/lit/ - Literature

he's great

people who hate on him don't even read

If you've read Bluebeard or Slaughterhouse, I can't see how you can't like him.

Something along the lines of

"Oh well, at least he's not reading Game of Thrones"

Some people don't like him because he writes simply but they can take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.

>>3316372

I've read Slaughterhouse and Breakfast of Champions. Slaughterhouse caught my attention, but Breakfast of Champions was the one that made me love him. Two questions:

Am I missing something from slaughterhouse? I didn't find it as amazing as Breakfast of Champions, and vonnegut himself rated slaughterhouse with an A+ and BoC got a C.

Where do I go from here?

What's your opinion of Vonnegut?

A little one-sided are we not?

>>3316388
Cat's Cradle
Mother Night

he's a-ight.

he's very popular and made a bunch of money.
He's better than most authors to ever be published, but not as good as many

in the grand scheme of things he's not worth talking about as much as he is

>>3316345

An angel of our time.

>>3316399

Kurt Vonnegut did not capture my love immediately. It took me awhile through Slaughterhouse 5 to really like it. As I've read more, my appreciation of him has increased as well. Breakfast of Champions is my favorite book so far. I also like stuff by chuck palahniuk, and I'm currently enjoying catch-22. This is my first post on /lit/, so I hope I'm not falling into some cirlejerky molds.

>>3316400

I'll look into those.

>>3316400
Seconding Cat's Cradle, though the only other work I've read is SH5.
I found CC easier than SH5 (which I read first and was pleased but not enthusiastic) but way more impressive in terms of craft and humor.

>>3316403
He's accessible despite the slant in his style and themes, and an inimitable contributor to American culture. Perhaps his texts are not as substantial as other works of literature, but I say he deserves the praise.

No mention of Sirens of Titan? I am disappoint...

I think he's fantastic

great ideas too

>>3316345
>filename

He's one of the most entertaining authors I've ever read.

I'd imagine he'd be a very good entry point into reading, reading him can be like a movie sometimes.

>>3316345
he's my boy, sirens of titan may be the best book ever

>>3316388
sirens of titan or cats cradle

Tryhard hipster college girl tier.

Tryhard hipster college girl tier.

>>3316795
Why did you delete your first reply, !jCPHcoOXuE?

>>3316728

I was waiting for someone to notice that. He is extremely entertaining, and definitely a great point to enter into higher level literature.

I like several of his books.

>>3316827
>Why did you delete your first reply, !jCPHcoOXuE?
Because I played some game on /mu/ where you made a tripcode out of your favorite band and then forgot to change it back to anon.

That post was just meant to be provocative anyway. I actually think Vonnegut is pretty great.

>>3316345
Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse are both fucking amazing.

babby's first REAL author after high school.

>>3316408
Jesus fucking Christ you sound exactly like me when I first read Catch-22. Am I from the future?

>>3316897
I don't know, is this a bad thing? Am I being told I'm a plebeian?

>>3316896
ty

>>3316893
This is 4chan, no trolling allowed!!!!!!!

>>3316918
I'm not insulting you, no. Besides, pleb/patrician is a joke anyway, nothing more.

Of course, I'm not the most enlightened guy around either.

>>3316896

>real author

half baked cynicism masking cliche humanist metanarratives
plus he's a total bitch for falling off the stairs im glad he's dead

>>3316962
0/10

>>3316962
>This is 4chan, no trolling allowed!!!!!!!

>>3316977
>>3316978

except that i'm dead serious you dumb facks
he's like, bukowski tier

>>3316991
1/10

>>3316991
Your trolling is Budweiser tier.

>>3316991
what are all the numbers and letters next to your post number where the word anonymous is supposed to be

I wasn't prepared for the Time Travel shit in SH5, I love when I know nothing about a book and start reading it.

>>3316400
Bro-five! Mother Night is where it's at.

>>3316943
I was treating it as a joke. Hard to tell that on the internet, I guess.

>>3317013
Me too. T-thanks for ruining it for SH5 which I was just about to read.

Has a lot of great ideas

Some of his art is tattooed on my thigh

>>3317490
It's not really a spoiler

i checked slapstick out of my high school library around the time he died. before that i didnt know anything about him.

read it in one sitting (I hadnt done that since sideways stories).

I would not have survived my teenage years without this man's books.
From this more advanced age, though, he's simply okay.

Good, not great as a writer.

Some unique ideas, though.

>>3317520
Care to explain why his books helped you so much, sir?

>>3317580
It was an exaggerated way of saying that I simply liked them a lot.
However, around that age, one usually begins to notice that the world is horrible and people are horrible. Vonnegut taught me why - simply because they are.

