I think his writing really clicks with a particular type of person at a particular time in their life; if either is not quite right it seems reactions range from disinterest to hostility.
I discovered Sirens of Titan and Player Piano in high school and loved them immediately (unlike so much assigned reading) but I'm not sure I'd feel the same if I was to read them for the first time at this stage in my life. For instance, I still enjoy re-reading Hocus Pocus or Jailbird but not so much Slaughterhouse Five. I can't precisely say why, but so it goes...
I taught how to be sociable with ink on paper. I told
my students that when they were writing they should be
good dates on blind dates, should show strangers good
times. Alternatively, they should run really nice
whorehouses, come one, come all, although they were in
fact working in perfect solitude. I said I expected
them to do this with nothing but idiosyncratic
arrangements in horizontal lines of twenty-six phonetic
symbols, ten numbers, and maybe eight punctuation
marks, because it wasn't anything that hadn't been done
before.
— Timequake by Kurt VonnegutSure the Bible might be the greatest story ever told, but the most popular story is about a couple who has a good time fornicating, but then stops for one reason or another while it is still a novelty.