bobfrombob Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 That book takes about twenty seconds to read. You actually put it down? Yeah, and for some reason I feel bad about it now. Started it Monday and got distracted with other things. I'll certainly finish it tonight. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
cryptique Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 Yeah, and for some reason I feel bad about it now. Started it Monday and got distracted with other things. I'll certainly finish it tonight.Just giving you guff. I love that book dearly. It was my first Vonnegut. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
bobfrombob Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 Just giving you guff. I love that book dearly. It was my first Vonnegut.No problem. Monday it was just a book. This morning I'm lying in bed and hear he's dead and it was no longer just a book. It felt very odd and I can't say why. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Blue and Green Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 He will be missed. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
EliotRosewater Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
embiggen Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 he's one of my all time favorit authors. in my freshman year of college, he was all that I read in my spare time. God Bless you Mr. Vonnegut Quote Link to post Share on other sites
intodeep Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 So it Goes. 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. -Slaughterhouse Five "When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon," Vonnegut told The Associated Press in 2005. "My father, like Hemingway, was a gun nut and was very unhappy late in life. But he was proud of not committing suicide. And I'll do the same, so as not to set a bad example for my children." Kurt's work was awesome Everthing was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Whitty Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 Timequake has two passages that seem appropriate here. Our last conversation was intimate. Jane asked me, as though Iknew, what would determine the exact moment of her death. She may havefelt like a character in a book by me. In a sense she was. During ourtwenty-two years of marriage, I had decided where we were going next, toChicago, to Schenectady, to Cape Cod. It was my work that determined whatwe did next. She never had a job. Raising six kids was enough for her. I told her on the telephone that a sunburned, raffish, bored butnot unhappy ten-year-old boy, whom we did not know, would be standing onthe gravel slope of the boat-launching ramp at the foot of Scudder's Lane.He would gaze out at nothing in particular, birds, boats, or whatever, inthe harbor of Barnstable, Cape Cod. At the head of Scudder's Lane, onRoute 6A, one-tenth of a mile from the boat-launching ramp, is the big oldhouse where we cared for our son and two daughters and three sons of mysister's until they were grownups. Our daughter Edith and her builderhusband, John Squibb, and their small sons, Will and Buck, live there now. I told Jane that this boy, with nothing better to do, would pickup a stone, as boys will. He would arc it over the harbor. When the stonehit the water, she would die. "At ten o'clock the old, long out-of-print science fiction writer announced it was his bedtime. There was one last thing he wanted to say to us, to his family. Like a magician seeking a volunteer from the audience, he asked someone to stand beside him and do what he said. I held up my hand. "Me, please, me,"I said. The crowd fell quiet as I took my place to his right. "The universe has expanded so enormously," he said, "with the exception of the minor glitch it put us through, that light is no longer fast enough to make any trips worth taking in even the most unreasonable lengths of time. Once the fastest thing possible, they say, light now belongs in the graveyard of history like the Pony Express. "I now ask this human being brave enough to stand next to me to pick two twinkling points of obsolete light in the sky above us. It doesn Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sir Stewart Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 See you later, Kurt Vonnegut. My dad met him on the Cape in the 70s, had him sign a copy of Slaughterhouse. Dad said he was kind and took his time, and seemed genuinely interested in my Dad's thoughts on his writing. Breakfast of Champions is the best.Granfaloonery. Drawings of assholes.Galapagos is the best. Vonnegut in a bar spying on his own character.Maybe I'll see him on an airplane someday. Bye. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
LouieB Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 Oh man. This digs deep. I'm proud to say he was a product of the area I live in.Slaughterhouse 5 is one of the greatest books ever. I had not realized until the story running in the Trib today that he had also worked at the City News Bureau here in Chicago for awhile. Many of the greats did time at City News, which is also long gone. RIP to Kurt.. he apparently tried to take his own life a couple decades ago. LouieB Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Artifex Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 "Galapagos is the best." Geez, I thought me and my brother were the only people that read that book. Good stuff. He will be missed, but man, what a legacy. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Boots Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 Read all his books over 2 summers when I was about 20 He will be missed, but he lived a good long life and got to smoke the whole way through! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
JesusEtc Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 [quote name='pn Quote Link to post Share on other sites
MrRain422 Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 Here's something awesome that he once said that is sadly apropos now: "I am, incidentally, Honorary President of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that totally functionless capacity. We had a memorial service for Isaac a few years back, and I spoke and said at one point, 'Isaac is up in heaven now.' It was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, 'Kurt is up in heaven now.' That's my favorite joke." Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sir Stewart Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 Vonnegut is up in heaven now. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
embiggen Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 Vonnegut is up in heaven now. do you think he's talking about us? if so, what would he say? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
MrRain422 Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 He's probably just laughing, since Sir Paul just told his favorite joke. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sir Stewart Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 Lovely that it started a new page, away from the giveaway! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
IATTBYB Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 I re-read Slaughterhouse 5 last week for the heck of it. This is truly sad news, but as others have already said, so it goes. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sir Stewart Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 http://wilcoworld.net/ Quote Link to post Share on other sites
brianjeremy Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 I've been making my way through Vonnegut's books and this is indeed sad news. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Dreamin' Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 http://wilcoworld.net/I was just thinking about that quote. Here's the source: Vonnegut's Blues For America I miss him already. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Mr. Heartbreak Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 I'd forgotten all about that epitaph. Glad to see it posted on wilcoworld ... way cool.He was unique, and one of my favorites, as I mentioned on here a while back. He and Hunter Thompson dominated my teens and thoroughly corrupted me, and for that, I thank them. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
MattZ Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 http://wilcoworld.net/ What a great fucking band we are all fans of. Jeezus Christ they never cease amazing me. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sweet Papa Crimbo Posted April 12, 2007 Share Posted April 12, 2007 sad sad news. poo tee weet. People...he was 84. Rejoice in his life...we all end up in the same place. Some of us just have a more interesting journey. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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