Kurt Vonnegut at 100 | Hacker News Reader

Kurt Vonnegut at 100

thecritic.co.uk

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I met Kurt Vonnegut in the next world, and he was hiding somewhere, not sure of what to make of the fact that he was in the next world, dead in this one. He was still Everyman, I noticed, and perhaps had something of his humor reawakened, because really, how could he take anything after death seriously? The last I saw of him he was chatting it up with Philip K. Dick, both believing that they were in one of the others' novels.

That's one of the most Vonnegut things I've ever read. Delightful.

> This is open to unfortunate misuse, when Vonnegut’s sweet-natured voice gets ripped out of the context of the fiction and rendered down into fridge-magnet poetry and social media banalities. (Run a Google search for images of his 1965 novel God Bless You, Mr Rosewater and you’ll first find pictures not of the cover or author, but of grotesquely bucolic wall prints bearing a line untimely ripp’d from the book: “God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”)

Not sure where the author sourced this contempt. The google image search yielded only pictures of the book, but even if it had given the magnets, so what? It's a lovely little anecdote from a great character considering a baptism speech. The full text goes:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

Words to live by.

An uncle of mine loaned me his abridged Vonnegut shelf, including Galapagos. Sirens of Titan also is good. Very strange. For people who do not read much but are desirous of learning more, I'm unsure of the best approach. Maybe Slaughterhouse-Five or Cat's Cradle? Vonnegut deals in Scenes. It is why we love him. Like Fitzgerald, he wrote of a Movie Age. And so I evaluate him based upon his individual scenes, not books. My favorite is from Breakfast of Champions. Kilgore Trout, who I believe was a trucker or maybe only a hitchhiker, walks onto the tarmac of a strip mall used car dealership. He has somehow warped thru various dimensionalities. He looks down at the ground. It reminded me of my father's description of walking the sidewalks of nyc after eating a brown paper bag of buttons: kicking a suddenly kaleidoscopic shard of glass. Or as Pynchon would say, you see "the warp and woof" of things.

Trout is a "notably unsuccessful author of paperback science fiction novels."

"The impetus to create Kilgore Trout as a character, Vonnegut suggested in a 1979 NYPR interview, was the convenience it offered to turn science-fiction plots into humorous parables. "Kilgore Trout was more or less invented by a friend of mine, Knox Burger, who was my editor in the early days. He did not suggest that I do this, but he said, 'You know, the problem with science-fiction? It’s much more fun to hear someone tell the story of the book than to read the story itself.' And it’s true: If you paraphrase a science-fiction story, it comes out as a very elegant joke, and it’s over in a minute or so. It’s a tedious business to read all the surrounding material. So I started summarizing [them], and I suppose I’ve now summarized 50 novels I will never have to write, and spared people the reading of them."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilgore_Trout

Of all the famous people whose lives I've overlapped, Vonnegut is the one I've wished I could've met in person.

He was formative. In our school's ostensible computer programming class in the 1980s, our great teacher not only taught us Pascal (UCSD p-System on the Apple IIe), but also computer history (e.g., Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace), and most memorably... reading and group discussion of Vonnegut's "Player Piano". This influence has caused me no end of trouble.

After reading Cat's Cradle, I saw him speak in 1991. He gave his Shape of Stories lecture. I left believing he was really Mark Twain reincarnated, but he really wasn't. Twain is a parody of Vonnegut.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FslqWztRS8M

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#World_War_II

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SiVasR2Gzo

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#Politics

Very few authors approach Kurt Vonnegut in hilarity, brevity, or creative brilliance. His writing is easy to love.

Also, easy to understand. When I learn a new language I usually start with Vonnegut's book to pick up the vocabulary and grammar - since his prose is so easy to read. And lovely, of course.

At first I was baffled, but then I came to absolutely love the literary utility of the phrase "… and so on" in a novel, which I've only seen in Vonnegut's writing.

Philip Pullman uses it too to great effect.

One of the greatest writers in history. An actual literary genius.

He (and maybe Mark Twain) have this ability to write sentences that burrow deep in your head and stay there forever.

