I feel, and at his best Vonnegut's own gifts in this regard are peerless, his works stunning. He didn't offer comfort, but empathy; not platitudes, but wry agreement -- and his depiction of Dresden is something to remember in these days, more than ever.

So it goes. Be at peace."

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:31 (eighteen years ago)

Oh man. I was just thinking about KV yesterday.... RIP.

― g®▲Ðұ, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:31 (eighteen years ago)

My mentor's mentor, and my youngest daughter's favorite writer. RIP

― M.V., Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:32 (eighteen years ago)

rip

i can't say much that'll do the guy's life justice.

― ghost rider, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:56 (eighteen years ago)

Perhaps my first favorite author - I think he still holds that title today. So much of his work was so brilliant. There's nothing I can say that will eloquently express what his writing has meant to me.

RIP.

― Nathan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:00 (eighteen years ago)

Don't be sad! He lived an amazing life, wrote amazing books, imparted amazing wisdom, and died old. The rest of us should do so well.

Vonnegut would not want us to be maudlin.

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:00 (eighteen years ago)

can we sigh?
sigh.
rip kv

― rrrobyn, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:03 (eighteen years ago)

great vonnegut quotes here.

"Be careful what you pretend to be, because you are what you pretend to be."

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:05 (eighteen years ago)

How odd -- just yesterday I was looking at the Vonnegut wikipedia article, and found myself dwelling on this 2006 quote in there:

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?"

It's hard to tell whether he means that about just books or life in general, but ... well, you'd certainly have to feel happy for a guy who could honestly feel, toward the end of his life, that he'd accomplished what he wanted, and was happy to move along.

― nabisco, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:05 (eighteen years ago)

vonnegut otm

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:09 (eighteen years ago)

I hope this serves as a warning to all you smokers out there.

― Pleasant Plains, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:10 (eighteen years ago)

haha

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:11 (eighteen years ago)

"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:14 (eighteen years ago)

You know, given his writing pace and style, one guesses he'll be leaving behind a lot of unpublished work to sort through -- I have some gut feeling he'll have left far more (and more interesting) odds and ends than guys like Mailer or Vidal will -- so it'll be interesting, down the road a bit, to see how that gets dealt with. (Especially given that ... well, my mind might just be blanking here, but I feel like he's the most popularly read Major Author to pass on in a while, right?)

― nabisco, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:15 (eighteen years ago)

rip

― dan m, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:21 (eighteen years ago)

RIP. A great writer

― badg, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:35 (eighteen years ago)

Well done, Mr. Krebbs, well done.

― W i l l, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:36 (eighteen years ago)

FUCK. I just got home from the bookstore, where I got a used copy of Player Piano for $3.95. I was finally getting into his stuff.

rest in peace. I wish he could have stayed on a bit longer, just to see somebody else in the white house.

― kingfish, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:43 (eighteen years ago)

I feel like he's the most popularly read Major Author to pass on in a while, right?

maybe so, but major to who? Vonnegut is seen as a phase, a weird college affectation, more than anything. At least in my experience. He gets lumped in with Tom Robbins or something, like, you know pot smokers always read him. Which is a terrible crime.

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:43 (eighteen years ago)

He's namechecked in the movie Footloose, that's not a good thing.

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:46 (eighteen years ago)

RIP

― Sara R-C, Thursday, 12 April 2007 05:03 (eighteen years ago)

30-some answers and not ONE mention of his cameo in back to school. tsk.

RIP

― impudent harlot, Thursday, 12 April 2007 05:13 (eighteen years ago)

Whoa. I was in a bookstore today and I remember randomly staring at the Vonnegut section for a good 10 seconds.

RIP

― marmotwolof, Thursday, 12 April 2007 05:22 (eighteen years ago)

― Dy, Thursday, 12 April 2007 05:38 (eighteen years ago)

so it goes

rip.

― jabba hands, Thursday, 12 April 2007 05:48 (eighteen years ago)

RIP. :( I loved Cat's Cradle as a teen.

