Kurt Vonnegut Museum Opens in Indianapolis | Hacker News Reader

Kurt Vonnegut Museum Opens in Indianapolis

economist.com

178 pointspseudolus55 comments

Meanwhile, the world outside of the Vonnegut Museum is performing an homage to him by attempting to recreate Harrison Bergeron.

I became a Vonnegut fan at age 12 when I tried to check out Breakfast of Champions from the local library, and they sent me home with a permission slip for my mom to sign instead. So of course I had to read all of his books. Then had to reread them a few years later to understand them.

"A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved." -- Vonnegut

> Meanwhile, the world outside of the Vonnegut Museum is performing an homage to him by attempting to recreate Harrison Bergeron.

It does seem like that sometimes. I think generally things have been going in the right direction overall (mostly), but some people are never satisfied and use social media to loudly demand that everything in society to be structured in exactly the way that pleases them, and not make any attempts to adapt themselves to society.

But if that never happened, and everyone was quiet, we wouldn't have the positive overall changes our world enjoys, it's just sad to see some people that look like they don't want to even try to enjoy the life they're given.

So, exactly what parallels do you see between the world today and Harrison Bergeron? This story is constantly misinterpreted by libertarian types. Vonnegut himself has disputed such readings. [0]

[0]: https://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/may/05/vonnegut_lawyers_c...

It reminds me of how many memes right now are going around trying to get people to recall the difference between "equity" and "equality". That story is a fascinatingly absurd version of those sorts of memes, and the reasons it can be so easily misinterpreted coincide directly with why those memes seem to be circulating again in today's political climate.

> Meanwhile, the world outside of the Vonnegut Museum is performing an homage to him by attempting to recreate Harrison Bergeron.

Diana Moon Glampers demonstrated a competent executive branch of government.

Reality is not so kind.

(If you want to know who Diana Moon Glampers is ... Go read "Harrison Bergeron".)

> Meanwhile, the world outside of the Vonnegut Museum is performing an homage to him by attempting to recreate Harrison Bergeron.

Can you expand on this? Isn't a central part of that book radical equalisation, where today's world is full of people and institutions driving inequality to greater heights.

In the story talented people are forced to handicap themselves. What is the parallel of that to the real world?

Beyond that: to me, the thing that distinguishes Harrison Bergeron in the field of dystopian literature is how relentlessly farcical it is. The "handicaps" are self-defeating because they blatantly advertise the advantages that they're meant to neutralize. The allegedly super-intelligent rebel protagonist acts like an impulsive idiot. His ultimate showdown isn't against a legion of high-tech enforcers, but against a shotgun-wielding bureaucrat.

In short, it goes beyond merely being unbelievable; it gleefully throws the whole notion of believability into a dumpster and sets it on fire because the fire is pretty.

https://www.research.ibm.com/5-in-5/ai-and-bias/

I read his books as a youth and enjoyed the stories. I re-read his books as a 60 yr old because they were very popular in the book bins scattered around the VA hospital I was at. This time I enjoyed the man and author. Some trivia: I always thought Tom Waits was clever to come up with the line "In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is King" but that came from Vonnegut in "Player "Piano. I especially appreciated "Breakfast of Champions" because he inserted himself into the book as a character and stated that writing the book prevented him from killing himself like his mother. It helped me not kill myself as well.

> I always thought Tom Waits was clever to come up with the line "In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is King" but that came from Vonnegut in "Player "Piano.

This is a Gaelic proverb at least a couple hundred years older than either of these people.

Apparently Erasmus coined it, around 1500. But there's earlier inspiration. But it's not from the Bible, as I initially thought it would be.

Cool! Thanks.

It's "a bit" older than that. I've heard it as a proverb in my native (non-english) tongue so I thought it probably came from the Bible, but TIL: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/in_the_land_of_the_blind,_the...

Vonegut came to speak at UMass in the 90s. It was kinda surreal, as I wasn't sure about half of what he was talking about. Interesting though.

I do enjoy reading his books, even as not much of a fiction reader.

His essays in "a Man without a country". particularly the "shape of stories", where he visualizes plots on a graph.

https://visage.co/kurt-vonnegut-shows-us-shapes-stories/

If you enjoyed the shape of stories you might want to check out "Tempo: timing, tactics and strategy in narrative-driven decision-making". A good chunk of it is on graphing narratives.

Great book. Last time I checked that guy (Venk Rao) had gone off the political deep end on his blog, but the early stuff is very good.

The Gervais Principle is another saga of his worth reading in its entirety (much better than just finding a summary of it somewhere).

I stopped reading his blog as it got longer and longer and I got less and less signal out of it. Haven't checked in years.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is cast out of society because everyone thinks he's crazy.

This technically isn't a new museum. Its been around since 2011. It's just been closed for most of the year as they have been moving to a new location.

It was the place that had some of his paintings on the wall, yeah?

Small, quaint place. Definitely worth stopping by.

Fun fact: Kurt Vonnegut once invented a board game [1]. Called General Headquarters, it was apparently aimed at children. The game was never published and, to my knowledge, the rules of the game have never been made public.

[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kurt-vonnegut-board-game_n_21...

The article you linked mentions that the rules can be found at the library here, box 21 folder 9: http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/index.php?p=vonne...

