Kurt Vonnegut is gone

[TCJohnson]

Kurt Vonnegut passed away today as a result of brain injuries he recieved when he fell last week.

:(

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

[JamesRitcheyIII]

Man, that sucks. No other novelist has ever said so much, with so few words--not even Hemingway, and he was a lot funnier than Hemingway.

Man--it's as bad for me as losing Kirby, Gil Kane, and last year, when Alex Toth died. It's like I've lost another grandfather.

[Lester C.]

Damn it this sucks. I loved the man and his books. RIP Kurt you will be forever remembered and missed.

[Dr. Killbydeath]

That totally sucks. Vonnegut is my favourite author....


='(

[Tad Sivana]

One of our funniest since Mark Twain.
Inventor of Ice Nine.
He will be missed.
So it goes.

[The Xenos]

So it goes, indeed. Po-tweet.

Well, he's out there somewhere unstuck in time.

[matterconsumer]

Best wishes Kurt!

[Lester C.]

Not that his makes his death any less tragic but Kurt is immortal in a way. Assuming human civilization is around thousands of years from today people are still going to be reading his books. Very few people leave such a legacy when they pass on.

[sgt pepper]

My favorite author. I can't really say it sucks because we've all known this has been coming. It's a miracle that he's been able to get his last two books of essays out.

I never thought that I'd be able to relate to a septegenarian, but everything he wrote in his seventies (since Timequake I think) has expressed exactly what I've been feeling about life. What an amazing guy. He will be missed.

[LtMarvel]

Greetings.

[Tobias March]

Timequake, The Sirens of Titan, Slaughterhouse 5 - all favourites of mine that were of great importance while I was growing up.

He will be missed :(

[MrSuslov]

Harrison Bergeron was a classic, and so was Mother Night. Mr. Vonnegut will be missed.

[stealthwise]

Aw... shit.

I'd only read Slaughterhouse Five, but it quickly became one of my favourite books. He was really, really good.

[Sally Sensational]

My favorite professor - the one who never gave me more than an A- on anything - in college had us write our freshman honors paper on Slaughterhouse Five. He never chose a novel that wasn't truly important.

I only hope that the 21st century produces a voice as strong and Truthful as Vonnegut's was for the 20th century.

Au Revoir, Kurt. I only hope the glut of scholarship that follows your loss does you the honor that you deserve and leads a whole new generation to wonder and think.

[PatrickG]

Vonnegut was a favorite of several friends of mine, including my roommate who died two months ago Monday.

A friend of a friend bought him a beer once.

I read Slaughterhouse Five years ago and remember virtually nothing about it save for its narrative style. Oddly, however, I've considered him a hero of mine and my creative writing is often compared to both Vonnegut and Tom Robbins; I've always wanted to read more Vonnegut and I've rather unconsciously adopted a favorite phrase of his that seems disturbingly appropriate as an epitaph:

So it goes.

[JamesRitcheyIII]

"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane."
--Kilgore Trout's epitaph.

I recommend Breakfast of Champions, if Slaughterhouse Five is all you've read. I'd heard Bruce Willis was trying to get it made into a movie, and wanted to play Dwayne Hoover, the main character. Anybody? I've loved the opening 'history' Vonnegut wrote for it, since I was 14, and it remains one of my favorite novels. The narrative is freakishly vivid.

"1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them."

and:

"The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were."
--Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

[JamesRitcheyIII]

"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane."
--Kilgore Trout's epitaph.

I recommend Breakfast of Champions, if Slaughterhouse Five is all you've read. I'd heard Bruce Willis was trying to get it made into a movie, and wanted to play Dwayne Hoover, the main character. Anybody? I've loved the opening 'history' Vonnegut wrote for it, since I was 14, and it remains one of my favorite novels. The narrative is freakishly vivid.

"1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them."

and:

"The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were."
--Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

[Dr. Killbydeath]

I recommend Breakfast of Champions, if Slaughterhouse Five is all you've read. I'd heard Bruce Willis was trying to get it made into a movie, and wanted to play Dwayne Hoover, the main character. Anybody? I've loved the opening 'history' Vonnegut wrote for it, since I was 14, and it remains one of my favorite novels. The narrative is freakishly vivid.


Bruce Willis was in a movie version. It was weird and I didn't see all of it. Omar Epps plays Wayne Hoobler and Nick Nolte plays Harry Lesabre.

[JamesRitcheyIII]

Bruce Willis was in a movie version. It was weird and I didn't see all of it. Omar Epps plays Wayne Hoobler and Nick Nolte plays Harry Lesabre.

How's the old respiration, Bill?

WOW. I actually went crazy, and did a web search--those are some of the worst reviews I've ever read for a movie--mostly saying the writer/director didn't 'get' the novel. That sucks--the casting seemed dead-on. Albert Finney as Trout? That's GREAT casting. I find it hard to believe they could ruin it so badly. The structure isn't exactly rocket science, and it's very linear. Oddly, I think Kubrick could have done it right. I just wonder where the hell I was when that came out. Tralfamadore, I suppose.

At least Mother Night totally rocked.

Hi ho.

[Dr. Killbydeath]

I haven't Mother Night or Slaughterhouse Five, but I would think they'd be hard movies to make. For me what made Vonnegut so great was his narrative structure as opposed to plot advancement or dialogue (not that those aspects of his writing was bad, just not the main characteristic).

[JamesRitcheyIII]

I haven't Mother Night or Slaughterhouse Five, but I would think they'd be hard movies to make. For me what made Vonnegut so great was his narrative structure as opposed to plot advancement or dialogue (not that those aspects of his writing was bad, just not the main characteristic).
They may have been hard to make, but BOY, were they creatively successful. Slaughterhouse Five won the Prix du Jury at Cannes, a Hugo and a Saturn--and no better review could be given than this:
"I love George Roy Hill and Universal Pictures, who made a flawless translation of my novel Slaughterhouse-Five to the silver screen.I drool and cackle every time I watch that film, because it is so harmonious with what I felt when I wrote the book."--Vonnegut, derived from Wikipedia
I get the feeling you'll love Mother Night as I did. Nolte as Campbell narrates all the way through, and it is freaking brilliant--ironic, absurd and sad, just like the novel. It's dark comedy at its absolute best.

[Acecool]

"My goal is to poison the minds of my readers with humanity"

He proved that even in a "just" war one the side of the "good guys", there can be really horrible atrocities. Thanks for Slaughter House 5 and Cats Cradle Kurt. I'll fight to have your books brought into high schools.