I'm a huge Vonnegut fan, Slaughterhouse Five, Cats Cradle, Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Armageddon in Retrospect, Hocus Pocus, God Bless you Mister Rosewater, Breakfast of Champions, Jailbird, Deadeye Dick, Slapstick. He's my favourite author, but by no means the best I've ever read. His work is accessible to almost everyone, he's hilarious and deep at the same time. I think I've taken such a liking to him because his black humour and cynicism match my own style. Vonnegut certainly isn't one of the greatest authors in the world, but he's got some great ideas, insights and jokes. As has been said before Kurt is a great place to start for getting into higher literature.

>>3317490
>Kurt Vonnegut
>Spoilers

Choose one, he literally says in an interview that the reader should know how the book ends ten pages in, I can find it.

He was one of the first authors I got into when I first started reading serious literature a few years back. Really was a great way to enter the world of great literature and definitely sparked my interest in reading more. I'm very grateful to Vonnegut for giving me my start.

Absolutely love him. Witty with some profound ideas, and his novels are fairly short and simple, which makes him pretty accessible.

Anybody with half a soul or more likes Vonnegut. He might not be your favorite, and you might think he's overrated, but you've got to at least like Vonnegut.

Oh shit, so I just found out about >http://www.amazon.com/Kurt-Vonnegut-Letters/dp/0385343752/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
and I think I'm going to have to take a ride down to muh local bookstore and check it out.

>>3316388

I find breakfast of champions his best work. It was originally part of Slaughterhouse Five but I think it grew a life of its own and Vonnegut split them.

I got my sister Breakfast of Champions for Christmas because I thought she would like Vonnegut.

It turns out she already read it so she took it back and got the Sirens of Titan.

:3

My absolute favorite author. If it wasn't for Breakfast of Champions, I'd still be wasting all my time playing video games instead of realizing how awesome reading is.

Why'd you post picture of Garcia Marquez?

Question: Does he have a little saying he repeated throughout the book in all of his books?

Like "so it goes" in Slaughterhouse 5 and "and so on" in breakfast of champions?

>>3320719

No.

>>3320719
>and so on

>>3320719
Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.
So it goes.

Another Kilgore Trouk book there in the window was about a man who built a time machine so he could go back and see Jeses. It worked, and he saw Jesus when Jesus was only twelve years old. Jesus was learning the carpentry trade from his father.
Two Roman soliders came into the shop with a mechanical drawing on papyrus of a device they wanted built by sunrise next morning. It was to be used in the exceution of a rabble-rouser.
Jesus and his father built it. They were glad to have the work. And the rabble-rouse was executed on it.
So it goes.

-Slaughterhouse-Five

I love so it goes and and so on. It makes everything so much funnier. But no, he doesn't, to answer your question.

>>3320739

What?

He's very good, but not spectacular. I find that I agree with a lot of his views, which helps.

>>3320739
lol I read it in his voice.

>>3320844
Those are Zizek's favorite words when he's giving conferences.

All of you should read TIMEQUAKE. Except for teh nubes, they must start with Slaughterhouse 5 or Cat's Cradle, or the short story Harrison Bergeron (my first).

But seriously, Timequake is his last book, super fragmented but also maybe his most insightful. lel, he tries to define 'art' at one point, you fags might appreciate.

>>3322666

>teh nubes

It's like I'm playing Runescape in 2004 again

>>3321011
I fucking hate Zizek's voice. He sounds like a hemophiliac homo high on poppers and MDMA.

Slaughterhouse-five is fantastic and makes him a very good author. If you pretend that Slaughterhouse-five doesn't exist, then he's a eh writer and I would actually think it's sad that people think he's anything more, any if he were actually to be one of the best writers, that would be extremely sad for writing.

>>3322963

How very eloquent of you.

>>3322969
corrected
and if he were to actually be one of the best writers, that would be extremely sad for writing.

"His high school was named after a slave owner who was also one of the world's greatest theoreticians on the subject of human liberty"

OH VONNEGUT!

Who writes better political satire on the united states than Vonnegut?

>>3322963
I think Mother Night, The Sirens of Titan, and even Welcome to the Monkey House (the only other books I've read by him) are all better - or at least I found them more enjoyable/interesting - than Slaughterhouse.

I've read like 14 or 15 of his books, and after a while, I suppose you grow out of them, but my personal favourites are Slaughterhouse-5, Galapagos, and Hocus Pocus. I also liked reading Wampateers, Foma, and Granfaloons, he's a good non-fiction writer as well. In my opinion, I would venture away from his more popular novels and read his obscurer ones, his themes and humor are more prominent in his later ones, so I prefer them more.

