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Non-Film Discussion => Other Media => Topic started by: SoNowThen on June 06, 2003, 11:42:04 AM

Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: SoNowThen on June 06, 2003, 11:42:04 AM
Discovered him a few years back, been reading like mad ever since. Favs are Slaughterhouse 5 and Cat's Cradle. Also read Breakfast Of Champions, Jailbird, and God Bless You Mr Rosewater.

Any other fans here? Got any recommends for another book of his?
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: godardian on June 06, 2003, 11:45:14 AM
I'm embarrassed, as something of a bibliophile, never to have read one of his books.  :oops: I've always intended to, and I still do.
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: SoNowThen on June 06, 2003, 11:46:31 AM
Start with Cat's.
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: Dirk on June 06, 2003, 12:55:45 PM
I read a few of his books but never thought much of them. It was a few years ago and I was a youngin' so maybe I just didn't "get it".
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: Sleuth on June 06, 2003, 12:56:20 PM
Did he write that short story "Harrison Bergeron"
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: children with angels on June 06, 2003, 01:08:04 PM
I've only read Breakfast of Champions, and absolutley loved it. I really should read more - do any of his other books have the same level of author intervening, postmodern, self-confessional, self-criticising thing going on...? I'm such a sucker for that kind of thing. That's what I try to go for with my own writing. Actually I only read Breakfast of Champions because a friend of mine told me that it was really similar to something I had written. Only twenty odd years earlier.

Has anyone seen the movie? I thought it was interesting - absolutely nowhere near the brilliance of the book (what was with that ending?) but interesting nonetheless. It would make no sense whatsoever to someone who hadn't read the book though. It was cool to see a tiny cameo from Vonnegut himself...
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: SoNowThen on June 06, 2003, 01:15:21 PM
Quote from: children with angelsI've only read Breakfast of Champions, and absolutley loved it. I really should read more - do any of his other books have the same level of author intervening, postmodern, self-confessional, self-criticising thing going on...?

That's it. Yeah, they all do, as far as I know. You'll love Slaughterhouse 5, then.

Jailbird is quite a different chacter than the usual Vonnegut, but turned out to be a charming and wonderful story all the same.

Don't you just love in Breakfast, the whole "machine" bit? Talking machine, crying machine, etc. I am a complaining machine. Hehehe.
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: Pedro on June 06, 2003, 02:58:40 PM
I've only read Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five.  Both are terrific.
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: AlguienEstolamiPantalones on June 06, 2003, 05:10:53 PM
and he wrote rodney dangerfields term paper in back to school
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: RegularKarate on June 06, 2003, 06:13:59 PM
I love his shit... went through a phase where I would only read books by him.  I think Breakfast and Slaughterhouse are my favs.
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: Ghostboy on June 06, 2003, 08:53:41 PM
Yeah, I suddenly realized I've been meaning to read more of his stuff for years. I've read Slaughterhouse Five, which definitely made a big impression. I vaguely remember checking Cat's Cradle out of the library, but never actually reading it...I'll have to remedy that. Just as soon as I get through this latest stack from Half Price Books...
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: SHAFTR on June 06, 2003, 11:23:19 PM
Quote from: SantaClauseWasA BlackManand he wrote rodney dangerfields term paper in back to school

Back to School...filmed at UW-Madison.

I have only read Slaughterhouse-5 and I liked it alot.  I remember in HS I did a presentation on that book... I didn't prepare for the presentation outside of reading the book and did the entire thing improptu.
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: chainsmoking insomniac on June 07, 2003, 11:00:36 AM
I've read Slaughterhouse 5 three times and glean new meaning from that brilliant fucking gold nugget each time; and of course, I keep Breakfast of Champions right up on the toilet (can never get enough of that book either!) :-D
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: polkablues on June 07, 2003, 02:39:12 PM
I love his more recent stuff, which has gotten more and more autobiographical, like "Timequake" or "Palm Sunday".  "Timequake" is essentially a book about whatever pops into his head at any given moment; it's unconvential, but incredible.  But definitely someone reading him for the first time should start with "Cat's Cradle" or "Breakfast of Champions".
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: ShanghaiOrange on June 07, 2003, 11:07:43 PM
Vonnegut :(
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: polkablues on June 08, 2003, 09:15:42 PM
Quote from: ShanghaiOrangeVonnegut :(

:(  :?:
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: russiasusha on June 08, 2003, 11:16:43 PM
Bluebeard, breakfast of champions, timequake, mother night, slaughter house, and galapagos

I just love galapagos and have read many of times.  It just has so many layers that you can never stop reading or enjoying it.  The main things i love about his books is how he gets himself involved (timequake, breakfast), How he uses the same characters (kilgore trout, i can't remember his name but the artist guy who makes an appearance in breakfast and who's the hero in bluebeard), and just the freaking weirdness of it all...

