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On November 03 2012 05:33 sevia wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 10:33 subliMe6 wrote:
Cat's Cradle is def one of my favorites if not my most favorite :D Same here. I picked it up on a whim one Saturday, and literally didn't set it down until I was done. Brilliant little book. Still my favorite poem to this day: Show nested quote +Tiger got to hunt
Bird got to fly
Man got to sit and wonder why, why, why?
Tiger got to sleep
Bird got to land
Man got to tell himself he understand.
That is generally one of the most popular "calypsos," as they call them. It makes me want to reread Cats...I really should. I read it a number of times, but not in a large number of years now. Bokonon is still one of my favorite characters from any book.
I was so excited years ago when Richard Kelly wrote an adapted screenplay for Cat's Cradle and it was close to becoming green-lighted by DiCaprio's company (Appian Way), but got shut down. Appian still owns the rights I think, but has not moved forward with it. Of all of Vonnegut's books, I think that CC is one that could definitely make a decent film.
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Happy birthday Kurt. This would have been your 90th birthday and it is also the 1st anniversary of this thread. We miss you and find comfort in your words.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/HGTK5.jpg)
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I find similarities between Kurt Vonnegut and George Carlin's philosophies and understanding of the world. I love them both though.
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Bokononism is one of the single best ideas I have ever heard of for a religion.
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Here is an article that the library shared today. I remember reading this when it first came out. It is called "Kurt Vonnegut, Joe Heller, and a Great Thanksgiving Message." I also added to the OP.
http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/11/kurt_vonnegut_a.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed: typepad/Bobsutton/my_weblog (Bob Sutton)
Joe Heller
True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel 'Catch-22'
has earned in its entire history?"
And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."
And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"
And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."
Not bad! Rest in peace!"
--Kurt Vonnegut
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For those who wanted to take a class lead by him, i present:
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2012/11/kurt_vonnegut_term_paper_assignment_from_the_iowa_writers_workshop.html
Kurt Vonnegut’s Rules for Reading Fiction
A term paper assignment from the author of Slaughterhouse-Five.
Posted Friday, Nov. 30, 2012, at 11:21 PM ET
Kurt Vonnegut.
Kurt Vonnegut.
Buck Squibb.
Suzanne McConnell, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s students in his “Form of Fiction” course at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, saved this assignment, explaining that Vonnegut “wrote his course assignments in the form of letters, as a way of speaking personally to each member of the class.” The result is part assignment, part letter, part guide to writing and life.
This assignment is reprinted from Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, edited by Dan Wakefield, out now from Delacorte Press.
FORM OF FICTION TERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT
November 30, 1965
Beloved:
This course began as Form and Theory of Fiction, became Form of Fiction, then Form and Texture of Fiction, then Surface Criticism, or How to Talk out of the Corner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro. It will probably be Animal Husbandry 108 by the time Black February rolls around. As was said to me years ago by a dear, dear friend, “Keep your hat on. We may end up miles from here.”
As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cynical and religious. I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be. “This above all ...”
I invite you to read the fifteen tales in Masters of the Modern Short Story (W. Havighurst, editor, 1955, Harcourt, Brace, $14.95 in paperback). Read them for pleasure and satisfaction, beginning each as though, only seven minutes before, you had swallowed two ounces of very good booze. “Except ye be as little children ...”
Then reproduce on a single sheet of clean, white paper the table of contents of the book, omitting the page numbers, and substituting for each number a grade from A to F. The grades should be childishly selfish and impudent measures of your own joy or lack of it. I don’t care what grades you give. I do insist that you like some stories better than others.
Proceed next to the hallucination that you are a minor but useful editor on a good literary magazine not connected with a university. Take three stories that please you most and three that please you least, six in all, and pretend that they have been offered for publication. Write a report on each to be submitted to a wise, respected, witty and world-weary superior.
Do not do so as an academic critic, nor as a person drunk on art, nor as a barbarian in the literary market place. Do so as a sensitive person who has a few practical hunches about how stories can succeed or fail. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows.
Since there are eighty of you, and since I do not wish to go blind or kill somebody, about twenty pages from each of you should do neatly. Do not bubble. Do not spin your wheels. Use words I know.
poloniøus
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On December 01 2012 15:06 xavierofsparta wrote:For those who wanted to take a class lead by him, i present: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2012/11/kurt_vonnegut_term_paper_assignment_from_the_iowa_writers_workshop.html+ Show Spoiler +Kurt Vonnegut’s Rules for Reading Fiction
A term paper assignment from the author of Slaughterhouse-Five.
Posted Friday, Nov. 30, 2012, at 11:21 PM ET
Kurt Vonnegut.
Kurt Vonnegut.
Buck Squibb.
Suzanne McConnell, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s students in his “Form of Fiction” course at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, saved this assignment, explaining that Vonnegut “wrote his course assignments in the form of letters, as a way of speaking personally to each member of the class.” The result is part assignment, part letter, part guide to writing and life.
This assignment is reprinted from Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, edited by Dan Wakefield, out now from Delacorte Press.
FORM OF FICTION TERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT
November 30, 1965
Beloved:
This course began as Form and Theory of Fiction, became Form of Fiction, then Form and Texture of Fiction, then Surface Criticism, or How to Talk out of the Corner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro. It will probably be Animal Husbandry 108 by the time Black February rolls around. As was said to me years ago by a dear, dear friend, “Keep your hat on. We may end up miles from here.”
