Kurt Vonnegut

[Mobbd]

From the Deeper into Movies thread about the Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time documentary.

Saw this tonight, will write more later but for now I'll just say I found this absolutely fucking joyous and now I want to read all of Vonnegut's novels again.

Think we could do with a Vonnegut thread in Shelf Abuse as well.

I agree.

How to start? I've read and largely loved all of 'em. As, I imagine, have most of you. There's probably some posthumous stuff I haven't read.*

(*Bagombo Snuff Box is probably enough for me when it comes to early magazine gig work though if anyone wants to recommend any particular item from those late collections I'd be interested to hear about it.)

First one I ever read was Cat's Cradle when I was about 18. Was blown away by it and went to Slaughterhouse 5 next. The documentary showed how hard he worked on S5 -- rewriting a crazy number of drafts all from scratch on his typewriter, the originals of which can be found in the archive** -- and it became easy to see why it's his best-received (maybe just his best?)

(** can't remember where the archive pictured in the documentary might be. Indiana University has a lot of stuff, which obviously makes sense: https://archives.iu.edu/catalog/InU-Li-VAA1301)

The worst one to my mind is Slapstick but there's still something to it. A fan should rewrite it.

One of the most treasured items in my bookcase is a Dell first edition of Sirens of Titan. The cover is very funny, pulp sci-fi style that doesn't do even the first lines of the book justice let alone the overall tone and scale of ambition. I love the edition in large part for this.



I've never read this edition of Sirens. The version I read twice was one of those SF Masterworks books. I read it in Rome and struggled not to work the architecture around me into the book even though that made little sense, so I have a very personalised experience of that novel somehow.

Anyway, someone else take over. Tell us about your Vonnegut reading experiences, which books you've got, what you love (mustache?) and hate (mustache?) about him, what his work means to you, etc.

Or, y'know, don't.

We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodely do,
What we must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must;
Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do,muddily do,
Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust.

[Kankurette]

My dad was a Vonnegut fan so most of my books are inherited from him, except Breakfast of Champions. I've got Deadeye Dick, Cat's Cradle, Galapagos, Slapstick, G-d Bless You Mr Rosewater, Mother Night and Slaughterhouse-5. Deadeye Dick was the first one I read, but I'm not sure if I have a favourite - Galapagos, Slapstick and Cat's Cradle are all up there. I love the idea of the artificial families in Slapstick (Bokonon would probably call them granfalloons). I can't explain exactly what I love about him - the writing style, the humour, the worldbuilding in some of the books (like the entire Bokononist religion), the incredibly dysfunctional families with their clarinets and incest and Nazism. There's definitely a humanitarian streak there - I got the impression Deadeye Dick is meant to be an anti-gun novel. Slaughterhouse-5 was obviously based on his time in Dresden but Deadeye Dick's asexual hero is supposed to be a metaphor for his declining sexuality and the unused arts centre represents writer's block or something.

And yes, TV Tropes, I'm sure evolution doesn't work how it does in Galapagos but WHO CARES. I love the idea of a world of seal people.

[Mister Six]

Somehow I'd missed out on Vonnegut in my teens, despite him being completely up my street, and even failed to read him at university where I did an English Lit degree with a module in science fiction. What a cunt.

BUT! At a book swap in Beijing about 10 years later, I happened across a copy of Breakfast of Champions, thought "All right, then" and picked it up. I vaguely recalled reading a negative review of the film, but that was all I knew. And I hoovered the whole thing up in a day. Tremendously readable, bubbling with both warmth and cynicism, a frustration at the state of the human condition that comes from knowing we could be more, if only we believed that too. And it's funny.

Then, because - as I mentioned - I'm a cunt, I didn't read anything else by him until last year, when I picked up a copy of Timequake second hand. If he hadn't said himself in the book that it was a reworking of an earlier version of a novel "that didn't want to exist", I would've thought he'd just dashed it all off in one long, flowing moment of brilliant inspiration. The melding of reality, fiction, self-reflexive commentary - it all feels so easy, so natural, never ponderous or self-important. Genius.

This year I read Slaughterhouse-5, about which nothing more needs to be said. And now I have a copy of Cat's Cradle waiting for me when I feel like I'm in the mood. Ideally when I have a whole weekend free, with no impending reasons to get up from the sofa.

