"Whoever *did* write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut!"
Posted on 06/20/2023 6:15:11 AM PDT by wastoute
Vonnegut at home. From “America This Week,” the free transcript of this week’s story discussion. This week, “Harrison Bergeron” by the great Kurt Vonnegut:
Matt Taibbi: This week’s story is Harrison Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut, which has a lot of predictive power about a couple of things in modern society.
Vonnegut was always one of my favorites. I liked him as a kid, among other things, because he was easy to read. The paragraphs were small and separated. He drew pictures that were funny. He openly didn’t take literature seriously. He had a great sense of humor, and the message was, I always thought gentle, humanistic, encouraging, and optimistic, and the stories were great. But his short stories are not something that I ever really got into. So, this was interesting for me. What are your thoughts about Kurt Vonnegut?
Walter Kirn: I mean, to reintroduce him to maybe younger listeners or to people who weren’t fans, Kurt Vonnegut is an American novelist whose major works were produced in the sixties and seventies and the eighties to some extent, who was a World War II veteran, whose formative experience in life was being on the ground at the firebombing of Dresden in World War II. And so he experienced war at a level of horrific industrial incineration that was unique. And he came back to the United States. He’s originally from Indiana. He was from a commercial family in Indianapolis. They had a department or maybe a hardware store chain.
He went to work in upstate New York, maybe for General Electric or some big post-war company. And in this way he was like Joseph Heller. Heller and Vonnegut lived in some ways parallel lives.
(Excerpt) Read more at racket.news ...
early 20th century: modern Latin, from Greek skhizein ‘to split’ + phrēn ‘mind’.
Kurt! You’re fired!
“Hi! I’m Kurt Vonnegut. I’m looking for Thornton Mellon.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8ajIeIeJpY
“Slaughterhouse Five” is the only novel of his I have read.
Partially Sci-Fi, partially historical, was an good read for a weekend................
“Hey Kurt, can you read lips?”
That’s your opinion and you are entitled to it.
Grew up in the sixties.
Read most of Vonnegut.
Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five were both widely read as “anti-war” books.
Slaughterhouse Five worked for me more than Catch-22 as a book.
However, Mike Nichol’s film of Catch-22 was a bit more watchable than the Slaughterhouse Five movie.
Add MASH to the mix and one could take a trip back to early seventies.
Frankly, if I were to reread or re-watch any of the above, it would be to reread Vonnegut.
“Between Time and Timbuktu” was a made-for-TV mashup of Vonnegut stories. One of the best bits was the “Harrison Bergeron” scene.
I read a lot of Vonnegut as a teenager, in the early 70s, even though I really didn’t like him and thought his grasp of science to be tenuous.
I realized that his fiction was allegorical, but I thought it was overwrought and too heavy with cynicism. He was just one of numerous authors, filmmakers, composers of the day hawking the anti war, America sucks, life-is-a-sick-joke party line. He had his own take on it, a distinct voice that was unlike anyone else, but what he did with that voice duplicated what countless other voices of that time were saying.
I saw him as a little like the content of Zap comics, without the pictures. Then, in Breakfast of Champions, he started including pictures. A bit more highbrow, but a similar message.
A fine voice, a voice that “projected,” as my high school voice teacher would say, that he used to just project the party line.
Though Slaughter House Five was good, there are better ones. Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan and Slapstick is my favorite. “HiHo!”
I haven’t read all of Vonnegut, but did read quite a bit in the sixties and seventies. I think Player Piano is my favorite of his novels.
You are stating my thoughts. Third rate science, politically popular ideas that would not otherwise make the grade.
Hard to call Vonnegut "science fiction". More like leftist fantasy with a little bit of hardcore anti-war realism thrown in.
The Foster portfolio
My wife and I enjoy reading together, she aloud and I listen (while driving, especially) several hours every day (as opposed to watching TV). We just now agreed to re-read it all, in order. I can’t wait.
Curious. In 1976 I took a lit. Course because one was required at the Uni at Boulder. My wife recommended a summer course in Mark Twain. In 6 weeks I read everything he ever published. It was clear too me (and others have recognized) that Kurt was our day’s Samuel Clemons. Since I was a PreMed I made and A. I still have my final exam. Blue Book all written answer, some 10-20 pages (IIRC, which I probably don’t).
I find it odd a guy with a screen name “Mark Twain” which you have clearly had for some time as you clearly are “the first” would not see any similarities between the two men. You might want to ponder that as you are a unique fellow.
…sometimes “uniqueness” can be monetized. Seems to me you have an opportunity here. Explain to the world why Kurt and Sam are nothing alike. Make $.
…of course, it occurs to me you have already monetized your perspective.
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