Let's talk about Vonnegut

Cafe Society
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Years ago I inherited an uncle’s collection of paperback Vonnegut novels. (And Billy Bragg tapes, but I guess that’s another thread.)

I just read Cat’s Cradle for the eightieth (or so) time and am halfway through Breakfast of Champions (which I’ve also read more times than I can count).

Wow, he’s great. What a gift for words.

“I could carve a better man out of a banana.”

And the bit in BoC where he unapologetically inserts himself into the narrative:

“I do not know who invented body bags. But I do know who invented Kilgore Trout: I did. I gave him hair but I never let him brush it or cut it …” and then sits in the hotel restaurant, surveying his characters from behind his mirrored sunglasses …

And the ending of Slaughterhouse Five. He just does endings well.

God Bless You, Mister Rosewater may be my favourite (after CC, of course). If that makes me a big communist, so be it.

I like the irreverent science stuff - ice-nine, for instance, or descriptions of humans as meat and chemicals.

Also, is there a better post-apocalypic novelist? I don’t think so. He does it all so well (like in Welcome to the Monkey House, with the suicide parlours and overcrowded apartment buildings).

I love his recurring characters - Mr Trout, of course, whose cameo in Rosewater just makes my day, but also Eliot Rosewater (who turns up in Breakfast of Champions).

And I loved Hocus Pocus, where everyone is colour-coded.

What is the significance of “Goodbye, Blue Monday”? I think I read it in one of his books but I can’t remember.

I haven’t ventured far from my incomplete paperback collection: I have read some books a zillion times (the above (CC, BoC, SF, GBYMR, HP, WttMH), plus Mother Night, Slapstick, Sirens of Titan, Player Piano, Jailbird), some only once (Galapagos, Timequake) and the rest not at all. Where should I turn next?

Sorry for the disjointedness of this OP. I just want to chat about my favourite author for a bit, if anyone’s interested.

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His nonfiction is worth reading.

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Has he quit writing altogether? I suppose all those cigarettes finally got to him. Just about every picture I see of Vonnegut has him with a cig between his fingers.

What’s his non-fiction? I have never seen his non-fiction unless you mean the speeches he has given, reduced to book form. Is that what you’re talking about?

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Vonnegut was paraphrasing Teddy Roosevelt, who said, “I could carve out of a banana a man with more back bone than that” of Oliver Wendell Holmes. The quote was mangled into the form Vonnegut used – and, IIRC, credited to Roosevelt.

In any case, I was big Vonnegut fan. I reread CC a few years ago and found it was as good as I remembered, but I haven’t gotten a chance to reread anything else. Living in Schenectady, I do find his earlier novels interesting, since Illium, NY, is based on Schenectady, and his “Deer in the Works” is set in the GE company. When I worked at GE, I supposedly was in the same building Vonnegut worked in.

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My highschool English teacher grew up next door to him. She just remembers running through the house with his daughter (who later married, to Kurt’s public disgust, Geraldo Rivera) and her cranky old dad yelling, “Would you kids keep quiet? I’m tryna write here.”

I used to be a HUGE KV fan, but then after a while I found his single tone of voice–a kind of world weary shrillness, that built for me to an uremitting whine–te be monotonous.

He’s great when he’s great, but he’s grating when he’s grating.

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I’ve only read two Vonnegut novels: Slaughterhouse Five and Cat’s Cradle. I found both of them to be intensely aggravating and unenjoyable. Could never put my finger on why, though. I remember reading Slaughterhouse, and having an ever-increasing urge to slap someone every time I saw the phrase “So it goes.” I think part of it was a feeling that I was being talked down to by the prose. Lectured, almost. I found it very off-putting.

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About “Goodbye Blue Monday:”

In Breakfast of Champions, he makes it the advertising slogan for a washing machine company.

Make of that what you will.

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That’s my favorite too and I lean towards libertarianism. I’ve read and enjoyed most of his stuff but Slapstick put me off as just organized stream of conciousness crap. Best first line ever is in Harrison Bergeron:

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Walter M. Miller, Jr.

(No relation)

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No way ! thanks for the tip. FTR It wasn’t credited to anyone in the novel (the younger Castle said it in reference to the younger Hoenniker).