About his only normal book was mother night which was made into a shitty movie a couple years ago.....
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on June 09, 2003, 12:12:53 AM
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15098
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: RegularKarate on June 09, 2003, 01:13:08 PM
This thread has made me read Breakfast once again and realize that I have a first edition print of his first book... Player Piano... I knew that I had a really old copy of it, but I hadn't realized how old it really was.
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: SoNowThen on June 09, 2003, 01:20:07 PM
is it any good?
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: ShanghaiOrange on June 09, 2003, 08:00:23 PM
I love Vonnegut's work so much it makes me sad. :(
Title: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: USTopGun47 on June 18, 2003, 08:29:51 PM
I've only read Slaughterhouse 5, though I love it.  He's just so zany and humerous, the book never ceases to entertain, and yet it maintains a deep and profound moral message and theme held throughout the entire work.  I mean, he's just such a brilliant writer.  I hail.
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: squints on December 24, 2005, 09:11:50 PM
what vonnegut book would make the best film adaptation? i've seen slaughterhouse 5 which was ok to say the least but breakfast of champions is just unbearabley awful, although the casting of albert finney as kilgore trout is brilliant but not more than 30 minutes of time devoted to kilgore. Brian Cox seems like he'd make a good kilgore as well...Timequake..i think would be the best adaptation
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: Reinhold on December 25, 2005, 01:21:36 AM
i think that sirens of titan would be good as a psychadelic exploitation film.

i've read slaughterhouse five, breakfast of champions, cat's cradle, sirens of titan, mother night, and some of his essays. 

i love him.
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on December 25, 2005, 11:45:50 AM
I really liked this article, it was pretty recent.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/cold_turkey/

Cold Turkey
By Kurt Vonnegut



Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America's becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.

When you get to my age, if you get to my age, which is 81, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged, what life is all about. I have seven kids, four of them adopted.

Many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.

I put my big question about life to my biological son Mark. Mark is a pediatrician, and author of a memoir, The Eden Express. It is about his crackup, straightjacket and padded cell stuff, from which he recovered sufficiently to graduate from Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: "Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is." So I pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can forget it.

I have to say that's a pretty good sound bite, almost as good as, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, 500 years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.

The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one.

But back to people, like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, who've said how we could behave more humanely, and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favorites is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana. Get a load of this:

Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran 5 times as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:

As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.
As long as there is a criminal element, I'm of it.
As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools or health insurance for all?

How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. ...

And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

But, when you stop to think about it, only a nut case would want to be a human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous, untrustworthy, lying and greedy animals we are!

I was born a human being in 1922 A.D. What does "A.D." signify? That commemorates an inmate of this lunatic asylum we call Earth who was nailed to a wooden cross by a bunch of other inmates. With him still conscious, they hammered spikes through his wrists and insteps, and into the wood. Then they set the cross upright, so he dangled up there where even the shortest person in the crowd could see him writhing this way and that.

Can you imagine people doing such a thing to a person?

No problem. That's entertainment. Ask the devout Roman Catholic Mel Gibson, who, as an act of piety, has just made a fortune with a movie about how Jesus was tortured. Never mind what Jesus said.

During the reign of King Henry the Eighth, founder of the Church of England, he had a counterfeiter boiled alive in public. Show biz again.

Mel Gibson's next movie should be The Counterfeiter. Box office records will again be broken.

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.

And what did the great British historian Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794 A.D., have to say about the human record so far? He said, "History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind."

The same can be said about this morning's edition of the New York Times.

The French-Algerian writer Albert Camus, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, wrote, "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide."

So there's another barrel of laughs from literature. Camus died in an automobile accident. His dates? 1913-1960 A.D.

Listen. All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible and The Charge of the Light Brigade.

But I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on, which could make you act crazy, even if you weren't crazy to begin with. Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and girls' basketball.

Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

Actually, this same sort of thing happened to the people of England generations ago, and Sir William Gilbert, of the radical team of Gilbert and Sullivan, wrote these words for a song about it back then:

I often think it's comical
How nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal
That's born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative.
Which one are you in this country? It's practically a law of life that you have to be one or the other? If you aren't one or the other, you might as well be a doughnut.