And someone on BoardGameGeek[1] says:

> A few years ago, after hearing about Mr. Vonnegut's GHQ game, I attempted to get access to the appropriate boxes at the Indiana Library. Failing that, I tried to persuade a fellow wargamer who lived closer to Bloomington than I did to go and have a peek for me. And failing that, I applied to the library for photocopies of the essential documents.

> This was all in aid of an article for Simulacrum.

> The library advised me that they could not photocopy any information from Mr. Vonnegut's files without the approval of his lawyer-cum-copyright holder/protector. So I contacted the lawyer, who wasn't aware that the files contained a game designed by Mr. Vonnegut. Then I never heard from him again.

> So I abandoned the effort to get, if nothing else, a copy of the rules. Perhaps someone here who is near the library could stop by and check it out.

> John Kula

And later:

> John Kula's enquiry got as far as the librarian at the Lilly Library at IU. She pulled the folder and said that it contained about "100 pages of different documents about the game, including multiple drafts of the game instructions, letters and notes about the game, etc.". So it appears that Vonnegut did do a bit of thinking and testing of the game, for sure.

Someone also mentions that an "interpretation" of the rules is available at generalheadquartersgame.com, but that URL is gone and even archive.org doesn't seem to have a single copy of it. It's also unclear what exactly that "interpretation" was based off anyway.

[1] https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/883385/kurt-vonneguts-board...

Cat's Cradle is tied for the funniest book I've ever read--it's absolutely hilarious from start to finish, while also remaining poignant to this day. The other book is A Confederacy of Dunces, which, like Cat's Cradle, causes me to smile fondly when I remember scenes and quotes from it.

I reread Cat's Cradle every couple of years. You can read the entire book in a 3-4 hour sitting. It is funny and sad, it loves humans and hates them. It is one of my favorite books of all time.

Player Piano is a fantastic book and very topical in today's world awash in UBI, fears of automation, etc. Player piano is the GE's factory will take all jobs version of today's AI FUD.

AI has the potential for significant impact on civilization, but to embrace it as being only positive is naive at best.

I saw him when he came to give a talk at Edinburgh University in the early 1970s - very witty. And I've loved all of his books, particularly Mother Night and Cats Cradle.

I fell in love with Vonnegut when I was in college.

A friend recommended Catcher in the Rye, but it didn't appeal to me, so he suggested Cat's Cradle.

After that I went on a binge.

I know Slaughterhouse-5 gets all the accolades, but for me Breakfast of Champions is my all time favorite novel.

https://outline.com/ps2vTZ

https://web.archive.org/web/20191121134126/https://www.econo...

Fantastic! Bluebeard is the book that inspired me to make the switch from poetry to novels. Vonnegut holds a special place in my heart.

Blue Beard fans, unite! Of his less-famous ones Deadeye Dick also stands out for me.

I'll read that next. Thanks for the tip!

On the flip side, I just couldn't get through Hocus Pocus. Bluebeard and Sirens of Titan are my two favorites though.

I've read all of them but Player Piano (started it twice, just got distracted both times, it wasn't bad) and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Of the rest, Hocus Pocus and Jailbird are the two that stuck the least.

Timequake was OK as a for-the-fans kind of thing I guess, but not great. Bluebeard is already a kind of summing-up of Vonnegut's major themes and is quite a bit better, so Timequake's just... fine. Slapstick is more memorable than Jailbird and Hocus Pocus but only for how incredibly bad it is.

I like or love all the other (counts) eight novels.

Timequake is one of the few I haven't read more than once, but also one of the ones I would most like to revisit, now that I think on it. I had the feeling that it would "settle". I remember feeling that it was disappointing when it was the newest and latest after years-ish of waiting. Now that there are no others and the context is reduced/simpler, and the expectations appropriately tempered, I've got this weird feeling that I'd like it a lot more in rereading it now, and this sense that there was at least one theme I missed that first time.

(Doesn't help that I'm also in that team of people with a strange disjoint out-of-time relationship to Vonnegut's novels having read Breakfast of Champions to early to understand most of it, and wandered the rest of the catalog randomly via my parents library and then the actual library as I grew older. Timequake was the only one released in a time where I was able to anticipate it, and given opportunity to hype it so much in my own head.)

Welcome to the monkey house takes the cake for me.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is actually my favorite. Hope you get to it! Some of his later books, as you note, just got so preachy and overwrought, I couldn't get through them.

Yes he became a bitter old grouch, negative about everything.

Fun fact, there is also a Vonnegut-themed restaurant in Indy named after Bluebeard.

And the food there is fantastic.

Always loved his cameo in Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield, Burt Young and a young Robert Downey jr.

I am glad that Vonnegut gets honoured, he changed the way of how i look at things.

I wonder if it closes before it opens, and then the hours change at random? Maybe you even leave before you arrive while spending 3 hours seeing the whole thing? It should be unstuck in time, at least.

Please tell me there's a train you can ride around the museum with a small keyhole to look out through to help you better understand human perspective in relation to multiple dimensions

I especially enjoyed his book Sirens of Titan.

Rented a tent a tent a tent

Vonnegut is my favorite author by far

So it goes.

That reference is more applicable when someone (or something) dies.

For those who don't know, maybe add author to the title?

I thought it was about Kurt Russel, the famous Snake Plissken.

It explicitly says "Kurt Vonnegut"

Even with that, I thought Kurt Vonnegut was the classic action movie actor. The name looks the part.

it must be hard being you.

Yes I don't know books.

But at least I know action movies.

But not surnames?

I know it's Kurt something with an impressive name that sounds as badass as the character name.

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