I agree. I feel about him the way I do about John Irving: I can (and have) gone on marathon sprees of reading as many of their novels as possible, then suddenly it’s as if a bell goes off and my limit has been reached. It’s cyclical: I read a Vonnegut (or Irving). I love it. I read another, and another, and another. I get fed up with/tired of/mired in misery because of Vonnegut (or Irving). I find something else to read. Time passes. I look at the bookshelf and think “Man, Vonnegut (Irving) sure is amazing! I should pick up Cat’s Cradle/Eliot Rosewater/The Cider House Rules again …” and then we’re back to the beginning.

Fabio: thanks ! I guess I haven’t gotten to that part yet. Is this something that has some sort of external relevance? I mean, he often talks about things that sound as if they are actually referring to something IRL, but in fact are made from the whole cloth of Vonnegut’s mind, but sometimes he talks about things that sound like absurd BS but are completely true.

Miller: any books in particular? I thirst for new material !

Interesting to see the negative responses, I have a friend who feels the same way. He is kind of grating (Vonnegut, I mean, not the friend), I can see. I interpret his style as sort of silly and loveable and friendly, but I can also see it as patronizing.

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I peed at the urinal next to him once. He had come to my university (Texas Tech - Go Raiders!!) to give a lecture. I worked in the student activities office, which brought him to campus. A group of us went to dinner with him, then afterwards, but before his lecture, I wound up in the same restroom as him, standing at the urinals.

Oh, yeah. And I read Slaughterhouse Five.

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cowgirl: Check out A Canticle for Leibowitz. Great little nuclear holocaust story told in the form of three novellas spanning a couple centuries of time.

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FYI, it’s a well known fact that the GREATEST post-apocolyptic novel ever written–in fact, one of the greatest novels written in English since Joyce died–is Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. Just to set the record straight.

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I haven’t been able to find any evidence of “Goodbye Blue Monday” being used as part of any advertising campaign. It sounds like something he just made up or liked the sound of.

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Seems like there’s a band with the name, I got quite a number of hits out of Google. The question is, then, are all those people Vonnegut fans? Hmm …

Thanks for the novel tips, Miller and lissener, I will take them straight to the library !

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It really is. I’ve been meaning to pick that up again.

Vonnegut’s gotta be one of the most humane writers we have, and certainly one of the most reader-friendly. Cat’s Cradle and God Bless You, Mr. R rank extremely high among books I’ve read, though I was disappointed by the majority of stories in Monkey House, which turned out to be pretty damn saccharine. I look forward to finally sitting down with what the universal consensus seems to regard as his masterpiece, Slaughterhouse Five.

Tigers2B1, he has a great collection of essays and lectures called Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons. Almost as entertaining as his novels. Think there’s another one called Fates Worse Than Death, but I’m not familiar with it.

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To each her own, but reading Vonnegut makes me just so goddamned happy to be alive. Even if he’s writing about syphilis or slavery, I always feel honoured to have access to hs mind. He’s the reason I donate to the public library, and he makes me want to teach people how to read. There are very few authors who make me feel that way (Saki- HH Munro- and Ray Bradbury are two of them).

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Busy, busy, busy.

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ARRRRRGHHHH <hijack> what it it with you Canticle of Liebowtitz people??? I read that vile piece of sludge at the urging of someone I have thankfully forgotten decades ago, BLECCHH. Then after reading a couple of threads here picked it up again because I thought I must have missed the point. Again BLECCHH. The only good thing about it the second time around was I realized that Pratchett was writing a parody of it in Small Gods, hehehe. Don’t even try to compare Canticle to any thing by Vonnegut. <end hijack, rant>. Your screen will return to it’s normal operation now. Sorry.

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I’m not a big fan of Vonnegut on the whole; I’ve started reading Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse Five several times each, and just can’t get compelled to finish. I appreciate Vonnegut’s whole schtick, of inserting himself in the story and deconstructing the book as he’s writing it and all that, but appreciating it and enjoying it are two different things. Those two books just seem like too much of it; I feel like he’s winking at me the whole time.

But Galapagos is one of my favorite books ever. He takes just the right tone with it – he’s still there, the whole time, but he doesn’t get in the way of the book or let all the gimmicks overrun the story. When the story’s allowed to play out, his message is conveyed more subtly, and it’s more effective – it’s reading a book and getting an impression from it, instead of being lectured to.

And the gimmick that he uses in the book (putting an asterisk after the name of a character as they’re about to get killed) is very clever, pretty subtle, and of course fits in perfectly with the theme of natural selection. I think that’s about as much Vonnegut as I can take, though.