Hi NNN, No I haven't read any of his work, but I read that article with interest. Thanks for the link.
Which title would you particularly recommend to start with?
This quote from "Slaughterhouse Five" struck me as appropriate for our times:
“You know — we’ve had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves,” an English colonel says in the book. “We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. My God, my God — I said to myself, ‘It’s the Children’s Crusade.’ ”
I was also reading that in "Timequake", Vonnegut wrote that the character, Kilgore Trout, dies at the age of eighty-four. Trout apparently, was Vonnegut's alter-ego.
Just last month I read his last? book, A Man Without a Country, which began as memoirs and ended as an anti-Bush rant. I thought Cat's Cradle and Galapagos were both pretty good science fiction. I read Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions years ago and enjoyed them, too. He did a lot of interviews in recent years, always sounding so sane. He will be missed.
Posts: 2065 | Location: U.S. | Registered: 06-03-02
When I first read this in the early 60s, I was blown away. A decade or so later, I read it again, and understood much more, and was again blown away. I think it is time to read it again.
Posts: 17549 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
Lots of the comments here mention having been blown away by a first reading of Vonnegut. That was my experience too, not just by the ideas in the writing but by the genre-hopping writing itself.
Yes, dance girl, 'Slaughterhouse 5' would be a good place to start. I like 'Galapagos', too; it's a more recent and less celebrated book.
I thought Cat's Cradle and Galapagos were both pretty good science fiction. I read Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions years ago and enjoyed them, too. He did a lot of interviews in recent years, always sounding so sane. He will be missed.