>>3324265
Twain?

>>3324265

The United States

>>3316345
americans should be proud of "Breakfast of champions".

Great writer. Everyone should read at least one of his books.

>>3320739
lel

>>3317589
Go to bed, Ockham.

>>3325944

He's not a great writer. But he's a decent story teller and great satirist.

>>3326023

what's the components of the "great writers"anyway. Breakfast of champions made laugh, made me cry, I will always remember the book because from time to time I fall in the same mental vacuum as the main characters of the book.

Now I'm not sure if I'm remembering this right because it was years ago, but Kurt Vonnegut appeared on the Daily show and made Jon Stewart nervous. It was shortly after the first elections in Iraq and Stewart asked Vonnegut what he though about it. Vonnegut replied with:
If anything, I think they're moving too fast. If American democracy has taught us anything, it's that after 100 years, you have to let your slaves go, and after 150 years, you have to let your women vote. There are women voting in Iraq right now! It's too soon.

And Jon Stewart just stared.
I love that man.

somebody needs to dig his ass up and lay down a hair cut

>>3316388
I found that the big difference between them is that Slaughterhouse is a lot heavier. It takes itself seriously. It had almost Hemingway-style undertones with the severity of the crimes in the book. And the relationship between Billy Pilgrim's visits to Tralfamador, the views on time of the Tralfamadorians, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder make it an examination in hardcore trauma.

Breakfast, which I also love, was more focused on issues of identity and the lack of control individuals have on their lives. That was probably best exemplified in Trout chasing after Vonnegut's car yelling, "Make me young, make me young, make me young." It does mention a lot of dark/absurd human history, but treats it with light humor. It was very touching, but lacked the weight of Slaughterhouse.

That being said, my favorite was probably Bluebeard. I loved the relationship between abstract expressionism and trying to understand your own perspective on what the hell is going on with life and junk.

Vonnegut was a genius.

>>3326082

I'd say being a great writer has more to do with prose and character development. One can be a great story teller without being a good writer.

I didn't really get Vonnegut, or at least see what was so great about him, until I tried Mother Night but then the scales fell from my eyes.

>>3328607

Is that the only book of his you enjoyed?

I've never understood what's so great about him

>>3329161
nothing, he's accessible but sounds deep so people feel like they've accomplished something when they read him.

Keeping this thread alive.

I've read Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions and ultimately I find him mediocre. He doesn't write sentences I find striking, interesting or especially poignant and while he occasionally tackles issues that are all too important (esp. in BoC) I'm not sure that he does it better than the host of actual American PoMo writers (or the group which is typically described as PoMo).

>>3329935

Are you implying anyone writes better and funnier satire on the situations of the united states?

I think more often than not, the people who don't like Vonnegut are people who aren't American. So they really don't get how hilarious some of his writing is.

Mother Night is his best work. And I really like Vonnegut.

>>3329175
>Kurt Vonnegut
He is the guy who's always on tumblr pages along with vintage typewriters and Jane Eyre book covers.

>>3329935
This

>>3326092
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-13-2005/kurt-vonnegut

>>3329960

This is a retarded generalization

>>3316372
Bluebeardfist

people don't talk about this one much, it's not told in his usual idiom. I read it when a friend lent it to me, not checking the author credit first. I blazed through it, and even as a Vonnegut fan, I didn't recognize it as him until after I'd read it. I'd recommend all the haters check this one out as it is less "gimmick-y," if you will. I personally like the gimmick-y stuff just for my personal taste, but my mans definitely threw a brick occasionally with that, resting on his laurels and whatnot. Timequake springs to mind. Bogambo Snuff Box should never have been published.

But even speaking of his trademark style, if you can't at least recognize that Slaughterhouse Five is the fucking truth, that's just hating for the sake of hate.

>>3329958
Yes. Delillo and Pynchy do a much better job at dealing with what have become the predominant issues in American life. Also the write sentences that I enjoy more and if you're going to pull some stereotypical "Pynchon's unreadable cause I get mega nervous around writers I perceive to be geniuses even if I've never read them" then Delillo still does it with no hard writing. The guy ain't Pynchon but he's damn good at weaving ideas and sentences that are suspiciously accessible and remind me of William Burroughs' best moments. I understand you'll probably just sarcastabomb me but these are all things I actually believe to be true.

>>3329996
So you think that The Things They Carried or The Naked and the Dead or Gravity's Rainbow didn't do better jobs with war and death and american anarcho-capitalism?

