Thought you all might want to know that he has passed. He will be missed. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18066068/?GT1=9246
"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different." The thing that upsets me most is that he died during the Bush regime. Not the way he would've wanted to go at all.
Whatever existence may lie beyond this world is now funnier and wiser because of Kurt Vonnegut. What he wrote inspired me to observe, to think, to be a tenacious idealist, and, most importantly, to laugh for those who may not be able or willing to do so for themselves. Through his fiction, I learned to search for meaning and mirth in a world where there is an almost inseparable relationship between the comic and the tragic, the sublime and the absurd, the profound and the profane. God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut! Peace and Love
As I wrote in another thread: I'm usually not too saddened by someone's passing, especially at old age... but Kurt still had so much in him, he could still publish a million more books. He's one of my favorite authors... I feel like I know him through his books, like I have some sort of unspoken connection to him. Still, let us celebrate his life and his amazing books. I have 5 books of his left to read, all of them are sitting next to me on my desk... it's sad to think that those 5 books are going to be my last experiences of such a marvelous author. Hi ho. Anyhow, I'm gonna sticky this for a week or so, the world has lost one of its best authors, after all.
RIP to the best thing to ever come out of Indiana his legacy will live on as long as the written word
Aye, so it goes. I've just posted this over in the UK forum but thought you may like to read it in here aswell... I'd just heard this sad news in here tonight and pretty much immediately plucked 'Slaughterhouse 5' from the shelf and started reading. And there in the second chapter are some nice thoughts from Tralfamadore... "The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the differant moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It's just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is, "So it goes."" (Kurt Vonnegut, "Slaughterhouse 5")
All of this makes my heart hurt badly. But i didn't cry over it till last night on the Daily Show when at the very end Jon Stewart said "You might have noticed the world felt a little grayer today, b/c it got a little grayer" and then a clip w/ vonnegut talking about hippos and the clap. The world is losing all of its awesome and being left with assholes and morons =\
Kurt Vonnegut is, by far, my favorite author. Although most people cite Slaughterhouse Five or Cat's Cradle as their favorite Vonnegut work, mine is The Sirens of Titan. This book demonstrates that Vonnegut was far ahead of his time in his thoughts and ideas, as it was written in 1959. Obviously, Vonnegut had a good understanding of the principles of space and time, as he was able to make his far-fetched tales of space travel seem almost believable. Another thing I like about The Sirens of Titan is that it attempts to answer the ultimate question: “What is the meaning of human life?” Vonnegut does a superb job of not only addressing a very complex question, but also, in the process, makes the story interesting to read with his sardonic sense of humor. When Kurt Vonnegut passed away, the world lost a truly great writer.
Vonnegut reportedly smoked Pall Mall cigarettes, unfiltered, which he claimed is a "classy way to commit suicide."
Hehe, yeah. He tried suing them aswell didn't he? For promising to kill him through the smoking of their cigarettes which they never did!
