MetaChat - My God. Kurt Vonnegut left us.

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12 April 2007

My God. Kurt Vonnegut left us.

post by: shane at: 05:44 | 28 comments

posted by shane 12 April | 05:44

Man.

posted by richat 12 April | 06:02

I think he was about as ready to go as anybody wants to be at 84. From what I'd read, he was sickened by the events of the last few years.

posted by PaxDigita 12 April | 06:12

Son of a bitch, that's tough to hear. But really, I think PaxDigita's right.

posted by cobra! 12 April | 06:56

Thank you for standing up Kurt.

posted by hadjiboy 12 April | 07:06

cobra! 'n' everybody, I was thinking of a particular story linked-to in an FPP. I found it; it's from a couple of years ago. Seen from this perspective, it's an elegy of sorts.

posted by PaxDigita 12 April | 07:17

Fuck crap.

posted by danostuporstar 12 April | 07:29

posted by tr33hggr 12 April | 07:37

I really appreciated his appearance in "Back to School" as himself.

posted by plinth 12 April | 07:55

So it goes.

.

posted by Elsa 12 April | 07:57

While you're fuck-crapping, reflect, too, that this was fairly well-lived life that's touched and influenced millions of others, culminating in an inevitable death at a pretty advanced age. We come very briefly to this place and move on; our lives are like the arcs of arrows in flight, with beginnings, middles, and ends. KV did well by us, and I cherish his works and his memory, even bitter as he was in the final years.

Like I wished in the blue: I hope and pray that he got a wonderful surprise last night. He deserved no less.

We were really lucky to have had him among us. I read Slaughterhouse-Five as child, only a few years after it came out, and it was a useful counterpoint to growing up as an immediate offspring of "Greatest Generation" parents who were themselves ambivalent and wistful at times about WW II.

posted by PaxDigita 12 April | 07:59

"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt"

Seems fitting now more so than ever. He will be missed.

posted by LunaticFringe 12 April | 08:02

vonnegut was one of my two or three favorite authors. i had always hoped i might get a chance to meet him.

there have only been a few celebrity deaths that really affected me. elliott smith was one, and -- though this is much more natural -- vonnegut's will be another.

posted by brina 12 April | 08:37

I really appreciated his appearance in "Back to School" as himself.

Yeah, I just about died laughing from that.

posted by cobra! 12 April | 08:42

I picked up his short story collection Welcome to the Monkey House last night, and heard the news this morning. His stories, strangely, have always given me hope; other people are reading these same stories and connecting viscerally with them, the way I do. Other people are thinking about the world around them, about action and reaction, about the ultimate, perhaps terrible, fate of humanity.

posted by muddgirl 12 April | 08:50

other people are reading these same stories and connecting viscerally with them, the way I do

An important thing to remember. He will be read and re-discovered for a long, long time. He did an incredible amount of good with his time on earth, and has left the world a more thoughtful, richer place.

.

posted by Miko 12 April | 09:01

I just found out this morning at work. In high school I loved "Cat's Cradle" and then later "Breakfast of Champions."

His short story about the poetry writing computer was inspired.

I felt it was specially appropriate that I'm currently reading a Vonnegut-esque book, "One Big Damn Puzzler" by John Harding.

posted by drezdn 12 April | 09:04

I loved Welcome to the Monkey House. It's one of my favourite books of all time. I think he is partially responsible for the way I see things today, which I don't think is "normal" when I compare myself to my friends. He also taught me that it's OK not to think like everybody else and that it is a beautiful thing to think of things in ways others don't.

posted by LunaticFringe 12 April | 09:14

Reading Vonnegut at the age of twelve led to my fascination with the philosophical impact of relativity and other breakthroughs in modern physics.

"I hope and pray that he got a wonderful surprise last night."

That God is actually Montana Wildhack?

posted by mischief 12 April | 09:31

I think my favorites were Cat's Cradle, too, and Monkey House. I also liked the Sirens of Titan for the question it poses: "Do you still think chance is the Hand of God?"

Perhaps a Bokononist epitaph:

On Life
We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodley do,
What we must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must;
Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, muddily do,
Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust.

posted by Miko 12 April | 09:50

I've been thinking a lot about favorites. I'd go with Mother Night (I think it might be the most profound book of the 20th century, and awfully relevant for the first part of the 21st; you can't turn on a TV without seeing people who'd do well to remember that they are what they pretend to be), Slaughterhouse-Five (doesn't need much more explanation, really), and Hocus Pocus. I know Hocus doesn't get as much love as his older work, but it's a really fun, accessible book, and I can't think of another book that does such a great job of being misanthropic and pessimistic without being a total fucking downer.

Big love for Galapagos, too. It totally blew my mind, and I'm still having an internal debate as to whether the book's right about big brains being an evolutionary dead end (raccoons don't have nuclear arsenals, after all).

posted by cobra! 12 April | 10:03

Kilgore Trout is still alive and well somewhere.

posted by shane 12 April | 10:06

Ah fuck. 2007 seems to be the year of loss.

posted by mygothlaundry 12 April | 10:19

Fucking hell.

posted by smich 12 April | 11:09

This comment pretty much sums up my feelings:

If there is actually a personal, Calvanistic-type big ol' beardy God, there's some consolation in knowing that He's getting the ass-chewing of an eternity this morning.

My feelings are so mixed. I'm sad, but . . . what a gift he was, and will continue to be. Ultimately, I can only be grateful that he was here and wrote what he wrote.

posted by treepour 12 April | 11:30

"And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, 'Kurt is up in Heaven now.' That’s my favorite joke."

posted by Specklet 12 April | 15:49

I haven't read him since high school, but I think it would be a good time to visit his works again.

posted by matildaben 12 April | 16:09

everything was beautiful and nothing hurt...

*

posted by Schyler523 12 April | 17:18

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