>>3326092
anon, thanks for the feels of relating that to me on /lit/; being my filter for that exchange rather than actually seeing it. I don't think I'm going to click the link, I'd rather get it from you. I'm totally serious, it's perfect.

>>3330003
Pynchon doesn't write about problems, though.

>>3330006
I'd add The Nova Trilogy by William S. Burroughs to that list as well

>>3330048
Someone hasn't read Pynchon.

I'm out.

>>3330052
This is how Pynchon fans deal with...what?
Pynchon doesn't write about problems.

>>3330006
truth can be multifaceted. it's not a contest to see who is best, jeez. SH5 stands on its own, irrespective of any other works.

I wanna read a Vonnegut novel that takes its self seriously for the most part. I just finished Breakfast Of Champions and thought it was pretty funny, but I want something that reads more like an actual novel.

what's the vonnegut book where he draws a picture of an asshole. thats my favorite

god bless u mr. rosewater is great

>>3316345
SH5
precedes checksum?

>>3332096

>>3329996 Bluebeard is a good place to start if you want a more serious novel from Kurt V. That or Mother Night.

>>3332101
Breakfast of Champions

Where can I find slaughterhouse-five ebook online for free?

>>3332550
FUCK YOU

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Slaughterhouse+5+ebook

>>3328646

I'd tried S5 before that and thought it really smug and annoying in tone. Only after Mother Night did I go back and read it again and realise that the smug attitude was all sarcasm. S5 is real good and has some great parts (like the bombing raid in reverse) but I still like Mother Night best (having also subsequently read Sirens and CC).

>>3329960

That's really funny given I really like this pithy line from Cat's Cradle:

"I was very upset about how Americans couldn't imagine what it was like to be something else, to be something else and proud of it."

he graded his books according to their value to him, and relative to his other books

slaughterhouse five and cats cradle got A+'s, where are totally merited and hands down his best work

however jailbird got an A, and that book was a piece of shit 4/10 would not finish so i am not thinking his other stuff is remotely worth reading if he thinks his books are not as good as jailbird even

I have to throw my two cents in for "God Bless You Mr Rosewater". I think it's definitely one of his most emotionally affecting works and is strangely unappreciated by Vonnegut enthusiasts.

I really like The Sirens of Titan. One of my favorites.

>>3332599
I honestly don't understand why he rated Jailbird that high. It was awful. Pretty much everything after Slaughterhouse-Five was awful too, except maybe Bluebeard.

>>3332744
check the wikipedia, it has his grades of all his novels on it

>>3332744
>>3332820
In "The Sexual Revolution", Chapter 18 of his book Palm Sunday, Vonnegut grades his own works. He states that the grades "do not place me in literary history" and that he is comparing "myself with myself." The grades are as follows:

Player Piano: B
The Sirens of Titan: A
Mother Night: A
Cat's Cradle: A-plus
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A
Slaughterhouse-Five: A-plus
Welcome to the Monkey House: B-minus
Happy Birthday, Wanda June: D
Breakfast of Champions: C
Slapstick: D
Jailbird: A
Palm Sunday: C

Player Piano: C-
The Sirens of Titan: A++
Mother Night: A++
Cat's Cradle: B+
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: B
Slaughterhouse-Five: B-
Welcome to the Monkey House: C
Happy Birthday, Wanda June: D
Breakfast of Champions: C+
Slapstick: A++
Jailbird: C-
Palm Sunday: C

>>3332899
>cats cradle
>only b+

nigga....

I'm reading Breakfast of Champions right now and it's pretty bad. The self references are tedious and pointed, and I don't how he doesn't get sick of writing like an simpleton observer, cause I'm sick of reading it.

>>3333075
See the cat, see the cradle?

And yes I agree the book deserves a better rating!

>>3333122

Shove it up your arse.

I liked Vonnegut at first, but every successive book I read leaves me less and less impressed.

Sirens of Titan was the last one I read, and I thought it was okay.

I'm kind of scared that if I were to re-read Breakfast of Champions I wouldn't like it nearly as much as I did the first time I read it.

>>3333122

I loved SH5 so I picked up Breakfast of Champions. I liked it for a while but by the end I was rushing because I was so sick of the book making a joke out of itself. By the time I got to the epilogue I was completely done with the shit and just skipped to the end.

To expand on:
>>3333323

Timequake is so awful it left a bad taste in my mouth and his books at this point feel like popcorn reading. I can finish one in half a day.

Still, Slaughterhouse 5, Cat's Cradle, and BoC are good books.

>>3333333
>>3333333
>>3333333
What a waste.

>>3333333
oh fuggggg

SH5, Sirens of titan, Breakfast of Champoins, Mother night, welcome to the monkey house, and cats cradle.
He is my favorite auther, i absolutely love him

>>3333333
it begins

>>3333333
God. Damn.

