Novelist Kurt Vonnegut Dies at 84

by Democracy Now (reposted)

Thu, Apr 12, 2007 7:29AM

The author Kurt Vonnegut has died. He was eighty-four years old. Vonnegut authored at least nineteen novels including “Slaughterhouse-Five” and “Cat’s Cradle.” In recent years, Vonnegut was a fierce critic of the Bush administration and a columnist for the magazine In These Times.

In June of last year, Kurt Vonnegut spoke at the eighty-fifth birthday celebration for the peace activist Father Dan Berrigan.

Kurt Vonnegut, speaking in June 2006.

In February 2003, Vonnegut took part in a reading of Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove’s book, “Voices of a People’s Hisory of the United States.” Vonnegut read Mark Twain’s response to Theodre Roosevelt’s congratulating the commanding general in the 1906 massacre in the Philippines.

Kurt Vonnegut, speaking in February 2003.

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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/12/1347259

§Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84

by UK Guardian (reposted)

Thu, Apr 12, 2007 7:41AM

Kurt Vonnegut, the American novelist best known for his science fiction classic, Slaughterhouse-Five, which begins with the bombing of Dresden during the second world war and goes on to offer a blackly witty investigation of fate and free will, died yesterday. According to his wife, the photographer Jill Krementz, Vonnegut had sustained brain injuries from a fall at his home in Manhattan some weeks earlier.

Vonnegut's writing career spanned more than half a century and saw him produce 14 novels (many of which were bestsellers) as well as dozens of short stories, essays and plays. He ranged from the conventional science fiction of his 1963 novel, Cat's Cradle (which hangs around the discovery of "ice-nine", a substance with the properties of water but which is solid at room temperature) to the satirical Breakfast of Champions (1973) and the semi-autobiographical Slaughterhouse-Five, the catalyst for which was his own experience as a soldier with the US 106th Infantry Division and as a prisoner of war during world war two.

More
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2055226,00.html

§God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

by Counterpunch (reposted)

Thu, Apr 12, 2007 7:55AM

We Join Kilgore Trout in Mourning
God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

By RON JACOBS

It was 1972. I was a junior in high school. A number of my friends and I were sitting in the audience at the Amerika Haus in Frankfurt am Main, Germany waiting for the speaker to appear. A few minutes after 8:00 PM a gray-haired man who looked a little like Mark Twain in the shadowy light of the stage sauntered out. "Good evening," he began. He arranged his drink on the podium. Then he leaned the top half of his lanky frame on the podium's wooden top. Kurt Vonnegut's court was in session for the night.

I don't recall everything he talked about that evening, but do recall that he spoke rather critically about the nature of young people. It was his belief at the time that they were too interested in the short term solution. Hence their fascination with mood modifiers like LSD and other psychedelics. Unknown to us in the audience at the time, Kurt Vonnegut's son Mark was being institutionalized for a bout of some kind of mental illness. Mark wrote in his book about the experience that it was probably brought on because of a bout with psilocybin mushrooms. Like good kids, we sat there taking the scolding from this man who was as old as our fathers, only a lot hipper.

Two of the essential books on every literate, at least somewhat countercultural young person in the US's list at the time were Slaughterhouse Five and Cat's Cradle:. The former is an antiwar novel that needs to be dusted off and read anew by every US resident who gives a shit about the direction our country has been going since it was written. We are all Billy Pilgrim--the novel's protagonist--and we can all decide to either make a difference or not. The second novel is an allegory about a lot of things. There's a substance called Ice-Nine that cannot touch water without instantly freezing it. Not only does this substance freeze the water it first touches; it continues to freeze all the water that that water touched and so on, potentially freezing all the water in the world. In fact, that's how the book ends. The rock band The Grateful Dead named their publishing company Ice Nine. Interestingly enough, the Grateful Dead also represented another concept presented by Vonnegut in Cat's Cradle: the karass. Simply put, a karass is a group of people who, unbeknownst to them, are collectively doing God's will in carrying out a specific, common, task. The idea became the model for more than one group of young folks trying to put together a collective living situation.

More
http://counterpunch.com/jacobs04122007.html

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§Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: Sitting Up Mud Lies Down

by kirsten anderberg

Thu, Apr 12, 2007 11:02AM

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: Sitting Up Mud Lies Down
By Kirsten Anderberg (http://www.kirstenanderberg.com)
Written April 12, 2007

“”God made mud. God got lonesome. So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!" "See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars." And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud. I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done. Nice going, God. Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have. I feel very unimportant compared to You. The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around. I got so much, and most mud got so little. Thank you for the honor! Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep. What memories for mud to have! What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met! I loved everything I saw! Good night.” - The Last Rites of the Bokononist faith (Written by Kurt Vonnegut, jr., from “Cat’s Cradle”)

It is with sadness I eulogize Kurt Vonnegut, jr. today. He was an impressive sitting up mud! I used to cut classes in high school, to go sit under a tree and become engrossed in Vonnegut’s wonderful novel, “Cat’s Cradle.” I have used lines from “Cat’s Cradle” and “Breakfast of Champions” as life references since the 1970’s. Terms such as “karass,” “sitting up mud,” “bad chemicals,” and “Bokononism” have become commonplace in my life, due to my exposure to Vonnegut at an early age. My father gave me “Cat’s Cradle” to read, and I handed it to my teenaged son to read as well. I normally do not enjoy fiction, but Vonnegut was an exception for me. I delighted in his plots and twists, all heavily laden with sarcasm and political angst. “Cat’s Cradle” is a fictional story about what scientists and their families did the day America dropped the A-Bomb on Japan. I love the dark humor throughout “Cat’s Cradle.” And the child’s game “cat’s cradle” has never seemed the same after reading that book! In the book, the father who rarely speaks to his children, walks up to his son and leans into the kid, in a frightening manner, and holding a cat’s cradle made of strings in his fingers, says, “See the cat? See the cradle?!” Yes, that in a nutshell, is the madness and beauty of Vonnegut’s writing style...to read the rest of this article, visit http://resist.ca/~kirstena/pagevonnegut.html

For more information: http://www.kirstenanderberg.com

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