― Roz, Thursday, 12 April 2007 05:50 (eighteen years ago)

i think i've read more vonnegut than any other author. great writer, etc. he managed to be a grump without being a misanthrope like céline. all of his books have sort of merged together now in my mind, but my favorites are Mother Night, Bluebeard, Sirens of Titan, S-5, Cat's Cradle, and Slapstick. (i never liked Breakfast of Champions much, and I only remember random images from Deadeye Dick, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, and Jailbird). they're all worth reading, though.

R.I.P.

i'm going to go smoke a cigarette on my porch now.

― poortheatre, Thursday, 12 April 2007 05:55 (eighteen years ago)

I am proud to say that I smoked with Kurt Vonnegut twice.
More recently, in 2004, when he was a visiting Prof. at Smith College in ultra PC Northampton, Ma.
He hung out at a certain place, at an outdoor table, and I just said hello and bummed a light from him. And sat down.
He definitely liked being treated as the "old lion" with his smoking habits.
The world is a much less happy place without him, and nobody can replace him.

― aimurchie, Thursday, 12 April 2007 06:02 (eighteen years ago)

great american moralist, in a tradition too thinly populated. funny too. rip billy pilgrim.

― tipsy mothra, Thursday, 12 April 2007 06:47 (eighteen years ago)

I didn't see any asterisks near his name, so I was not prepared!

RIP.

― Casuistry, Thursday, 12 April 2007 07:00 (eighteen years ago)

RIP.
Hugely bummed out.

― g-kit, Thursday, 12 April 2007 07:37 (eighteen years ago)

(I'm not the first person on this thread to say it, but I'll say it anyway): so it goes

― Nasty, Brutish & Short, Thursday, 12 April 2007 08:10 (eighteen years ago)

RIP. i can't believe it.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Thursday, 12 April 2007 08:35 (eighteen years ago)

RIP

― RJG, Thursday, 12 April 2007 08:36 (eighteen years ago)

RIP, a great human and writer.

― estela, Thursday, 12 April 2007 08:38 (eighteen years ago)

R.I.P. Vonnegut is up in heaven now...

"I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great, spectacularly prolific writer and scientist, Dr. Isaac Asimov in that essentially functionless capacity. At an A.H.A. memorial service for my predecessor I said, 'Isaac is up in Heaven now.' That was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. It rolled them in the aisles. Mirth! Several minutes had to pass before something resembling order could be restored."

-God Bless You, Dr. Kervorkian

― Mark Rich@rdson, Thursday, 12 April 2007 08:50 (eighteen years ago)

― Matt DC, Thursday, 12 April 2007 08:52 (eighteen years ago)

so it goes. kurt is up in heaven now.

― stirmonster, Thursday, 12 April 2007 08:53 (eighteen years ago)

kurt was my favourite american and while this is an incredibly sad day i'm going to go out and try and buy a packet of pall malls and laugh as i sit and smoke the whole packet in his honour. farewell my friend.

― stirmonster, Thursday, 12 April 2007 08:56 (eighteen years ago)

so it goes indeed. great, great writer.

― m the g, Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:01 (eighteen years ago)

a wonderful writer. i sped through a bunch of his books my first year of college, damn near saved my life. i'm gonna dig em out this weekend and give them another read.

― J.D., Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:03 (eighteen years ago)

"and at his best Vonnegut's own gifts in this regard are peerless, his works stunning. He didn't offer comfort, but empathy; not platitudes, but wry agreement -- and his depiction of Dresden is something to remember in these days, more than ever.

So it goes. Be at peace."

Nicely said, Ned.

― aimurchie, Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:08 (eighteen years ago)

kilgore trout rip

― estela, Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:11 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, Kenan is right about this. Vonnegut was NOT sentimental. Let's build a rocket.
(i still miss him, just because...)

― aimurchie, Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:45 (eighteen years ago)

so it'll be interesting, down the road a bit, to see how that gets dealt with. (Especially given that ... well, my mind might just be blanking here, but I feel like he's the most popularly read Major Author to pass on in a while, right?)

