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I absolutely adore Vonnegut. Reading his works taught me more about writing than any English teacher and formed my world view more than any other author. I wi
by alextheparrot 10y ago
I absolutely adore Vonnegut. Reading his works taught me more about writing than any English teacher and formed my world view more than any other author. I wish I could have met him before he passed, but it is hard not to feel like you're conversing directly with him through his books.
- mr_overalls 10y agoI had the good fortune to hear him speak at my university in the late 1990s. Fantastic. Notably, he talked just like he wrote - good-natured, quirky, avuncular, a little bit cynical. For what it's worth, when you read Vonnegut, you're getting the real Vonnegut. He put his heart into his writings, leaving all of us (and future generations) the richer for it.
- mercer 10y agoThat's interesting to hear! I always felt like Kurt Vonnegut and Mark Twain were cut from the same cloth, but my impression was that Vonnegut was a bit too cynical (perhaps for perfectly understandable reasons) and his writing was less cynical than his person, whereas Twain came across as more WYSIWYG. It's nice to hear that his 'quirky, avuncular' side was very present in-person.
- HashHishBang 10y agoHold on, in a comparison between Vonnegut and Twain it ended up being Vonnegut who came off as too cynical? I've had the exact opposite reaction. Twain is borderline unreadable at points due to what seems like a near crippling cynicism just barely holding back from becoming outright whining.
- mercer 10y agoHmm. I read most of my Vonnegut after Twain, so it's possible that it's rather my own 'relationship' with cynicism that changed. I guess I'll have to re-read something from both!
- adyavanapalli 10y agoAs someone who hasn't read any Vonnegut, what would you recommend I read first?
- mmmpop 10y agoSlapstick was one of my favorites, plenty of sarcasm to go around. I've been trying to get through Player Piano (his first novel) but it's a tad dry.
- ranko 10y agoSlaughterhouse-five - probably his most well-known work, and at least partly based on his own experiences in Dresden in World War II. It's a very Vonnegut book, and a great gateway to the rest of his writing.
- sharkweek 10y agoSecond vote for Slaughterhouse Five - the "war backwards" section of the book, to me, is one of the most beautiful passages in any novel I have ever read. http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/279125-it-was-a-movie-about-american-bombers-in-world-war http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/279125-it-was-a-movie-about-...
- djeikyb 10y agoCat's Cradle. Not too long. Themes include science, apocalypse, and religion.
- beautifulfreak 10y agoI liked the Sirens of Titan. Here, read a couple of pages: https://www.flickr.com/photos/romasita/2766136797 https://www.flickr.com/photos/romasita/2766136797
- hkmurakami 10y agoFor some additional context, Sirens of Titan is one of his earlier works. The grammar is also more "standard", and is a more straightforward read than some of his more famous works.
- nickbauman 10y agoI was on a tear with his stuff in my mid 20's until I read Galapagos, which was so depressing, pessimistic and cynical I ended up deciding that would be the last book of his I'd read. He's certainly talented.
- roymurdock 10y agoRead 30 pages or so into Galapagos as I picked it up on a shelf at an AirBNB I passed through. His point about humans living as long as their teeth has always stuck with me.