If some of you still haven't decided, I'll make it easy for you.

If you want to take my guns away from me, and you're all for murdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other, and want to give them kitchen appliances at their showers, and you're for the poor, you're a liberal.

If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you're a conservative.

What could be simpler?

My government's got a war on drugs. But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.

One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 41. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.

Other drunks have seen pink elephants.

And do you know why I think he is so pissed off at Arabs? They invented algebra. Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which nobody else had ever had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.

We're spreading democracy, are we? Same way European explorers brought Christianity to the Indians, what we now call "Native Americans."

How ungrateful they were! How ungrateful are the people of Baghdad today.

So let's give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That'll teach bin Laden a lesson he won't soon forget. Hail to the Chief.

That chief and his cohorts have as little to do with Democracy as the Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have absolutely no say in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven't noticed, they've already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a perfectly enormous debt that you'll be asked to repay.

Nobody let out a peep when they did that to you, because they have disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution: The House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the FBI, the free press (which, having been embedded, has forsaken the First Amendment) and We the People.

About my own history of foreign substance abuse. I've been a coward about heroin and cocaine and LSD and so on, afraid they might put me over the edge. I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, just to be sociable. It didn't seem to do anything to me, one way or the other, so I never did it again. And by the grace of God, or whatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a matter of genes. I take a couple of drinks now and then, and will do it again tonight. But two is my limit. No problem.

I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.

But I'll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver's license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut.

And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.

When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won't be any more of those. Cold turkey.

Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn't like TV news, is it?

Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.

And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on.

Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: hedwig on December 25, 2005, 07:38:53 PM
i've never read his books but i saw him interviewed on TV once. he said that human beings should just stop reproducing.

i think he may have been drunkĀ  :shock:

also i agree with him.
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: squints on December 25, 2005, 09:29:36 PM
I saw him on the daily show one night shortly after hurricane katrina. he said that the human race is a disease and the hurricane was just the earth's immune system working to get rid of us.-which is something he said in one of the essays from A Man Without a Country

he's also an old old chain-smoking bastard and he'll probably end up in the Who's Next to Croak thread soon, god forbid

I think Timequake would make the best movie probably because America loves a disaster movie with lots of destruction and such, there is a lot of destruction going on in Timequake but it would take most of the movie to explain what the hell a Timequake is...then again Vonnegut novels and short stories could also be considered "unfilmable", but damn wouldn't brian cox make an excellent kilgore?. i read that aronofsky once wrote a screenplay for Cat's Cradle but nothing ever came of it. it'd take an imaginative filmmaker like aronofsky to serve whatever story justice. maybe something like they did with hitchhikers guide. A friend of mine who's a literature professor always explains hitchhikers guide as "vonnegut for beginners". i don't know if i completely agree with that statement but i see where he's coming from.

i've been obsessed with vonnegut since i read slaughterhouse 5 as a sophomore in high school and i've read just about everything i can get my hands on since then. player piano would have to be my least favorite but its still worth a read.

here's one of my favorite quotes:
"If i should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music."
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: grand theft sparrow on December 28, 2005, 10:05:05 AM
OK, Mother Night and Deadeye Dick are both sitting on my shelf.  Which one should I go for first?
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: squints on December 28, 2005, 11:50:31 AM
Deadeye Dick
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: polkablues on December 28, 2005, 12:49:32 PM
Yeah, Deadeye Dick.  Mother Night's a great book, but it's probably the least "Vonnegut" of all Vonnegut's books.
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: I Love a Magician on December 29, 2005, 11:30:35 PM
I'd suggest Mother Night.

And I think Cat's Cradle is being made into a movie.
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: squints on December 30, 2005, 02:45:34 AM
Mother night was made into a movie starring nick nolte in 1996, cat's cradle is "announced" but the screenplay was written by the dudes who wrote the screenplays for Tomb Raider 2, Sahara, Contact, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Muppet Treasure Island...no director yet...so i dunno how i feel about it, actually i'm a little frightened at what travesty could surmount
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: polkablues on December 30, 2005, 07:12:10 PM
Quote from: squints on December 30, 2005, 02:45:34 AM
Mother night was made into a movie starring nick nolte in 1996, cat's cradle is "announced" but the screenplay was written by the dudes who wrote the screenplays for Tomb Raider 2, Sahara, Contact, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Muppet Treasure Island...no director yet...so i dunno how i feel about it, actually i'm a little frightened at what travesty could surmount

Could it be worse than "Breakfast of Champions" with Bruce Willis?