As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cynical and religious. I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be. “This above all ...”
I invite you to read the fifteen tales in Masters of the Modern Short Story (W. Havighurst, editor, 1955, Harcourt, Brace, $14.95 in paperback). Read them for pleasure and satisfaction, beginning each as though, only seven minutes before, you had swallowed two ounces of very good booze. “Except ye be as little children ...”
Then reproduce on a single sheet of clean, white paper the table of contents of the book, omitting the page numbers, and substituting for each number a grade from A to F. The grades should be childishly selfish and impudent measures of your own joy or lack of it. I don’t care what grades you give. I do insist that you like some stories better than others.
Proceed next to the hallucination that you are a minor but useful editor on a good literary magazine not connected with a university. Take three stories that please you most and three that please you least, six in all, and pretend that they have been offered for publication. Write a report on each to be submitted to a wise, respected, witty and world-weary superior.
Do not do so as an academic critic, nor as a person drunk on art, nor as a barbarian in the literary market place. Do so as a sensitive person who has a few practical hunches about how stories can succeed or fail. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows.
Since there are eighty of you, and since I do not wish to go blind or kill somebody, about twenty pages from each of you should do neatly. Do not bubble. Do not spin your wheels. Use words I know.
poloniøus
Awesome. I am adding this to the OP. Thank you for sharing!
As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cynical and religious. I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be. “This above all ...”
Epic. This is KV in a nutshell.
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In response to Kurt's assignment article, Suzanne McConnell has just posted this article in depth about what it was like to be one of Kurt's students. I will add it to the OP as well.
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2011/12/fiction/kurt-vonnegut-at-the-writers-workshop
In that class, among Kurt’s several assignments, was one to write a four-page essay on “the mechanical and spiritual limitations…imposed by the short story as compared with the novel.” Though a “grotesque and stupid thing to do,” he wrote, another was to describe in less than twenty-five words the plot of four books we’d read, then discuss “the usefulness or uselessness of plots” to the writer and reader.
He composed the assignment playfully, in letter form, beginning “Dear Gus.” I wrote my paper likewise, from the point of view of a smart but airhead-sounding woman writing letters to her friend about the war ravaging her town between those favoring the short story and those on the side of novelists; her second letter dissected plots, and so on. “Full of life, Suzanne, and that’s all I ever ask of anyone.” He scrawled a fat A.
Also, I just reread Cats, which I hadn't done in years, and am starting a Breakfast reread. This time reading Cats, things were a bit different...my mindset now. I was reading it more as a simple diversion and didn't seem to take as much from it, but that is not always a bad thing. I was just pointing out the difference. =)
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I loved player piano. I might have to reread it again.
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On December 08 2012 02:06 GreYMisT wrote:
I loved player piano. I might have to reread it again.
I have good friends that love Player and Sirens best, those early dystopian-style books. I personally enjoyed them, but not nearly as much as when he found his voice in the 60s and 70s books. My sleeper favorite though is "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater." I think that one does not get as much credit as it deserves. =)
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On December 08 2012 02:10 TheAmazombie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 08 2012 02:06 GreYMisT wrote:
I loved player piano. I might have to reread it again. I have good friends that love Player and Sirens best, those early dystopian-style books. I personally enjoyed them, but not nearly as much as when he found his voice in the 60s and 70s books. My sleeper favorite though is "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater." I think that one does not get as much credit as it deserves. =)
Yea I read that one as part of a class in high school, It was very good though it has been a while.
Looks like I have 2 books to read again
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My mom said that Vonnegut was one of the coolest people she's ever met (when he came to speak at her school). She then proceeded to give me like every book he's ever written :p
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Here we go. "Everything is nothing with a twist."
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/fZ9dn.jpg)
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As a fan of sci fi, I really enjoyed Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle most of all.
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On February 07 2013 10:40 TheAmazombie wrote:This is not directly Vonngut-connected, but when I saw this article I was reminded of something that Vonnegut often said. http://mentalfloss.com/article/48793/18-complicated-scientific-ideas-explained-simplyHe said on multiple occasions (Cat's Cradle notably) that if a scientist can't explain what he is working on to a child, then he is a charlatan. Thought some Vonnegutians out there would appreciate that.
Reminds me of a quote from Einstein: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
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I have a 90 minute each way commute to work, and I've recently discovered the joy of audiobooks with good narrators after dismissing the format for so long. I've also somehow never read Vonnegut so far, but am downloading Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, and Breakfast of Champions to my iphone right now. Excited.
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On February 10 2013 06:01 Iranon wrote:
I have a 90 minute each way commute to work, and I've recently discovered the joy of audiobooks with good narrators after dismissing the format for so long. I've also somehow never read Vonnegut so far, but am downloading Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, and Breakfast of Champions to my iphone right now. Excited.
Awesome. I did listen to one of the SL5 audiobooks ones. Overall that one and Cat's will work...I am confused on how BoC will work over audio since there are a number of illustrations that are part of the story. You will have to let us know!
Audiobooks are one of those things that I love, but I never really listen to. I do listen to a lot of talk radio and whatnot though. If you love good audio storytelling, I suggest downloading the podcasts to the radio shows "This American Life" and "Radiolab." Those are the best and most interesting top-shelf audio storytelling you can find.
Good luck with Vonnegut and let us know how it turns out. Find yourself pondering questions surround him or the books, feel free to ask away. =)
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Found this pic, added it to the OP:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/nq9tqiF.png)
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EPT
