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I get why you'd include him in the "having a laugh" group, but I don't really get that from Vonnegut, overall. The most-uplifting I usually find him is on par w

I get why you'd include him in the "having a laugh" group, but I don't really get that from Vonnegut, overall. The most-uplifting I usually find him is on par with Camus' "Myth of Sisyphus", so a kind of dark, existentialist sort of uplifting. Even most of his "jokes" are a pretty big downer when you think about it, and much of the time he's not telling jokes at all (Mother Night or Deadeye Dick or Galapagos or Bluebeard have humorous and absurd parts, but I'd not characterize the overall effect as funny or absurd, at all—the humor's so you come away with "well, that's life" and not "Jesus, I guess I should go kill myself")

dmux 4y ago
>the humor's so you come away with "well, that's life" and not "Jesus, I guess I should go kill myself" Exactly. "So it goes."
voz_ 4y ago
Yes, I could see that, but then you read Hocus Pocus, Pearls Before Swine, Cat's Cradle, and realize that, maybe, those serious books... are still humorous but in their own why? I do concede the point that some of Vonnegut's work is darker, and the humor is harder to find (perhaps akin to Catch-22s Snowden chapters, rather than say, Orr or The Anabaptists Chaplain's Wife). I think I probably got a strong feeling of this as the last Vonnegut I read was "Armageddon in Retrospect" which was almost a Sedaris like read. Or maybe I am misremembering. Either way, yea, Vonnegut is perhaps a stretch there :)