A sample: "Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."

Maybe also add Douglas Adams to that list.

"The mere thought," growled Mr Prosser, "hadn't even begun to speculate," he continued, settling himself back, "about the merest possibility of crossing my mind."

Another Twainism: "A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle!"

Once upon a time, I was staying at a friend's house; her dad was something of an amateur military historian - two rooms full of wall-to-wall bookcases on military history, some SciFi, and all kinds of other stuff. Not much light reading.

Stoned and bored, I picked one off the shelf at random (Mother Night). I'm not sure how I missed Vonnegut's name on the cover, but I mistook it for one of his legitimate history books and read it cover-to-cover in one sitting. Woah, we definitely never learned about this in school!

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Player Piano by Vonnegut. It was one of his first novels and also one of his few science fiction novels. I still remember reading it in my teens. Great book and quite prescient.

I'd say Player Piano was one of the most formative books I read growing up. Probably had a lot to do with the fact that I was studying engineering in a great American city whose economy had almost completely transitioned away from heavy industry to financial services, everyone I knew was either going into engineering or business administration, and nobody ever seemed to stop and ask, is this good?

I can never decide if Cat's Cradle is the funniest book I've ever read, or Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. Some days, Dunces wins, but the majority of the time all it takes is remembering ice-nine and it's back to camp Kurt I go.

I just feel so sad reading Tooles because it reads like his autobiography, edited by his madness.

Cat's Cradle is one of my favorite books, but to be honest, I've never found it that funny - at least not in the sense that it makes me laugh much. What do you find so funny about it?

Everything about it is funny. Humans are absurd, and Cat’s Cradle revels in the absurdity. It’s funny in the same way atom bombs are funny, that our species would hate itself so much as to make a weapon that could destroy us all, and like, we ignore it almost all of the time? Bokonon and the dictator becoming their roles is absurd, but aren’t people this absurd?

Also, there are a lot of chapters. Every single chapter break is there to let a punchline sink in. It’s a literary pause for laughter.

Have you read Tim Dorsey at all?

His stuff is full of this type of humor, with notes of whatever decades of covering Florida Man stories for a Miami newspaper does to a man.

I’d never even heard of him. But as a meteorologist, that main character of his sure sounds fun.

That's interesting, I've always reveled in the absurdity, but perhaps I'll re-read it with an eye to take each chapter in as a discrete unit. Thanks!

Sometimes it’s a whole scene, but sometimes the only reason for a new chapter is comic timing. Or to shove more jokes in the chapter titles, of course. So I wouldn’t say they were discrete, as a break could come in the middle of a scene.

Seeing Vonnegut use chapter breaks for all sorts of purposes — dramatic, comic timing, scene breaks, suspense, etc — really encouraged me to use shorter chapters in some of my own writing, along with some of the techniques. Just like metadata is data, chapter breaks, line breaks, and white space are text. Of course the more you use it for tricks, the more you see the fourth wall, which might not match your tone — like all techniques there’s always a trade-off. More tonally serious works that use short chapters tend to avoid chapter titles, for instance.

Both are in my top five, but something about Vonnegut’s style gives him the edge in this comparison for me.

Any chance you’ve read any Paul Beatty? His book “The Sellout” shot to the top of my list of funniest books as well, in the same realm as the above when it comes to absurdist comedy.

A Confederacy of Dunces is the only book I’ve read cover to cover in one day. I just couldn’t put it down. I couldn’t see straight by the time I finished.

I’d say it’s funny in a more down to earth way than Cat’s Cradle. But I do enjoy Vonnegut’s sardonic sense of humor.

Have read both in college and enjoyed them thoroughly. I remember talking to my undergrad advisor, raving about Cat's Cradle, and asking him if he'd read it or wants to read it, and he looked at me and said something to the effect of "I don't need to read a book by a Preacher my own age" or something to that effect, and it really is quite a preachy book, as are all of his books. It makes a big impact on younger people, though. So it's in the bucket of books I remember enjoying, and wouldn't want to spoil that memory by rereading.

Confederacy of Dunces, on the other hand, is timeless.

