happy burfday kurt vonnegut, jr.
 

i forget how old he is. i'd guess maybe 78 but that's just a guess.

I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cat's Cradle

Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organisation. If there are such things as angels, hope that they are organised along the lines of the Mafia.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. The Sirens of Titan

by far my favorite author. Much love to my nigga kurt. the smartest man alive. happy birthday you krazy negro

Find a subject you care about and which you feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

my dad doesn't really like vonnegut. he thinks he's a punk :-/ i don't think my dad really appreciates irreverance. yeah when i was like 15 i guess i read every single one of his books...possibly except one of his short story collections...and my dad was all 'he's such an asshole' :( my dad doesn't have much respect for i dunno :( not very nice.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion . . . . I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

(person) by RalphyK (16 hr) (print) ? 2 C!s Thu Jan 25 2001 at 23:25:53


A bizarre, lunatic genius with a unique voice. One of my favourite authors. If I ever get to meet him, I'd like to ask him "Why?" so that he can tell me "Why not?" For some reason, this will be immensely satisfying to me. Of course, the real question is "How the hell does he do that?"
Listen:


His books are hearbreakingly sad, and hilariously uplifting - sometimes in the same breath.
They pull off the neat trick of being highly important works of literature, while remaining simply the deranged ramblings of a crazy person.
When reading one of his books once, someone asked me "Hey, what's it about?" I was stumped. What I couldn't explain was how they manage to be about everything - the human condition, life, existence - but at the same time about absolutely nothing at all.

Vonnegut has a cameo in the Rodney Dangerfield film "Back to School". The story is: this kid's rich father (Dangerfield) is trying to make life easy for his kid at college. He pays NASA to do his astronomy homework, and has 10 tiny student rooms converted into one giant luxury apartment. When the kid has to do a book report on a Kurt Vonnegut book, the dad pays Kurt Vonnegut himself to write it - which he does, and turns up personally to deliver it. The punchline of the cameo comes later in the movie, when everyone finds out that the kid isn't doing his own work: a teacher is berating the kid for lying. Brandishing the Vonnegut book report, to which he has given an 'F', he delivers the kicker: "And whoever wrote this obviously knows nothing about Vonnegut!" Vonnegut, self-deprecating to the end, probably thought that was just perfect. I can hear him watching the movie, shouting "Well, I don't!", and roaring with laughter. Later, when Dangerfield hears about the report, he calls up Vonnegut to complain. We come in at the end of the phonecall, to hear Dangerfield saying "Fuck me? Hey Vonnegut, fuck you!"

People who think this sort of thing is beneath Vonnegut clearly don't know him that well. He is very anti-elitist, and deliberately writes his books simply and plainly, so as not to exclude anyone from reading them. He is not a fan of literary critics, who have given him a hard time over the years. Just because his books are simple doesn't mean they are stupid - "Spot the Dog" books are also simple and concise, but they're not generally regarded as important works of art.

When I was 12, I discovered two of his books in the otherwise desolate school library. I then became the only student who had ever quoted Vonnegut in an essay. It wasn't very clever - I just peppered a story with "So it goes" a few times. Later I made my own version up. It was "That's how life goes". Let it never be said that I lack imagination.

Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut's alter ego, and a writer of some repute, often makes appearances in his books. Once said that "being alive is a crock of shit". He writes stories that usually appear in magazines with photographs of "wide open beavers". For a while now, these stories have only appeared in Vonnegut's books, in rough form. They are still better than my stories, though. It saddens me that a non-existent person is a better writer than I am. Still, that's the way life is. See what I mean?

It is very important that you read all of Vonnegut's books as soon as possible. I cannot tell you why, only that you must. You'll thank me for it one day.

person) by clarkkent (4 mon) (print) ? 1 C! Thu May 31 2001 at 23:34:08



To the character of Kurt Vonnegut:

At about the time of the release of Timequake, my wife and I attended a talk Kurt Vonnegut gave in Palo Alto. This being Palo Alto, which is where Stanford is located, I assumed this would be a well attended event in a large venue. It turned out to be a somewhat poorly attended event in a high school gym. One of the things I remember from the talk was the part where he compared the internet to a bunch of hobbyists with ham radios all going "Blah blah blah blah...".

Following the talk was a question an answer session. One question I remember in particular was given by a very full of himself high school student who obviously thought that since he had read a couple of books that intellectually, he was the shit. The interchange went something like this:

Arrogant Kid: Mr. Vonnegut, {rambling, long word containing intro to his question. Not *******d for brevity and because I don't remember any of it}. What is your opinion of the average person?

Kurt Vonnegut: Do you consider yourself to be above average?

AK: Well, yes.

KV: Well, you're not.

Crowd: {Much laughter at the expense of AK.}

AK: {Sheepishly sits down.}

After the event was over, my wife and I caught up with KV in the parking lot. As seemed completely appropriate, he was wearing an old sport jacket that had holes worn through the elbows. My wife asked if he would mind signing my old paperback copy of Welcome to the Monkey House for a fellow Hoosier. This is the only Vonnegut book I have every purchased, all of the other ones I've read coming from the library. His response was this: "I've been signing books all day, and if I sign that for you, I'll have to sign stuff for everyone else."

So, I have a book that Kurt Vonnegut personally refused to sign, which I think seems very fitting.

borN: 11/11/22

so if my memory serves me correctly..that would make him

80 FUCKING YEARS OLD

OH MAN

:*(

2,2 old

What is flirtatiousness but an argument that life must go on and on and on?"

- Jailbird p.24

"My soul knows my meat is doing bad things, and is embarrassed. But my meat just keeps right on doing bad, dumb things."

- Bluebeard p.246

"What is literature but an insider's newsletter about affairs relating to molecules, of no importance to anything in the Universe but a few molecules who have the disease called 'thought'."

- Bluebeard p.188

"Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?"

- Bluebeard p.168

"Belief is nearly the whole of the Universe, whether based on truth or not."

- Bluebeard p.144

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (George Santayana)
"I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive."

- Bluebeard p.91

"Time is liquid. One moment is no more important than any other and all moments quickly run away."

- Bluebeard p.82

"Mere opinions, in fact, were as likely to govern people's actions as hard evidence, and were subject to sudden reversals as hard evidence could never be. So the Galapagos Islands could be hell in one moment and heaven in the next, and Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next, and Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next, and the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next--and on and on."

- Galapagos

"Bergeron's epitaph for the planet, I remember, which he said should be carved in big letters in a wall of the Grand Canyon for the flying-saucer people to find, was this:


WE COULD HAVE SAVED IT
BUT WE WERE TOO DOGGONE CHEAP

Only he didn't say 'doggone.'"

- Hocus Pocus

"Me and Mike, ve vork in mine,
Holy shit, ve have good time.
Vunce a veek ve get our pay,
Holy shit, no vork next day."

- Slaughterhouse-Five

"If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts."

"Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous."

- Slapstick

"I think William Shakespeare was the wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly frank, though, that's not saying much. We are impossibly conceited animals, and actually dumb as heck. Ask any teacher. You don't even have to ask a teacher. Ask anybody. Dogs and cats are smarter than we are."

- Hocus Pocus

"Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery."

- Breakfast of Champions

"There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead. It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done.

- Breakfast of Champions

"Take Care of the People, and God Almighty Will Take Care of Himself."

- Sirens of Titan

He doesn't turn 80 for eleven days, moron: www.imdb.com

lol, moron. he was born on armistice day. it's one of those facts.