eFilmCritic

Luke Pyzik · Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 12:40 am Post subject: So it Goes ...

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’.”

David Cornelius · Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 10:45 am Post subject:

I'm reminded how much more of his work I need to read.

Oh, and he was brilliant in Back to School.

Kand El · Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 10:57 am Post subject:

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.

Rob Gonsalves · HBS Monkey Joined: 19 May 2006 Posts: 2024

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.
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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.

CharlesTatum · Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 12:42 pm Post subject:

Filmwise, I liked "Slaughterhouse Five" and "Breakfast of Champions," but "Slapstick" almost made me quit watching movies for the rest of my life.
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Oz · Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 1:25 pm Post subject:

Which is how Breakfast of Champions made me feel.

Best tribute of all: Vonnegut on The Daily Show
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MP Bartley · Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 1:46 pm Post subject:

From Charles' BoC review:

Kand El · Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 2:06 pm Post subject:

David Cornelius · Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 3:05 pm Post subject:

I second the lameness of Breakfast of Champions.

SeveredAreolas · Joined: 20 Oct 2006 Posts: 125 Location: New Jersey

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.
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