I like Vonnegut.

Enjoyable and easy. Maybe too easy. I read Beakfast of Champions in a day and Mother Night and Slaughterhouse Five in two days. On the one hand you have to give credit for readability and keeping me interested enough to keep on going. On the other hand I have to wonder if that really challenged me anywhere near as much as Ulysses or The Recognitions.

>>3333333

>>3332892
That's so saddening. Slapstick was actually pretty good. Certainly not worthy of a D.

>>3333333
Whoooooaaaaa

>>3333483

But you have to remember his purpose is not to challenge you. It's satire. He wants to make you think a little but mostly he wants you to laugh at yourself an your country (if you live in the US).

>>3333333
>>3333333
>>3333333
>>3333333

>>3333333
>>3333333

>>3333333
>>3333333
>>3333333

>>3333333

>>3333333

based nietzsche reporting in

>>3333491
>>3333494
>>3333497
>>3333498
Take it to /b/, guys. Please.

>>3333500

>>3333490
Well there's his purposes and there's my purposes, ya know cuz? Would I have known about the firebombing of Dresden without reading Slaughterhouse, prolly not. Maybe I would have run into Shostakovich's string quartet but would it have made any impact on me without Vonneguht? Prolly not. But Ulysses and The Recognitions I feel like they tampered with my mind a bit. They changed the way I read. Vonneguht enlightened me on some of the bloodier aspects of US history in Slaughterhouse though. He gave me a history lesson they neglected to give me in American History classes in high school and college.

>>3333333

>>3333333
If BoC is a good book in your opinion I'd hate to see the rest of the books you think are good.

>>3333500
This fuckin' guy.

come on, BoC is one of the greatest books of the contemporary american literature, not describing but letting the rearder to feel the depression and the troubles of the modern society. It's way more better than any Kerouac or Bukowski book imo.

>>3333328

I agree. One Vonnegut novel is enough to get his general idea.

>>3333623
>way more better than any Kerouac or Bukowski book imo.

>YEAH BUT IT BEATS TWILIGHT AND ANIMORPHS SO IT'S TOTALLY IN THE CANON U GUYS

>>3329996
Can we get a three way bluebeardfist going on? Even when I try and talk about Bluebeard to people I know who say they love Vonnegut they kind of just stare at me confused or say "yeah I read the first half it wasn't very good".

>>3333333
>>3333333
>>3333333

Anon's opinion confirmed as an objectual fact.

>>3334125
gb2/b/

>>3333333
>>3333333
>>3333333

ultimate truth is ultimate.

>>3333623
If it was somehow one of the greatest books of American literature(you have barley read anything how the hell would you know) that would be a very sad thing for American literature.

>>3333333

>>3334254

Do you really want me to start counting how many American books I’ve read? I doubt it.

Regarding BoC, let me tell you something, you ignorant bastards. The book is very Americana and since for lots of other titles this will be disadvantage, because the universal part is being lost because of that, for BoC it is something good. I want to stress on the following part of the plot: in the beginning Vonnegut start with something like satire on the star spangled banner since according to him – this is the only anthem in the world with so many question marks and it’s more confusing for the people than making some kind of patriotic emotions in them. Ok - after that there is a big story with lot of characters and very painful climax with violence and chaos. And in the middle of it – the only glimpse of hope for the whole book was a driver of an ambulance, watching a small American flag flourishing on the front of the truck thinking to himself “Still waving man” giving a direct answer to the lines Öh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave”- videlicet – people find hope and more precisely –find meaning in their life, in their country and even in their fuckin anthem . now fuck off.

>>3333333
nice

>>3335643
Only Boards of Canada may use the BoC acronym.

>>3336710
>>>/mu/

>>3336710
>Boards of Canada

I enjoyed Slaugherhouse V quite a bit (including the film, look it up), but my favorite is Galapagos. I found Cat's Cradle disappointing. I haven't finished Breakfast of Champions yet.

Anyone else find Galapagos to be their favorite?

Never read his books.

I only know that pseudo-intellectual 20-somethings love him, and everyone else seems to be indifferent.

>>3333333

I didn't find Cat's Cradle all that great. It's probably because I had read most of Vonnegut's other books before that and got accustomed to his manners already.

Mother Night is my favourite Vonnegut book.

any here dislike his Sci-fi works compared to his anti-war works?

The general consensus on /lit is that Vonnegut is great, but beginner level, most of /lit loves Kurt Vonnegut, although we will get pissed if you only read Slaughterhouse and Breakfast of Champions.