Dunces outstays its welcome, though this could just be because of the format.

I found mother night awfully serious but really laughed a lot during Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse five.

Long time fan here. I just got done watching the documentary "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time" and thought it was pretty good. The project seemed to make Vonnegut happy anyway.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1461238/

So it goes...

Wow, this was a joy to read - thank you for sharing. I’m trying to make a concerted effort this year to read 20 books, which has led to me reading 4 Vonnegut pieces for the first time and am currently on my 5th. I was never assigned Vonnegut readings in school, but I have never felt more connected with an author while reading their work. Mother Night has been my favorite thus far, but I’m saving Slaughterhouse Five as the finale for my 20th book.

As stated in the article, there is something unique about how Vonnegut can capture vast ideas and distill them into his character’s expository. For example, here is my favorite quote from Cat’s Cradle:

> Do you know the story about father on the day they first tested a bomb out in Alamogordo? After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said ‘Science has now known sin.’ And do you know what Father said? He said ‘What is sin?’

I love Vonnegut and need to read more of him.

I have a funny little side project languishing right now - it's a collection of the 5 short stories he wrote about a character named George Helmholtz, who is a high school band teacher. The character reminds me of my dad, who might be the best man on the planet. He was a teacher and dealt with his students in much the same way as Helmholtz - with humor, love, and empathy.

Vonnegut had this rare ability to be funny without being mean and cynical (he was cynical at times, but not mean). His work is so essentially human.

I couldn't find a good link, but if you'd like to get a sense of Mr. Helmholtz, my favorite story is probably "A Song For Selma," which was collected in "Look at the Birdie". It is both hilarious and beautiful in a way that very few authors can pull off.

Recently got on a Vonnegut kick. In one of the books he calls Our Town by Thornton Wilder the best play ever written. So I went and read that. He's right. It's damned good.

It's always fun to remember that he played himself in the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield movie "Back to School". I always have to double check this when I think of it, partially because I confuse it with the time Ernest Borgnine played J.D. Salinger in an episode of "The Single Guy". It's almost like Vonnegut decided to do this only because people would some day think it sounded so obviously ridiculous and false.

Interesting piece: "The ‘Rebellious Scientist’ Who Inspired Kurt Vonnegut". [https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/the-rebellious-scient...]

by the author of *The Brothers Vonnegut*.

I had the fortune of seeing him speak maybe 30 years ago at my university. Couple things he said stuck with me. We are here on Earth to putter around. And the interesting writers at universities are not found in the literature departments.

A year ago I happened to be in Dresden, and I wanted to visit the Slaughter House number 5. It was just a warehouse for some kind of business. Shame on Dresden's town hall for not keeping it as a cultural spot in the city.

Fun fact: Kurt Vonnegut once invented a board game, as was revealed in one of his letters [1]. This was discussed on HN when it came to light [2]. TL;DR: The game was called General headquarters, ostensibly a war game, but very abstract, almost chess like. Vonnegut tinkered a lot with the concept and rules so there is no known definitive version of the game. Some board gamers made an effort to go through his papers to but were unsuccessful or have nothing to report [3]. The game was never published.

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

[2]. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21596537

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

Edit to provide this update: One Geoff Engelstein managed to get access to Vonnegut's papers and the game rules, but was unsuccessful in getting the game published [4]. Per Barnes & Noble who turned him down, “Not enough people know who Kurt Vonnegut is” .

[4]. https://www.getrevue.co/profile/gengelstein/issues/gametek-t...

The article starts "Kurt Vonnegut, who was born 100 years ago this month". Today is November 9 and according to Wikipedia Kurt Vonnegut was born on November 11, 1922.

so the article is correct?

Man, reading comprehension is a funny old bugger. You can be intelligent and literate and educated and genuinely whip-smart and Muphry's Law will still fuck you the second you look away.

> Muphry's Law

I'm going to assume that was an intentional misspelling to prove the point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law

Decent tyop there

Muphry's Law is a thing :-) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law

Incidentally Vonnegut shares his birthday with Dostoevsky who was born 201 years ago.

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