A wonderful author.

[Oh, Nobody]

In college a 'mature student' asked me who my favourite author was and when I said Vonnegut "you'll grow out of that"

I DID NOT.

Love pretty much everything to varying degrees but I always loved that Galapagos is his longest by a mile and it's entirely in service to a dumb joke at the end.

Also love his short stories about the pompous music teacher, always imagined him as a Jason Alexander character.

[Mister Six]

In college a 'mature student' asked me who my favourite author was and when I said Vonnegut "you'll grow out of that"

This person sounds like a quite incredible cunt.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I loved Vonnegut as a teenager, assumed that I grew out of him but when I went back in my twenties he was just as funny and humane as he seemed when I was dumb enough to go hunting for the cleverest seeming books I could find and his were the perfect honeypot to catch me. Maybe I even liked him more because I got the overarching gag that the affectations weren't affectations, it was really all written in his voice.

I think he's got the similar "you'll grow out of it" reputation as Bill Hicks but he doesn't deserve it in the least. What I am supposed grow up into reading god knows what elevated genre fiction or David Foster Wallace or something. No I like the jokes and humanity.

[Mister Six]

Based on the fanbase, DFW seems much more like pretentious twentysomething fodder than Vonnegut, but I'll admit I've never actually read any of his books.

EDIT: Just read this on the Infinite Jest Wikipedia page...

These narratives are connected via a film, Infinite Jest, also called "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat". The film is so entertaining that its viewers lose all interest in anything other than repeatedly viewing it, and thus eventually die. It was James Incandenza's final work. He completed it during a period of sobriety that was insisted upon by its lead actress, Joelle van Dyne. The Québécois separatists seek a replicable master copy of the work to aid in acts of terrorism against the United States.

Isn't that basically just the Monty Python sketch about the British trying to weaponise the "my dog has no nose" joke?

[markburgle]

Any work that contains much in the way of symbolism/subtext goes over my head and leaves me feeling stupid, so I confess myself baffled by Slaughterhouse 5. I didn't not enjoy it but the Tralfamadore stuff baffled me, I thought maybe it was meant to be about traumatic disassociation but viewed through that lens I still felt like I was missing something.

Loved Cats Cradle though

[Mobbd]

Based on the fanbase, DFW seems much more like pretentious twentysomething fodder than Vonnegut, but I'll admit I've never actually read any of his books.

I've never read DFW in part because of the people I know who like him; they're all so intense and weird. It's probably unfair to the writer but I've not been drawn to him solely because of that. Maybe I'll try Consider the Lobster one day but I really can't be arsed with Infinite Jest.

I don't get the Vonnegut-style humanity or humour from DFW at all. DFW seems like a try-hard who sees his own writing as really, really important. Vonneguts seems more like a wise and funny uncle telling stories for fun as he chainsmokes.

On the subject of the patronising people saying "you'll grow out of [Vonnegut]" there's a bit in the documentary where they talk about his first less-good book after the success of Slaughterhouse 5. Someone points out that the critics rejoiced in the panning of it, that they were saying "See? See? We knew he wasn't literature." But then they had to shut their fucking faces when Timequake came out.

[Kankurette]

I first read Vonnegut when I was in my teens and I'm now in my late thirties so now, I haven't grown out of him. I didn't even think you were supposed to grow out of him.

[Rizla]

The idea that you would/should grow out of KV is ludicrous. But he is a writer you can get into at a young age - I even remember reading Harrison Bergeron to my eldest when she was about 7 and her loving it. All those short stories are brilliant, it's surprising more of them haven't been adapted for TV. Mind you, Welcome To The Monkey house does feature the use of rape as a cult deprogramming tool. Maybe don't read that one to the kids.

[Mobbd]

I first read Vonnegut when I was in my teens and I'm now in my late thirties so now, I haven't grown out of him. I didn't even think you were supposed to grow out of him.

I think it's because they teach him in a lot of American schools. So everyone knows about him and he's relatively easy to read; we're supposed to find more obscure or serious or hard-to-read stuff in later life apparently. It's all self-defensive or snobbish bullshit but I think that's what people mean.