Well, there is Bellow, for whom basically nothing has happened since his death? I mean to say, I'm still waiting for the unpublished work, etc.

― G00blar, Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:56 (eighteen years ago)

That is, R.I.P. (I need coffee).

― G00blar, Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:57 (eighteen years ago)

Vonnegut on Bush & co, getting to the heart of the matter as usual :

http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,1691370,00.html

― Matt #2, Thursday, 12 April 2007 10:12 (eighteen years ago)

reading him as a teenager woke me up to so many things, a great storyteller and member of my parents generation who actually saw the world the way we did...or maybe we came to see things the way he did. thanks for the inspiration and RIP

― m coleman, Thursday, 12 April 2007 10:26 (eighteen years ago)

Woah. I really wasn't expecting this. He was a great writer, one of the best, and shall be sorely missed.

― emil.y, Thursday, 12 April 2007 10:41 (eighteen years ago)

This reminds me that there is still a lot of his I have to read, lucky me indeed! RIP and thanks in advance.

― kv_nol, Thursday, 12 April 2007 10:46 (eighteen years ago)

Lucky mud, lucky me.

― Oilyrags, Thursday, 12 April 2007 10:59 (eighteen years ago)

how will I miss him and the thought that he is somewhere around here thinking brilliantly out loud this stupid world of ours.

― misshajim, Thursday, 12 April 2007 11:30 (eighteen years ago)

"Get yourself a gang!"

m.

― msp, Thursday, 12 April 2007 12:53 (eighteen years ago)

Terrible news. Check out last year's Non-Required Reading for his amazing lecture (with graphs) on literary structure.

Nabisco, how many Major Authors as popularly read as Vonnegut have there EVER been, especially popularly read lately? Three? Saul Bellow was the last monster of American Lit to die that I can remember, but he's not nearly as widely read as KV.

― antexit, Thursday, 12 April 2007 13:13 (eighteen years ago)

RIP KILGORE TROUT

― nickalicious, Thursday, 12 April 2007 13:23 (eighteen years ago)

"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest."

― nickalicious, Thursday, 12 April 2007 13:24 (eighteen years ago)

His ghost will live on for a million years in the Galapagos Islands, bored.

― nickalicious, Thursday, 12 April 2007 13:24 (eighteen years ago)

I saw him speak once in college. He was very, very funny. Great writer.

― Ms Misery, Thursday, 12 April 2007 13:25 (eighteen years ago)

Who were the primary agents in getting 15-yo's to read him? Older siblings or hippie teachers?

― Dr Morbius, Thursday, 12 April 2007 13:26 (eighteen years ago)

my primary agent was my dad. his big thick red volume with 5 of KV's best novels (Slaughterhouse-Five, Player Piano, Breakfast of Champions, Cat's Cradle, The Sirens Of Titan) was like the most important book in the world to me in middle school/high school, I've probably read more of him than any other author. I really liked the non-fiction/essay collection Palm Sunday, too, has anyone read the one that was published just a couple years ago, Man Without A Country?

― Alex in Baltimore, Thursday, 12 April 2007 13:27 (eighteen years ago)

RIP

― Ai Lien, Thursday, 12 April 2007 13:35 (eighteen years ago)

My first boyfriend gave me "Cat's Cradle" and told me it would change my life or something equally dramatic. It kind of did at the time. I was sixteen. He was probably introduced to him by his hippie academic parents. I saw Vonnegut speak somtime in college - he was wonderful. So it goes.

xxpost

― ENBB, Thursday, 12 April 2007 13:35 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.stuie.net/1pagers/mud.htm

― Oilyrags, Thursday, 12 April 2007 13:39 (eighteen years ago)

i gave him a light once, outside the new school's auditorium.

― ghost rider, Thursday, 12 April 2007 13:41 (eighteen years ago)

My primary agent was just my nerdiness. I read whatever I could find.

