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Luke Pyzik HBS Monkey


Joined: 29 Aug 2004 Posts: 205 Location: Chicago
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 12:40 am Post subject: So it Goes ... |
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Tonight, Kurt Vonnegut died. In my humble opinion, he was single greatest writer to ever put pen to paper. He was my personal favorite, at least.
More than anything else I've ever read, he really helped shape the way I view the world. He was a humanist, but he found so much of humanity to be stupid and destructive. He was a pessimist, but his writing always contained glimmers of hope. When he wrote about the world spiraling into oblivion, he never knew whether to laugh or cry. Oddly enough, that's how I'm feeling as I read about his death. I want to laugh because he wrote a lot about dying, and he always seemed to imagine it would come with great revelatory punchline. I think about him getting his long awaited answers, and it makes me smile. But then I think about where the world is headed without a mind as eloquent as his, without someone to critique humanity as deftly as he did, and it makes sad.
Rest in peace, Mr. Vonnegut.
From "Slaughter-House Five":
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’.” |
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David Cornelius HBS Monkey


Joined: 30 Nov 2004 Posts: 3401 Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 10:45 am Post subject: |
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I'm reminded how much more of his work I need to read.
Oh, and he was brilliant in Back to School. |
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Kand El HBS Monkey


Joined: 23 Sep 2004 Posts: 1684 Location: New York
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 10:57 am Post subject: |
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Lord Dave I almost responded with one of the Back to School quotes before realizing after Luke's beautiful testament to him it would come off really snarky and cheap- so thanks for going there!
And another thing Vonnegut!
Seriously though, I did love his stuff- he was kind of a nicer version of Philip K. Dick in his writings (mostly thinking of Player Piano here), and really a giant of fiction- science or otherwise. |
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Rob Gonsalves HBS Monkey


Joined: 19 May 2006 Posts: 2024
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 11:55 am Post subject: |
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This'd be a good time for a feature on the various hapless attempts to turn his books into movies, but I haven't seen many aside from the one decent one, Mother Night. Others were Slapstick, Slaughterhouse-Five, Happy Birthday Wanda June, and Breakfast of Champions. Then there was the great little short Who Am I This Time?, directed by Jonathan Demme, and the made-for-Showtime Harrison Bergeron, which was quite good. _________________ But I wish the public could, in the midst of its pleasures, see how blatantly it is being spoon-fed, and ask for slightly better dreams.
- Iris Barry, Let's Go to the Movies, 1926
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Shoot him again. His soul is still dancing. |
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CharlesTatum

Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 1107 Location: Bismarck, North Dakota
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 12:42 pm Post subject: |
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Filmwise, I liked "Slaughterhouse Five" and "Breakfast of Champions," but "Slapstick" almost made me quit watching movies for the rest of my life. _________________ Charles Tatum's Review Archive |
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Oz HBS Monkey


Joined: 12 Jul 2002 Posts: 5895 Location: Vancouver, Canada
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 1:25 pm Post subject: |
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Which is how Breakfast of Champions made me feel.
Best tribute of all: Vonnegut on The Daily Show _________________
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MP Bartley HBS Monkey


Joined: 16 Jul 2002 Posts: 1818 Location: Sunderland, England
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 1:46 pm Post subject: |
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From Charles' BoC review: Quote: | "Slaughterhouse Five" is the most successful, while I have reserved a special place in my bowel tract for Jerry Lewis in "Slapstick (of Another Kind)." |
 _________________ "We hate the French! We fight wars against the French! Did all those men die in vain on the fields of Agincourt? Was the man who burned Joan of Arc just wasting good matches?" |
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Kand El HBS Monkey


Joined: 23 Sep 2004 Posts: 1684 Location: New York
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 2:06 pm Post subject: |
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I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer- I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing, and why, and where evolution is headed, and that's why we've got Giraffes and Hippopotami and the Clap.
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David Cornelius HBS Monkey


Joined: 30 Nov 2004 Posts: 3401 Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 3:05 pm Post subject: |
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I second the lameness of Breakfast of Champions. |
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SeveredAreolas

Joined: 20 Oct 2006 Posts: 125 Location: New Jersey
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Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 10:38 am Post subject: |
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I thought the film Slaughterhouse Five was OK. It was a tough novel to translate to the big screen, and it was done as well as possible.
I agree with David, though... I really need to read more of his work. _________________ http://blog.myspace.com/severedareolas |
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