[Inspector Norse]

He also had some sci-fi elements, don't forget, which is always bound to get the mahogany literary elites wrinkling their noses.

I've never read DFW in part because of the people I know who like him; they're all so intense and weird. It's probably unfair to the writer but I've not been drawn to him solely because of that. Maybe I'll try Consider the Lobster one day but I really can't be arsed with Infinite Jest.

I don't get the Vonnegut-style humanity or humour from DFW at all. DFW seems like a try-hard who sees his own writing as really, really important. Vonneguts seems more like a wise and funny uncle telling stories for fun as he chainsmokes.

DFW was definitely very pleased with his own smarts but large parts of his work justify that. There's a raw feeling of loneliness and emptiness at the heart of much of his writing, an expression of frustration at the inability to find anything to cling onto in a society built so much around ephemera and useless shite. Infinite Jest has the "difficult" reputation but that's mainly just because it's long and detailed (and flawed, some parts are tedious), his actual prose tends to be very readable.

[sweeper]

I really like Slapstick. I find the idea of a state-mandated family as a response to his own personal tragedies incredibly moving. It's one of the few times when I feel like Vonnegut is talking primarily about himself, as opposed to the world around him.

[Kankurette]

And it also contains one of my favourite lines: "Why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the moooooon?"

[Ray Travez]

Currently reading Palm Sunday, it's my bath book^[1]. Wish I could see the film, but it's not playing anywhere near me.


_________________________________________________
^[1]_{A set of rules governs this- it has to be a book that is in poor-enough condition that I won't wish to resell it afterwards, must be possible to dip into, not too heavy (weight), not too heavy (content) and a writer I trust to be entertaining. Last bath book was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas}

[Mobbd]

Currently reading Palm Sunday, it's my bath book^[1]. Wish I could see the film, but it's not playing anywhere near me.

Ah yes. Nice choice for the tub, that one. I remember really loving that book but I sadlystruggle now to remember anything specific about it. I will have to revisit it.

In the meantime, I have made do with looking up some quotes from it. Here are some goodies:

That's what is was to be young — to be enthusiastic rather than envious about the good work other people could do.

The Dresden atrocity, tremendously expensive and meticulously planned, was so meaningless, finally, that only one person on the entire planet got any benefit from it. I am that person. I wrote this book, which earned a lot of money for me and made my reputation, such as it is. One way or another, I got two or three dollars for every person killed. Some business I'm in.

Comedians and jazz musicians have been more comforting and enlightening to me than preachers or politicians or philosophers or poets or painters or novelists of my time. Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.

[wrec]

I've really tried with Vonnegut but I struggle with him. Years ago I read Breakfast of Champions and Timequake, and more recently Slaughterhouse Five, The Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, and Galápagos. I think Slaughterhouse Five is a masterpiece and a noble reaction to an unthinkable war crime, but I didn't get much out of the others. It feels like he hates his characters, which are two-dimensional anyway, and the cynical "love humanity but hate people" vibe doesn't do it for me. I don't get the purported "warmth" of his work at all. I've read a lot of old SF in recent years and I find Vonnegut really lacking as a practitioner of the genre - his settings are threadbare, lacking in detail and unconvincing, though maybe his books are better thought of as whimsical moral fables than SF novels. I've persisted with a lot of his books because I feel like there's something there I should be getting but have come away from them disappointed more often than not.

His recurring character Kilgore Trout is famously a tribute to Theodore Sturgeon, who I think is light years ahead of Vonnegut as a writer, but most of his work seems to be out of print. So it goes.

[Mister Six]

Trout is also a stand-in for Vonnegut on more than one occasion, isn't he?

[wrec]

Yeah probably just the name that's a tribute rather than being a representation of Sturgeon's character or anything.

[Mobbd]

I've really tried with Vonnegut but I struggle with him. Years ago I read Breakfast of Champions and Timequake, and more recently Slaughterhouse Five, The Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, and Galápagos. I think Slaughterhouse Five is a masterpiece and a noble reaction to an unthinkable war crime, but I didn't get much out of the others. It feels like he hates his characters, which are two-dimensional anyway, and the cynical "love humanity but hate people" vibe doesn't do it for me. I don't get the purported "warmth" of his work at all. I've read a lot of old SF in recent years and I find Vonnegut really lacking as a practitioner of the genre - his settings are threadbare, lacking in detail and unconvincing, though maybe his books are better thought of as whimsical moral fables than SF novels. I've persisted with a lot of his books because I feel like there's something there I should be getting but have come away from them disappointed more often than not.