― Ms Misery, Thursday, 12 April 2007 13:42 (eighteen years ago)

lfam, without having read the rest of this thread, i just wanted to say that you should start with slaughterhouse-five. my dad convinced me to read it a few years ago and it was absolutely brilliant. i wish i appreciated vonnegut more in his own lifetime, but i suppose now is the time to delve into more. i just have to finish this behemoth of a tolstoy novel first.

― modestmickey, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:05 (eighteen years ago)

His obit kind of astounds me -- he was a GE p.r. guy AND a Saab salesman!

― Dr Morbius, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:07 (eighteen years ago)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/10/arts/vonnegut6.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/10/arts/vonnegut6.jpg

can we please keep our national treasures indoors more please,how many have we lost to slip and falls?

― danbunny, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:12 (eighteen years ago)

He was indoors when it happened!

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:14 (eighteen years ago)

“Mark Twain,” Mr. Vonnegut wrote in his 1991 book, “Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage,” “finally stopped laughing at his own agony and that of those around him. He denounced life on this planet as a crock. He died.”

― Dr Morbius, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:16 (eighteen years ago)

o,can we please pad the indoor rooms of our natrional treasures,how many more do we have to lose before an acceptable foam filled house is accepted as the norm!

― danbunny, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:17 (eighteen years ago)

i love the excerpt of his poem at the end of the nyt article

― modestmickey, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:21 (eighteen years ago)

Who were the primary agents in getting 15-yo's to read him? Older siblings or hippie teachers?

For me, neither...the Science Fiction Book Club (my "11 for $1.99" included S-5, Breakfast and Sirens) and whichever Dangerous Visions anthology had "The Big Space Fuck".

RIP KV. I think it's important not to be sad about this. So it goes.

― Rock Hardy, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:27 (eighteen years ago)

the Science Fiction Book Club

A perfect gateway drug for a lot of things. With me it was a story in some anthology (not that one), but I'll be damned if I can remember which, annoyingly.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:29 (eighteen years ago)

saw him 10 years ago this spring on a lecture (read: crumudgeonly complaints) tour at the university of southern mississippi. he spent a lot of it making fun of those who spend a lot of time on the internet. he compared them to kids he knew back in the day holed up in attics with ham radios. it was a heavily barbed talk. and funny. his advice at the end: he ordered us all to go home and read or re-read "an occurrence at owl creek bridge."

― andrew m., Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:33 (eighteen years ago)

Oh man, and I was thinking of Bierce too when I first heard the news. Wise advice, that.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:34 (eighteen years ago)

http://web.bvu.edu/organizations/tack/1999/04/23/Photos/asshole.jpg

― nickalicious, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:38 (eighteen years ago)

RIP

― deej, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:39 (eighteen years ago)

haha (xpost to asshole)

― Rock Hardy, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:40 (eighteen years ago)

Sad. One of the first writers I truly loved.

― chap, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:41 (eighteen years ago)

ETC.

― sexyDancer, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:43 (eighteen years ago)

oh geez

i think i'm gonna go on a KV tear this summer

― river wolf, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:45 (eighteen years ago)

the BOC asshole! Breakfast of Champions was my first.

― Dr Morbius, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:45 (eighteen years ago)

From a speech and article last year in honor of Mark Twain:

[quote] I note that construction has stopped of a Mark Twain Museum here in Hartford —behind the carriage house of the Mark Twain House at 351 Farmington Avenue.

Work persons have been sent home from that site because American “conservatives,” as they call themselves, on Wall Street and at the head of so many of our corporations, have stolen a major fraction of our private savings, have ruined investors and employees by means of fraud and outright piracy.

Shock and awe.

And now, having installed themselves as our federal government, or taken control of it from outside, they have squandered our public treasury and then some. They have created a public debt of such appalling magnitude that our descendants, for whom we had such high hopes, will come into this world as poor as church mice.

Shock and awe.

What are the conservatives doing with all the money and power that used to belong to all of us? They are telling us to be absolutely terrified, and to run around in circles like chickens with their heads cut off. But they will save us. They are making us take off our shoes at airports. Can anybody here think of a more hilarious practical joke than that one?

