Vonnegut dies

[Colt McCoy]

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I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.

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R.I.P.

[KilgoreTrout]

I'll take a stab at Sirens and Champs.

Sirens is a terrific religious satire, with a heavy doses of commercialism, and relativism tossed in. In it we see the first Tralfamadorian, Salo. Tralfamadore reappears in S-5. The satire is richest regarding the manipulative power religion holds over the masses, and in individuals' inability to escape it. Malachi Constant is a modern-day Adam, and indeed he spends much of the novel naked and innocent, stripped of his worldly (read: capitalist) knowledge. Vonnegut weaves layers of satire and irony throughout. Sirens is a playful exposition of the placating hegemony that is organized religion.

Breakfast of Champions is my favorite essentially for the narrative style. We have a naive narrator describing mundane things and events in a manner that makes you think he's writing to some alien race.... could it be the Tralfamadorians? Mixing illustrations with narrative is a fun device (if you've read my entry in the writing competition you know where I got the idea now). Plus, Kilgore Trout's odyssey in Champs is simply hilarious.

[yukoncpa]

Hey, thank you KilgoreTrout
This is exactly what I was looking for. It’s been 15 years since I read a book of his, but I am now looking forward to reading more.
You people have sold me on Vonnegut. God bless his soul ( or whatever, he, himself believed in). I for one will read more of his works.

[Colt McCoy]

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God bless his soul ( or whatever, he, himself believed in).

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Anyone who cannot understand how a useful religion can be based on lies will not understand this book (Cat's Cradle) either.

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[WhoIam]

I remember reading an interview with him years ago and the interviewer asked him, "Kurt, are have you really retired from writing?" His response was "I don't know, I didn't plan on living this long." Hopefully that's the attitude I can maintain when I get old. Godspeed.

[pryor15]

And so on.

[thatpfunk]

im sad for selfish reasons, glad that he may finally be at peace.

a sad day to lose one of the best.

[Blarg]

A eulogy article:

Article on V and his death

[Blarg]

I wish more people who esteem this writer would read one of his great inspirations, a man called the greatest prose stylist in France. Vonnegut wrote forwards for the Engilsh editions of some books of Louis-Fernand Celine. Celine came to huge prominence in the early 30's with the magnificent Journey to the End of the Night, an absolute must-read in world literature.
Journey to the End of the Night, at Amazon

Future books included Death on the Installment Plan and a series of novels about Europe after WW2.

Celine, horrifically bitter, horrifically honest, eventually made the horrific mistake of supporting the Nazis, and with that virtually vanished from the world stage overnight. But Vonnegut knew the stunning power of the man, and that his later mistakes did nothing to wipe out his previous brilliance. "So it goes," his famous refrain, was taken directly from the spirit of Journey to the End of the Night's blasted, prodigiously cleverly and artfully styled incorporation of endless terrible, fearless, wrenching, yet often screamingly funny truths into the hapless picaresque fugue of his protagonist's stark encounters. Seen with an absolutely ruthless eye, Celine's characters and situations undoubtedly were a lifelong wellspring of Vonnegut's own fiction and outlook on the world.

If you love the son and value his judgment, you owe the father a look. It's worth it.

[Zeno]

Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (1894-1961) known as Céline by the world is a confusing character, at least for most. Céline was wounded at Ypres in 1914 and was decorated for valor and finished medical school after the war. He was a serious misanthrope, instead of a laughing one like myself. He was also a vicious anti-Semite though the reasons for this are probably complex and there is no way to truly classify the man. “I adhere only to myself, as much as I can”, was Céline’s only explanation. After some of his polemics were published (these have never been translated into English and were banned in Nazi Germany) he stated, “Left and Right, Monarchist and Communist, all agreed that I was the greatest scum on earth”. Perhaps that was the mark he was shooting for all along.

The above information is culled from Florence King’s informative book: With Charity Toward None A Fond Look at Misanthropy. A book I recommend, along with Kurt Vonnnegut's The Sirens of Titan which is much more than just a satire on organized religion.

Le Misanthrope