Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

[baby tuckoo]

Yes, Jn, I think you are right about the magical realism category, but it has some unique twists in Vonnegut's case.

For one, the Latin-American writers most associated with the genre used their "magic" (the transcendence of physical laws) to look into the past. Vonnegut mostly looked to the future and thus gets confused with SF, which never struck me as true, even when reading them in 1969 at a time I didn't know no better. The Latino writers I know (and that's certainly not all) use the magic to conflate time; Vonnegut projects it.


For another, Vonnegut's style is sparse. Sentences might extend, but in a rambling, stringy way, not ornate or convoluted. The Latinos generally follow Faulkner (a Borges idol) in their constant referencing and renaming. The magic is driven by an "every grain of sand" philosophy (the Aleph) that sometimes tries to name them all. Vonnegut just creates a synchronastic . . . (I used to know the whole thing) and lets the reader connect the dots while he positions them.

[Jnyusa]

Very interesting analysis, bt. I didn't know that Faulkner was Borges idol, but it makes perfect sense to me. (My feelings about both of them comes close to worship, btw.)

chronosynclastic infundibulum

Jn

[baby tuckoo]

Yeah. That thing. I used to be able to say it even when stoned.

All the previous was off the top of my head. A true student of such things could refute it all, perhaps with good reason. Which doesn't mean I wouldn't argue about it. But I've only read the first wave of the latino magicalists. Shadow of the Wind was pretty good, though.

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Vonnegut also filled the role that Shippey describe in "Author of the Century".

He used a fantastic mode to engage with experiences of horror, such as the Dresden bombing, that could not be readily dealt with otherwise. To talk about them as "real" was too difficult.

This is akin to what Tolkien did, in part, in translating his experiences in the Great War into some of the stories of Middle-earth.

I am a great fan of Vonnegut, and I am torn between whether I love his short stories or his novels more.

BrianIs AtYou

[JewelSong]

I love Vonnegut and greatly mourn his passing.

"Slaughterhouse 5" defies categorization, I think. I also remember liking the movie adaptation.

"Listen. Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time." What a great opening line.

Vonnegut was a cynic, but a spiritual man. He described himself as a "Christ-loving agnostic." I always liked that.

[baby tuckoo]

A question to Kurt Vonnegut in an interview . . . and the answer.

Q: You write that when you die you want your epitaph to read, "The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music."

V:Well, that's certainly true. Why this is so I don't know. And what music is I don't know, but it helps me so. I mean, it's just noise, but it's such magical noise and enchanting to me. Why it works so well I don't know. But I know that I can find relief listening to music.

[Rowanberry]

Vonnegut was one of my all-time favourite authors.

I always felt that, he held a mirror in front of the reader's face, and said: "This is whom you find in the story!" The world is as mad as it is, because we, the people, are as mad as we are.

May he rest in peace.

[axordil]

http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/1 ... negut_said

As opposed to the graduation speech he didn't make.

[PrinceAlarming]

I have always emulated Vonnegut's Christ loving agnosticism.

Although, I would say he was more realistic than cynical.

Well... He could be realistic... Sometimes.

Maybe?

“An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.”
-Sydney J. Harris

[Inanna]

I loved his decription of "Humanists" - people who try and do good and right without believing in the after-life

[Inanna]

One of my Profs ( a great guy) on the last day of our class gave us Kurt Vonnegut's speech labelling it as "Be Honorable: Speak Truth to the Guessers". That was my Prof's label. He also said that McGrath (one of the greatest social scientist researchers who actually taught us how to do research) died in the same week as Vonnegut. Two great men...

Some excerpts from: When It’s Honorable to Be a ‘Wise Guy’ from a speech at the Southampton College commencement.

You can read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/07/books ... ement.html

This speech conforms to the methods recommended by the United States Army Manual on how to teach. You tell people what you're going to tell them. Then you tell them, then you tell them what you told them.

Now we'll first discuss honorable behavior, especially in peacetime, and we'll then comment on the information revolution - the astonishing fact that human beings can actually know what they're talking about in case they want to try it. From there, I will go on to recommend to those graduating from colleges everywhere in the world this spring that their hero be Ignaz Semmelweis.
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Now we come to the main body of the speech, which is an amplification of the first part. See how memorable it all becomes. No wonder we have the greatest Army in the world. Honor. I have always wanted to be honorable. All of you want to be honorable too, I'm sure.
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So I will limit my discussion to honorable behavior in peacetime situations. In peacetime it is honorable to tell the truth to those who deserve to hear it.
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This is the information revolution I promised to tell you about. We have taken it very badly so far. Information seems to be getting in the way all the time. Human beings have had to guess about almost everything for the past million years or so. Our most enthralling and sometimes terrifying guesses are the leading characters in our history books. Should I name two of them? Aristotle and Hitler. One good guesser and one bad one.
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Let us acknowledge, though, that persuasive guessers, even Ivan the Terrible, now a hero in the Soviet Union, have given us courage to endure extraordinary ordeals which we had no way of understanding. Crop failures, wars, plagues, eruptions of volcanoes, babies being born dead - they gave us the illusion that bad luck and good luck were understandable and could somehow be dealt with intelligently and effectively.

Without that illusion, we would all have surrendered long ago. The guessers, in fact, knew no more than the common people and sometimes less. The important thing was that somebody gave us the illusion that we're in control of our destinies.
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Persuasive guessing has been at the core of leadership for so long for all of human experience so far that it is wholly unsurprising that most of the leaders of this planet, in spite of all the information that is suddenly ours, want the guessing to go on.

It is now their turn to guess and guess and be listened to. Some of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting.

They think that the whole country is sick of it, and they could be right. It isn't the gold standard that they want to put us back on; they want something even more basic than that. They want to put us back on the snake-oil standard again.
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And the guessers are almost all highly educated people, think of that. They have had to throw away their education; even Harvard or Yale education.

If they didn't do that, there is no way their noninhibited guessing could go on and on and on. Please, don't you do that. And I give you something to cling to; for if you make use of the vast fund of knowledge now available to educated persons, you are going to be lonesome as hell. The guessers outnumber you and now I have to guess about 10 to 1.

<then he tells the story about Ignaz Semmelweis, how he tried to change things in the hospitals and how he committed suicide>
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The guessers had had all the power. They had won again. Germs indeed. The guessers revealed something else about themselves too, which we should duly note today. They aren't really interested in saving lives. What matters to them is being listened to -as however ignorantly their guessing goes on and on and on. If there's anything they hate, it's a wise guy or a wise girl.

Be one anyway. Save our lives and your lives too. Be honorable. I thank you for your attention.