Smile, America. You’re on Candid Camera.

And they have turned loose a myriad of our high-tech weapons, each one costing more than a hundred high schools, on a Third World country, in order to shock and awe human beings like us, like Adam and Eve, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

The other day I asked former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton what he thought of our great victory over Iraq, and he said, “Mohammed Ali versus Mr. Rogers.”

What are conservatives? They are people who will move heaven and earth, if they have to, who will ruin a company or a country or a planet, to prove to us and to themselves that they are superior to everybody else, except for their pals. They take good care of their pals, keep them out of jail—and so on.

Conservatives are crazy as bedbugs. They are bullies.

Shock and awe.

Class war? You bet.

They have proved their superiority to admirers of Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain and Jesus of Nazareth, with an able assist from television, making inconsequential our protests against their war.[/url]

(Quoted over in NROville, oddly enough -- with one of their number adding later that perhaps being at Dresden must have 'messed with a guy's mind.' See the point and see it missed.)

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:46 (eighteen years ago)

Whoops, odd formatting, but it's all there, so.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:46 (eighteen years ago)

Last year, more like 2003! Must get something to eat here.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:51 (eighteen years ago)

The last Vonnegut book I read was Venus On The Half-Shell by "Kilgore Trout", which was possibly the funniest book I've ever had the pleasure of reading, and, while I highly recommend it to fans, I'm not sure I would recommend it at all to anyone not in on the joke.

― nickalicious, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:55 (eighteen years ago)

Uh, that was written by Philip Jose Farmer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_on_the_Half-Shell

― Rock Hardy, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:00 (eighteen years ago)

So, with which novel should I start?

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:04 (eighteen years ago)

slaughterhouse five

― modestmickey, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:22 (eighteen years ago)

Uh, that was written by Philip Jose Farmer.

This is heartbreaking in so many ways, least of which was my inability to determine between KV doing goofy sci-fi pulp and someone impersonating KV doing goofy sci-fi pulp. It's still a very funny book though.

― nickalicious, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:27 (eighteen years ago)

It is said that Vonnegut was "not amused" by Venus on the Half-Shell. Vonnegut was definitely upset by the popular belief that he was the author of the book, which he was not.

Also this.

― nickalicious, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:27 (eighteen years ago)

Now I am the douchebag on the RIP thread.

― nickalicious, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:28 (eighteen years ago)

wear sunblock

― gabbneb, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:37 (eighteen years ago)

Make me young, make me young, make me young!

blood fuckin diamonds, dude

― 69, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:45 (eighteen years ago)

I can't remember how I went through the teenage gate from Judy Blume to Vonnegut. I remember Vonnegut being a "secret". Like, we were cool because we read Vonnegut and "got" the jokes.

I'm not sad that he died - I'm sad that today sucks because I have to stay here without the knowledge of his presence on earth. He has described my angst for 25 years.
No more? That's sad.

― aimurchie, Thursday, 12 April 2007 16:52 (eighteen years ago)

sunscreen

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 17:16 (eighteen years ago)

I always said I'd give up smoking when Kurt Vonnegut died, but now I want to smoke more to make up for his absence. So it goes.

RIP

― melton mowbray, Thursday, 12 April 2007 17:17 (eighteen years ago)

There will be no more Vonnegut books, but we can keep the ones we already have. That's a helluva good deal when you think on it. Most good people, when they die, leave less enduring legacies than that. He deserves to rest in peace.

― Aimless, Thursday, 12 April 2007 17:36 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.brianoberkirch.com/2007/04/12/those-are-my-brothers/

― Catsupppppppppppppp dude ‫茄蕃‪, Thursday, 12 April 2007 19:08 (eighteen years ago)

Post way back up to Antexit: guys like Mailer, Vidal, and especially Updike are all popularly read (if not among younger generations), and getting on in years. The first two especially, when asked what they're working on now, give responses that basically say "well I'm not starting any major projects, as I'll probably die soon."

