[NewMusic] Kurt Vonnegut R.I.P.

[Chris Broderick]

>From the Pynchon list, where much love and respect is
being showered:

And if I die-God forbid- I would like to to go to
heaven to ask somebody in charge up there," Hey, what
was the good news and what was the bad news?"

[...]

All I really wanted to do was give people the relief
of laughing. Humor can be a relief, like an aspirin
tablet.
    Kurt Vonnegut - A Man Without A Country

I'm still flabbergasted by the clarity of his prose. 
There's a lesson there for many contemporary novelists
(Pynchon included).  And few books have broken my
heart in the same was as did the end of Breakfast of
Champions.

He'll be missed.

-Chris

--- David Slusser <slusser at pixar.com> wrote:

> Don't know how he'd stack up
> with
> Melville and Dostoevsky in any technical sense, but
> he got
> to the point he was making quite well, without a lot
> of bull-
> shit.  I guess that makes him kind of a folk hero as
> well, and
> maybe that's where my great appreciation lies.  This
> was the
> Vietnam and Nixon era, and Vonnegut's moral compass
> was a
> beacon.  Oh, that we had something like that now. 
> His con-
> temporaries like Pynchon (a personal fav), Mailer,
> Kerouac and
> Burrows might get more prosaic credentials, but, I
> think Kurt
> nailed it quite clearly (and amusingly) every time
> out.
> 
> I love the implications of his alleged pseudonymous
> past, writing
> pulp material, which is only hinted at in something
> like Sirens of
> Titan.  As musicians, we can all immediately relate
> to the day gig.  In
> that book, (which also features Kazak, Hound of
> Space) he introduced
> the concept of (forgive my spelling) the
> "chrono-symplastic-infidibulum"
> which poses that time is a spriral, and that you can
> draw a vector
> through that spiral, and see that...to put it
> succinctly...the more  
> things
> change, the more they stay the same...you're just
> further along in  
> the cycle.
> 
> long live Kilgore Trout
> 
> 
> On Apr 11, 2007, at 11:29 PM, Moe! Staiano wrote:
> 
> > Sorry to see him go. Another great writer gone.
> >
> > http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/ 
> > 0,21985,21544354-5005961,00.html
> >
> >
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