<p>[YouTube</a> - Miller Harris introducing Kurt Vonnegut in 2005](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlCw6bw9Zxo]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlCw6bw9Zxo)</p>
<p>KV is my hero</p>
<p>… hence my CC user name haha</p>
<p>I’m pleased to say that I was in attendance. So it goes.</p>
<p>By the way, I just watched the clip, and it unfortunately cuts off before the best part.</p>
<p>Vonnegut’s latest little bit of short writing was the following:</p>
<p>“George W. Bush is so stupid that he thinks Peter Pan is a wash basin at a whore house.”</p>
<p>It brought the house down.</p>
<p>haha you are one lucky guy to have been there</p>
<p>! I thought he passed away already…</p>
<p>He passed away in '07. This clip was from '05.</p>
<p>I happen to be reading Slaughterhouse Five right now and I’m sort of underwhelmed. xs0itg0esx or CayugaRed2005, what am I missing here?</p>
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<p>The fact that the man lived through the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden and that life is tragically absurd?</p>
<p>^I got that, but how do any of those things translate to Slaughterhouse Five’s literary merit? And I do like his comic treatment of something as grim as war (particularly enjoyed “So it goes.”) but what exactly is new about this guy?</p>
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<p>It was written forty years ago. So the only other person who came close to such a lucid perspective on life and war was Joseph Heller. But Heller wasn’t nearly as self-referential, sarcastic, or postmodern (e.g. weaving of truth and fiction) in his approach.</p>
<p>Some people dislike Vonnegut. It’s not like his prose is of Nabokovian quality. It’s a fun and easy read that deals with a lot of weighty issues.</p>
<p>I’ve never read Joseph Heller so I can’t respond to that, but perhaps my thoughts are tempered by the fact that I’m fresh off spreeing on Milan Kundera, who is a lot more profound that almost any writer I’ve ever read.</p>
<p>I don’t dislike Vonnegut or think that his book was bad, thought I can understand why some people would. I do however feel (at 100 pages into Slaughterhouse Five) that he is overrated. Yes, he does examine weighty issues derived from the most significant episode in his life but doesn’t any other writer do that? Vonnegut’s credit then, is for cataloging something that happened to him, which he’s pretty straightforward about:</p>
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<p>He is largely credited to be one of the first to introduce the non-linear structure. The issues that he explains, is not just a narrative of events, but also a commentary based on what he has learned since then and presented in such a way as to make his point most clear, i.e, the structure of time and tralfamadore.</p>
<p>I love this.</p>
<p>Personally, I cannot get enough of his humor, narration, and candidness. I am not sure if you got to the part with the aliens, but Vonnegut gives a unique perspective of time and life: “here were are stuck in the amber of the moment. there is no why.”</p>
<p>My favorite book, however, is Cat’s Cradle. It includes the end of the world and a religon perposfully based on lies.</p>
<p>Some people love Vonnegut. Some people do not. Some people do not know what is so great about marijuana and are underwhelmed. Everyone has an opinion. So it goes.</p>
<p>I’m personally fond of Player Piano. It’s a bit rough around the edges, but I found it to be pretty prescient in terms of a lot of the issues we’re now dealing with in the 21st century.</p>
<p>I liked Slaughterhouse Five.</p>
<p>Regarding Vonnegut, IIRC he was a chemistry major at Cornell but spent all his time and energy on The Daily Sun and was basically flunking out, a fate which he enlisted to avoid.
He liked the Sun, obviously, but did not like Cornell. After the war he never came back there, rather he got a Master’s at U Chicago (without benefit of a prior BA, evidently you could do that then) on the GI bill. </p>
<p>He did not graduate from Cornell. If he took any English department courses at all there, the GPA issue casts doubt on how well he did in them.</p>
<p>Yet Cornell undoubtedly shaped his future path, as he put his reporting skills to good use while a POW during the bombing of Dresden. And the rest is history.</p>
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<p>I’m not certain that he didn’t like Cornell. He seemed to enjoy his time in a fraternity and obviously really got a lot out of his time at the Sun. I don’t think he liked his chemistry classes at Cornell.</p>
<p>Coincidentally, he dropped out of Chicago as well. He was only awarded a Masters there after Cat’s Cradle was published.</p>
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<p>My guess is that Vonnegut did not like the chemistry major that was forced upon him by his father (thinking that it was more practical than journalism/humanities). Otherwise his father was going to refuse to help with tuition. I don’t think that Vonnegut “didn’t like Cornell” per se … at least I couldn’t find corroboration of this claim in my quick perusal of a few online Vonnegut biographies.</p>
<p>Edit - I see that CayugaRed was on similar track above…</p>
<p>My wife’s cousin was photographer for the Daily Sun. He knew something about it from that, IIRC Vonnegut came to a Daily Sun reunion and spoke.
Or was spoken of, by others at the reunion. I don’t recall.</p>
<p>Either he told me that, or I read it.
But it’s pretty easy not to like a college if you’re flunking out.</p>