― nabisco, Thursday, 12 April 2007 20:06 (eighteen years ago)

Vidal's been saying it for 35 years.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 12 April 2007 20:09 (eighteen years ago)

I suppose Roth, Vidal, and Updike are the only Novelists of Quality of that generation whose books sell?

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 12 April 2007 20:10 (eighteen years ago)

I don't Vidal sells the way Roth and Updike do. And I don't think Updike and Roth sell that much.

― Mr. Que, Thursday, 12 April 2007 20:10 (eighteen years ago)

I hope Mailer finishes the Harlot's Ghost sequel first.

― Rock Hardy, Thursday, 12 April 2007 20:11 (eighteen years ago)

Vidal's two post-9/11 pamphlets were huge sellers! For months customers were either buying Coulter's Slander or Vidal's stuff at the bookstore at which I used to work.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 12 April 2007 20:13 (eighteen years ago)

Well that and so far as I know Vidal used to sell and have popular reputation, just mostly before I -- and, I assume, most people here -- were born.

― nabisco, Thursday, 12 April 2007 20:16 (eighteen years ago)

yeah i could be totally off base about Vidal's popularity but he seems a lot less popular than the other two

― Mr. Que, Thursday, 12 April 2007 20:17 (eighteen years ago)

Isn't Updike still cranking them out like crazy? Like, misguided thrillers about terrorism and romans a clef about Jackson Pollack that everyone hates?

― antexit, Thursday, 12 April 2007 21:44 (eighteen years ago)

and plays about James Buchanan!

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 12 April 2007 21:46 (eighteen years ago)

Yes, I believe his last two were about (a) a first-generation teenager lured into Islamic radicalism, and (b) an old Updikey guy sitting around thinking about his penis in a dystopic future-America blighted by radiation fallout from a Sino-American nuclear war.

Nevertheless, he is 75 years old, so it would not be hugely surprising if he passed on during the next 15 years or so.

― nabisco, Thursday, 12 April 2007 21:49 (eighteen years ago)

the one about the penis was Toward The End of Time, published back in 1997. he's written a bunch since then, including the Pollock one and the Islamic one (called "Terrorist").

Okay, Updike pedantry over.

― Mr. Que, Thursday, 12 April 2007 21:55 (eighteen years ago)

I realized I haven't been torn up over a famous person's death since Charles Schulz died...or Shel Silverstein when I was a kid. I looked up in the sky, thinking every airplane going by might be flying She'ls casket away. Now I know they don't fly corpses over the Rocky Mountains for no reason...I have nowhere to look in hopes I'll get a last connection to a beloved author/exemplar.

I love you, KJV. RIP buddy.

― Abbott, Thursday, 12 April 2007 22:46 (eighteen years ago)

Commencement speech, 1999

Hammurabi gave us a code which is honored to his very day by many nations, including my own, and by all heroes in cowboy and gangster films, and by far too many people who feel they have been insulted or injured, however slightly. However accidentally:

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
Revenge is not only sweet - it is a must!

What antidote can there be for an idea that popular and poisonous? Revenge provides revenge, which is sure to provide revenge, forming an endless chain of human misery.

Here's the antidote:

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Amen.

[...]

Computers are insincere. Books are sincere.

And don't try to make yourself an extended family out of ghosts on the Internet.

Get yourself a Harley, and join Hell's Angels instead.

― kingfish, Thursday, 12 April 2007 22:58 (eighteen years ago)

Still, this makes me feel like when Frank Zappa. One of the great iconoclastic and anti-authoritarian voices who wasn't afraid to point out how much bullshit comprised modern life, and in the most articulate ways.

This feels a bit harsher, tho, b/c i didn't get into Zappa until a year after he was gone(thanks to the Dr Dememto show on the 1 year anniversary).

― kingfish, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:04 (eighteen years ago)

And they're working on the screenplays for Cat's Cradle & Sirens of Titan right now

― kingfish, Friday, 13 April 2007 00:47 (eighteen years ago)

The Onion's American Voices today: "Are we totally, absolutely sure he's not alive? I just think it'd be silly to accept his death without checking Dresden for his younger self first."

