tonyc3742

I know, consider the source, but Drudge
http://drudgereport.com/
has got a headline stating

"Kurt Vonnegut, Writer of Classics of the American Counterculture, Dies at 84..."

No linked article yet, and I can't find anything else on the net about it, so consider it unconfirmed.

I just started reading him, I just finished Bagombo Snuff Box and started Slapstick. I tried him about ten years ago, but I started with Wampeter Foma and Granfalloons, which was perhaps not a good starting choice. I think I'm in a short story mood, but hopefully I'll like his novels as well as the shorts I've read.

In deference to his beliefs, I won't say rest in peace, but Kurt, though I found you late, thanks.

Appears to be confirmed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/bo...hp&oref=slogin

if that counts as confirmed, can a mod remove the question mark from the thread title.

story

I remember we all had to do a book report for American Literature my junior year of high school, and I loved "Slaughterhouse Five." I picked it because I was sure my English teacher had never heard of the guy or the book. Then he handed us a list of possible writers and BOOM - there's Kurt, there's the book, and he talks about it for like ten minutes. I got a sinking feeling as I considered how crappy my book report's first draft was. I worked my butt off on that.

Terrible news.

The Infidel

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070412/.../obit_vonnegut

I read that he was born here in Indianapolis. I wonder if he'll be buried here.

RIP

The Antipodean

One of my favorite authors, and a true American original. If anybody deserved to live forever... this just sucks.

Ginwen

Wrote some of my favorite books, and always interesting. I'm sad to have him die.

Tyler_Durden

Very sad news. He'll be missed. So far I've read "Hocus Pocus", "Cat's Cradle", "Breakfast of Champions" and "Slaughterhouse-Five".

I heard of his death in a news broadcast this morning. It started off with a report about Bush vetoing the proposed stem cell research law, and continued with a report about Bush sending more troops to Iraq... and then, "Kurt Vonnegut has died", and I couldn't help thinking that he died in protest.

jfoobar

Goodbye, Kurt.

movielib

I started reading his books in the '60s and have read nearly all of them. Cat's Cradle has long been my favorite but many more are great also.

I read in my paper this morning that he attempted suicide in 1984. He said he "botched it." Good thing. I know he fought depression.

A one of a kind. He'll be missed.

Jason Bovberg

I feel like I really missed out on this guy. I'd like to hear about some more favorites of his, as well as any memories of meeting him. Any booksigning memories?

Drop

Cat's Cradle is my favorite, followed by Slapstick, but all his stuff is great.

At least his works will last forever, and they are incredible to revisit as they never get old.

JasonF

What a loss. A friend of mine said that he was (until yesterday) America's greatest living author. Not only do I find that difficult to disagree with, I wonder how anyone familiar with his work could possibly disagree.

dvduser6

I have a couple of collections of his sitting on my bookshelf at home. Sadly, I never discovered Vonnegut until well out of my college years. I'll be cracking one of those books open tonight. He will be sorely missed.

Tracer Bullet

A sad loss, to be sure, but he had a full and long life and his work will live on. Not much else a person can ask for in death.

Pressplay

I always associate him with the movie "Back to School" and that scene where he gets scolded for writing a bad school paper about... himself.

fernsita

rip mr. vonnegut. sad day.

wakwak007

Sad day...He's my favorite author..

zombiezilla

RIP, Kurt.

You were a helluva author.

dork

I disagree quite strongly, but this still hit me pretty hard.

JasonF

Yeah, on reflection, one could argue in favor of Phillip Roth, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, J.D. Salinger, and probably others, but Vonnegut clearly had a legitimiate claim to the title. The world is a much poorer place for the fact that we'll never get to read a new example of his writing.

Sondheim

I only discovered his books a few years ago (my junior year in high school), but I've read seven or eight of his books since and have loved every one of them, my personal favorite being "Slaughterhouse-Five".

A great author who will truly be missed.

