Kevin's Watch

What's your favorite story?
Love him?
Hate him? (Blasphemer! )

I've only read a couple of his books, Timequake, Welcome to the Monkey House, Galapagos, and I'm currently reading Slaughterhouse Five.

I absolutely love him.

Timequake is my favorite so far... the "Ting-a-ling" story still has me burst out into laughter randomly somedays.

Galapagos is my least favorite of the 3... my english teacher looooved it though.

The chess story in Welcome to the Monkey House is amazing
Harrison Bergeron and A Long Walk to Forever are also really, really great.

I took a class on Vonnegut my junior year in High School ('73). In fact my teacher, Scott Tappan, lived with Vonnegut for 2 months and wrote his thesis on him. One of his (Tappan's) relatives produced Between Time and Timbutku a film made for PBS around 1971--it's a compilation of a number of his stories including Slaughterhouse 5, Player Piano, Cat's Cradle, Welcome to the Monkey House, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater and Sirens of Titan (all of which we had to read before we saw the movie). I haven't read much of him since but have read Happy Birthday Wanda June, Galapagos and Breakfast of Champions. My dad attended Cornell with Vonnegut and Carl Sagan, and thought he was an opinionated kook. I love the way his mind works and got a serious kick out of Sirens of Titans and Galapagos.

..Well ,,yes,,Slaughter House 5 is his classic and yes,,everybody who can, should read something of his.

...For me..he is opposite of Stephen Donaldson. Vonnegut has a certain amount of fatalism,,or lack of hope in his writings. He makes great satire of the human condition but doesn't give any reason or perspective that the human condition will improve. Even when the human spirit is elevated to do good things, its devoured by the negative.

Stephen Donaldson sees the same problems of duality in everything human, but puts faith in the human passion for things to eventually improve. The hope is that the passion infused into life gets us at least moving and trying.

,,,I haven't read all his work. I did read SH5,,Sirens of Titan, God bless you Mr Rosewater. Player Piano, Welcome to the Monkey House, Breakfast of Champions,,maybe one or two others, but it was a long time ago. I think Douglas Adams came along and hijacked my interest.....MEL

The first Vonnegut book I ever read was Cat's Cradle, which I enjoyed a great deal. I also like Welcome to the Monkey House. I actually never read Slaughterhouse 5 back when I was first becoming acquainted with Vonnegut, but both my kids had to read it in high school, and I am reading it now.

I somehow got through SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5 but immediately blocked it out. Started BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS and quit. That was the end of my Vonnegut venture. Reading him was obligatory in my day, but sheesh! Pessimism doesn't begin to describe it.

You should try Cat's Cradle and Welcome to the Monkey House. Both are quite amusing.

It's been a long time since I've read any Vonnegut, none of it ever disappointed! I especially loved God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

Welcome to the Monkey House was one I did not like. The short story itself, I mean... I can't say I remember much of what the rest of the book contained. That whole "enjoy being raped thing" ticked me off.

Loved Slaughterhouse-Five, though, and Harrison Bergeron. I read an account of Vonnegut's time as a POW a long time ago, too, but I couldn't say what it was called. His other works are on my ever-growing "To Read" list.

MsMaryMalone wrote:You should try Cat's Cradle and Welcome to the Monkey House. Both are quite amusing.

Isn't Cat's Cradle the one that ends with all the Earth's water freezing solid, and Bokonon giving God the finger as he dies? If Dragonlily doesn't like Vonnegut because of his nihilistic cynicism (my choice of words for what 'pessimism doesn't begin to describe'), I don't think that book will improve matters much.

Slaughterhouse-Five has a claim to be called Vonnegut's best work — it is at any rate representative of his best work — but I found it singularly unappealing. The chapters set in Dresden after the bombing are written with a terrible intensity that makes the rest of the book seem better than it is. The science-fictional conceits are so-so. And although it's superficially clever, I soon wearied of the famous rhetorical device by which Vonnegut renders all loss and death insignificant by equating the greatest with the least. A man finishes his beer and throws away the empty: So it goes. Millions of people are slaughtered in an obscene holocaust that calls into question the whole fitness of human civilization to survive: So it goes. Guilt by association: trivialization by banality. Not my cuppa, I fear.

'Harrison Bergeron' is one of my favourite SF short stories, but even it has that leaden core of despairing cynicism beneath the mordant glitter of the surface. Vonnegut reminds many people of Mark Twain; me, too, but the bitter and misanthropic Twain of The Mysterious Stranger, not the passionate and humorous Twain of Huckleberry Finn.

I've read all of Vonnegut's stuff that I know about. I'm not sure if he or SRD is my favorite author.
My personal recommendation is one of his earlier books: Mother Night, about a WWII double agent. I've never heard anyone else call it one of his better works, though.

Variol Farseer wrote:

MsMaryMalone wrote:You should try Cat's Cradle and Welcome to the Monkey House. Both are quite amusing.

Isn't Cat's Cradle the one that ends with all the Earth's water freezing solid, and Bokonon giving God the finger as he dies? If Dragonlily doesn't like Vonnegut because of his nihilistic cynicism (my choice of words for what 'pessimism doesn't begin to describe'), I don't think that book will improve matters much.

While what you say is true, I have to say I found elements of Cat's Cradle amusing. I guess I see Vonnegut's writing more as poking fun than nihilistic cynicism, but maybe that's just my perverse view.

I found your comments on Slaughterhouse Five interesting, too. To tell you the truth, I am having a hard time getting through it. It just hasn't grabbed me like some of the other books I've read by Vonnegut.

Love him. Didn't everyone have their Kurt Vonnegut phase? Mine was just after my Herman Hesse phase! really.
favorites are Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Slaughterhouse Five, and Cat's Cradle and i DO think Mother Night is one of his best!!

my dad still raves about Breakfast of Champions but i've never read it!

Read Slaughterhouse Five and Cat's Cradle (does this make us granfalloons?).

Syl wrote:Read Slaughterhouse Five and Cat's Cradle (does this make us granfalloons?).

Possibly, Syl.

About five years ago I read Player Piano and was hooked. Since then I've read Slaughterhouse five, Breakfast of Champions, Cat's Cradle and God Bless you Mr Rosewater (twice, it's my favorite vonnegut novel. It has sooo much Kilgore Trout and he is, afterall, my inspiration to be the bad American sci-fi writer.)

I've read them all and am in the process of rereading them all. I'm at the library now having just returned God Bless You Mr. Rosewater and The Bagombo Snuffbox. Breakfast Of Champions is probably my favorite.

www.vonnegut.com/

Got Cat's Cradle on my shelf. Will get to it eventually. Also going to get Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse Five.

Slaughterhouse-Five is a great novel. It's so bizarre and relatively short, but can be read at so many different levels.

Lord Foul wrote:Got Cat's Cradle on my shelf. Will get to it eventually. Also going to get Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse Five.

Just finished Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions. CC has a great little part about an elevator operator that grabs his butt and shouts "Yes, yes!" whenever he's made a point.

The Leper Fairy wrote:
Just finished Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions. CC has a great little part about an elevator operator that grabs his butt and shouts "Yes, yes!" whenever he's made a point.

I almost forgot about that guy! Pretty funny.

I don't remember a lot of Cat's Cradle, but I do recall KV's jab at relgion. One of the characters concocted a religion to make the lives of the inhabitants of a small island more enjoyable. Then, to liven things up a bit, he (or he convinces the island's leader?) to ban the religion, making its practice punishable by death!

I love Bokononism--it's just so perfect...as long as they don't catch you practicing it