― kenan, Friday, 13 April 2007 17:38 (eighteen years ago)

Which somehow reminds me that once on ILE, perhaps four years back, another ILXor guessed I was actually Mr. Vonnegut posting incognito. My retort was that, however flattered I might be, I was not Mr. Vonnegut, and this would become obvious when KV was dead. I trust my point has been made now. Thanks, Kurt, for the assist!

― Aimless, Friday, 13 April 2007 17:46 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.independentcritics.com/images/jfkSPLASH.jpg

"The Zapruder film will show that Aimless could not have in the hospital when Vonnegut died..."

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, 13 April 2007 17:59 (eighteen years ago)

Aimless, it was you that wrote the sunscreen thing, wasn't it.

― Alex in Baltimore, Friday, 13 April 2007 18:10 (eighteen years ago)

http://a70.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/12/l_9d20a3cec42cc3f44352eee120bbd635.jpg

― g®▲Ðұ, Friday, 13 April 2007 21:05 (eighteen years ago)

ew leakage

― kenan, Friday, 13 April 2007 21:06 (eighteen years ago)

I don't see how books are sincere.

― sexyDancer, Friday, 13 April 2007 21:15 (eighteen years ago)

fox news ~~obit~~attack:

http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=730C14ED7E505A2899B01A6B31A4DC10?diaryId=16063

― lfam, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 23:38 (eighteen years ago)

see also:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnAaDEFk7Uk

haters are hatin'

― kingfish, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 07:22 (eighteen years ago)

link to aimless / vonnegut accusations

― JW, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 07:45 (eighteen years ago)

I like the way that terrible FOX obit is cut off at the very end:
"in washington, James Rosen, Fuck"

― StanM, Thursday, 19 April 2007 07:52 (eighteen years ago)

(the YouTube one, at least)

― StanM, Thursday, 19 April 2007 07:52 (eighteen years ago)

one year passes...

Fuck do I wish he would have stayed around for just a little while longer.

Just to see the different Administration, at least.

― kingfish, Friday, 30 January 2009 17:12 (sixteen years ago)

link to aimless / vonnegut accusations

Oh, well. Better late than never, I supose.

I'm a deeply spiritual person?

Wherein the following exchange may be discovered:

"I have never found the limits to my capacity for self-delusion."
Posts that make me think Aimless isn't Kurt Vonnegut = 0
Posts that do make me think that = 1 billion.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Thursday, May 27, 2004 12:45 PM (4 years ago)

Just you wait until Kurt Vonnegut keels over dead, nickalicious. I'll have the last laugh on you then.
― Aimless (Aimless), Thursday, May 27, 2004 1:09 PM (4 years ago)

― Aimless, Friday, 30 January 2009 18:43 (sixteen years ago)

kingfish, I'm sure he'd have been happily astounded at an African-American president, and bitter but unsurprised that Bush gets to retire to a mansion, a fat pension, and a private bodyguard of Secret Service instead of a cell and prison guards.

I wish he and Molly Ivans were still around to flay the CEOs of the megabanks who just sailed our economy straight into an iceberg. Alas. So it goes.

― Aimless, Friday, 30 January 2009 19:18 (sixteen years ago)

one year passes...

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/11/slaughterhouse-five.html

― egregious apostrophising (schlump), Friday, 26 March 2010 14:59 (fifteen years ago)

wow.

― Jermaine Jenason (darraghmac), Friday, 26 March 2010 15:04 (fifteen years ago)

fascinating - and his authorial voice is already there clear as day.

― Bill A, Friday, 26 March 2010 15:07 (fifteen years ago)

shit, I hope I never experience war. somehow knowing that that came from the pen of kurt fucking vonnegut makes war all the more real and horrifying to me.

― it is just like an unknown puzzle till the end of the world (dyao), Friday, 26 March 2010 15:23 (fifteen years ago)

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