I submit that it could not.
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: squints on December 30, 2005, 08:57:40 PM
i love Breakfast of Champions..but cat's cradle popped my vonnegut cherry and i hold it very very dear...turning it into some half-assed "action-packed" thriller intended to have a huge box-office draw starring leonardo dicaprio would crush a part of my soul...they still haven't announced a director..so there's still hope. i'm not saying a vonnegut story couldn't be a blockbuster...i'm just saying it'd be hard

slaughterhouse 5, while not great, is the best vonnegut adaptation..and most people i know (even huge fans of vonnegut's work) have never seen it. Breakfast of Champions is utter shite though, in the same way bonfire of the vanities is tripe.

i think i'll stick with my feelings of vonnegut being unfilmable

Who would play bokonon? how would they fit all the bokonon calypsos into the film?
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: Reinhold on January 03, 2006, 05:51:50 PM
i'd want morgan freeman to play bokonon, personally.
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: A Matter Of Chance on January 03, 2006, 07:17:38 PM
The other day, while riding the T with my friend, I got into a heated literary discussion with some stranger, where I decided to be wise a talk about Vonnegut. This kid was like, "Vonnegut? I don't do sci-fi." I nearly cried.
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: grand theft sparrow on January 04, 2006, 09:41:49 AM
Quote from: A Matter Of Chance on January 03, 2006, 07:17:38 PM
The other day, while riding the T with my friend, I got into a heated literary discussion with some stranger, where I decided to be wise a talk about Vonnegut. This kid was like, "Vonnegut? I don't do sci-fi." I nearly cried.

That comment was a cry for help.  You should have bought this kid a copy of Slaughterhouse Five and sent him on his way.

Quote from: squints on December 30, 2005, 02:45:34 AM
cat's cradle is "announced" but the screenplay was written by the dudes who wrote the screenplays for Tomb Raider 2, Sahara, Contact, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Muppet Treasure Island...no director yet...so i dunno how i feel about it, actually i'm a little frightened at what travesty could surmount

Where the hell have I been?  The last I heard was screenplay by Richard Kelly and Darren Aronofsky.  So it makes more sense to get the guy who wrote Hook instead of the guy who wrote Pi to adapt Vonnegut?
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: Reinhold on January 05, 2006, 04:40:53 PM
my friend ethan told me he didn't like sci fi when i told him about vonnegut this summer. we happened to be walking through a used book store, so i bought him a copy of slaughterhouse-five. he loved it and has since read cats cradle and breakfast of champions.

has anybody read  wampeters, fomas, and granfalloons?
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: squints on January 05, 2006, 04:48:23 PM
Quote from: permanent username on January 05, 2006, 04:40:53 PM
has anybody read  wampeters, fomas, and granfalloons?

Its sitting there on my shelf but i have yet to read it.
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: I Love a Magician on January 07, 2006, 03:29:20 PM
Quote from: permanent username on January 05, 2006, 04:40:53 PMhas anybody read  wampeters, fomas, and granfalloons?

I read it summer before last. It's a lot better than his new collection of essays, Man Without a Country.
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: Reinhold on April 12, 2007, 11:31:51 PM
i own kvjr.com

i'd like use it to honor Vonnegut in some way or donate it to people who will.

what do you guys think i should do with it?
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: I Love a Magician on April 12, 2007, 11:45:36 PM
i mean i'm not horribly saddened by this because from what i could tell, the dude kind of hated being alive. still my favorite author though so it did drag a tear out of this old bear's eye. ol vonnie was all about kindness.

top 5 favorite vonnegut books:

1. cat's cradle
2. mother night
3. timequake
4. slaughterhouse-five
5. galapagos

QuoteStill and all, why bother? Here's my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg164.imageshack.us%2Fimg164%2F2356%2Fvonneguttearuu3.gif&hash=6fc3a71aaff596e1d8942da2b1de8e4ef2e755e6)
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: I Love a Magician on April 23, 2007, 02:07:01 AM
check this shit out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnAaDEFk7Uk&eurl=
Title: Re: The brilliance of Kurt Vonnegut
Post by: polkablues on April 23, 2007, 02:16:15 AM
Good gravy.  I've never heard a person complimented so backhandedly in an obituary before.  My favorite bit was the reference to his "despondent leftism"... followed by Vonnegut telling the funniest (intentional) joke that's ever been heard on Fox News.

But what do you expect, he's been making hamburgers out of all their sacred cows since Vietnam.  I suppose they're not going to suddenly start appreciating him just because he died.