His recurring character Kilgore Trout is famously a tribute to Theodore Sturgeon, who I think is light years ahead of Vonnegut as a writer, but most of his work seems to be out of print. So it goes.

It sounds like you really have tried your best. If he's not for you, then he's not for you.

(As you said above though, I really think it's just the Trout's name that refers to Sturgeon. Trout is sort-of Vonnegut in a fiction suit and, I sometimes think, a version of himself where he pursued Science Fiction more earnestly rather than as an occasional device. He wonders, I think, whether he'd be better known and/or destitute. The character of Trout is a little different whenever we see him too so it's not like there's only one Trout. He dies twice, in two different ways!)

[Virgo76]

I love his books, especially Slaughterhouse 5.
Are any of his books considered bad though?
I seem to remember finding Timequake unreadable.

[Mobbd]

I love his books, especially Slaughterhouse 5.
Are any of his books considered bad though?
I seem to remember finding Timequake unreadable.

According to that documentary Timequake was considered a return to form. Slapstick was, I think, the one considered a slip and Vonnegut himself didn't rate it highly. People here seem to like it though so I'm looking forward to reading it again to see.

[touchingcloth]

I've not read Slaughterhouse Five yet, as I've never been able to find the first four. So it goes.

[Sebastian Cobb]

He also had some sci-fi elements, don't forget, which is always bound to get the mahogany literary elites wrinkling their noses.

I'm sure in one of the books there's a meta thing involving Kilgore Trout where there's something along the lines of "you scifi writers are the only ones doing anything remotely interesting, sure you can't write worth a damn, but when it comes to ideas...".

As much as I love Billy Bragg, I feel like Handy Man is basically "no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works." in song form.

[Mr Vegetables]

I'm not sure I want to meet the sort of person who thinks you can grow out of a first-hand description of the Dresden bombings.

I guess I think that Vonnegut's stuff is often very grounded in its way, even when it's unstuck in time or trapped in an alien zoo. It's not doing these things to be random or whimsical, but to say that human civilisation is stretched over this darker world. And it has the sadness and the beauty in that, but sort of inherently without feeling like it has to wank on and on. I guess it's not what maturity is supposed to look like, but I would say it is definitely mature.

[Mobbd]

I'm not sure I want to meet the sort of person who thinks you can grow out of a first-hand description of the Dresden bombings

Damn, that's spot on. I'll use that riposte forever now.

[QDRPHNC]

I think one of the reasons that bad idiots look down on him, is that his writing style is very unaffected. For me though, that's one of the things that most delighted me about Breakfast of Champions (the first of his I ever read), that it could be comfortably read and understood by a ten year old, yet Vonnegut managed to wring such depth and emotional complexity out of such straightforward prose.

[Famous Mortimer]

He also had some sci-fi elements, don't forget, which is always bound to get the mahogany literary elites wrinkling their noses.

DFW was definitely very pleased with his own smarts but large parts of his work justify that. There's a raw feeling of loneliness and emptiness at the heart of much of his writing, an expression of frustration at the inability to find anything to cling onto in a society built so much around ephemera and useless shite. Infinite Jest has the "difficult" reputation but that's mainly just because it's long and detailed (and flawed, some parts are tedious), his actual prose tends to be very readable.

Not to drag it too far, but agreed - DFW's work is very readable, and I've really enjoyed everything I've read.

Back on topic, I remember doing "Sirens Of Titan" as an extra-credit book report thing for either my GCSEs or A Levels. This is the cover I was exposed to, and I love it.

[Attila]

Vonnegut is my favourite author; I first read Slaughter-House Five when I was about 14 or 15, and have revisited it every couple of years in the 40 years since. I'm not big into graphic novels, but I found the graphic novel version of the book gorgeous.

I am from Delaware and went to the University -- where all of Vonnegut's writings, drafts, and so on were donated and archived. I was a work-study student at the library at about that same time, so it was fantastic to be able to wallow in all of it as they were sorting and cateloging it.