RonPrice

Part 1:

In 1959, the year I joined the Baha’i Faith, the year I turned 15, Kurt Vonnegut published his second novel The Sirens of Titan. By the late 1960s this novel had become a cult-book of the counter-culture. The genre is novel, sci-fi, space-opera, black humour, satire and fabulation. The story-line, the narrative is based on a world where machines have taken over. The story is told by a future historian. Faith in science, technology and progress is undermined as is humankind’s ability to shape its future. Vonnegut questions the very nature of reality and argues that individuals have the ineluctable responsibility to make meaning out of their lives by looking within not without at organized religions. Looking back after more than forty years, I would place Vonnegut among the first of a "New Wave" of science fiction writers who appeared in the 1960s and who have inhabited one of the many backdrops of my life.-Ron Price with thanks to Herbert G. Klein, "Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan and the Question of Genre," EESE 5/98.


Part 2:

I had heard those enchanting sirens1
back in the fifties; little did I know
about their sharp rocks, the perils
of chronic and committed rapture,
growing dedication, deeper belief--
that would be later.

I’ve seen many draw near
to those voices and, yes,
I’ve seen them shipwrecked.
For these sirens were daughters
(so the myth goes)2 of the sea
and river gods, Nymphs partly
bird and partly human.


Yes, their voices enchant,
but be warned: this journey
to their island home is not
for the timid & overwrought,
not for the vainly pious,
the pusillanimous of spirit,
not for those who think this
is some kind of vacation,
who seem somehow to have
missed the point that:
this ardent, often tiring, voyage
on this unvariable storm-lashed brig
with the unseasonable rains,
the sweet song of the dove,
the bird, the clear beauty
of the siren’s notes is mostly distant,
on some far-off island, faintly heard,
but they sweep me out to sea
and in full consent I drown,
though I do not like all the journey.3

I wish you well, Kurt, in your journey
which, as Shakespeare called it, now
goes to that undiscovered country.
____________________________

1 I first heard the Baha’i Writings in the years 1953 to 1959. These are the sirens, for me.
2 This poem also draws on the Greek myth of the Sirens, part bird and part human.
3 I thank Roger White and his poems "Parable for the Wrong People" and "Sightseeing"(Pebbles, pp.69-75) for some of his phraseology.

Ron Price
20/12/'04 to 24/6/'15.
Updated: 13/4/07.

Ronnie Dobbs

Kurt Vonnegut's obituary, courtesy of FOX News

Why can't certain news networks do an obituary of someone without adding on some political, personal dig?

Case in point, this Kurt Vonnegut obituary that FOX News ran recently. Sure, Vonnegut was no doubt a lefty (his last book of essays would tell anyone that), but the entire tone of the obit is pretty shitty.

"By the late 70s, Vonnegut was rich and irrelevent." Really? I think a lot of people, including me, got to know Vonnegut's writing in the 70s and 80s, and that a lot of his work rings true to present times. And why the comment about "being rich?" Oh, yeah, those damn liberal elitists and their money! The reporter also says that Vonnegut "failed at suicide" (that's a clever dig, not only mention a suicide attempt but that he FAILED at it), had writings filled with "mumbo-jumbo," and had "scatalogical humor." Using Vonnegut's own words (the part about male writers being past their prime at 55 and then the reporter saying "but Vonnegut kept at it," as if he should just quit his work) against him.

The ending is the worst part. Instead of honoring the guy's achievements in writing, they have to not only mention that he once said he hoped his kids didn't remember him as "making wonderful jokes but he was such an unhappy man," they also get in one final editorial comment and dig, the reporter taking it upon himself to say what the kids won't say, that he ended life in just that way, "unhappy." I'd love to see the evidence of that. He was married with seven kids.

kms_md

link?

this (influential author ... ) is the top link searching for "vonnegut" at fox news.

edited to change "and" to "at", sorry.

Ronnie Dobbs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnAaDEFk7Uk

kvrdave

Who?