Comments on: Kurt Vonnegut, R.I.P. http://blog.booklistonline.com/2007/04/12/kurt-vonnegut-rip/ Behind the Book Reviews--The Official Blog of Booklist Online Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:30:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.5 By: Keir http://blog.booklistonline.com/2007/04/12/kurt-vonnegut-rip/#comment-41496 Keir Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:27:31 +0000 http://blog.booklistonline.com/2007/04/12/kurt-vonnegut-rip/#comment-41496 Thank <i>you</i>, Donna. Thank you, Donna.

]]> By: Donna Seaman http://blog.booklistonline.com/2007/04/12/kurt-vonnegut-rip/#comment-41444 Donna Seaman Fri, 13 Apr 2007 04:47:03 +0000 http://blog.booklistonline.com/2007/04/12/kurt-vonnegut-rip/#comment-41444 Kurt Vonnegut has been compared to Mark Twain for his gift for meshing humor with gravitas. His great humanism illuminated our follies and tragedies, our yearnings and heroism. A mordant social critic and a brilliantly inventive storyteller, his irreverence balanced his sense of responsibility as he revealed the absurdity and horrors of war, and the thrill and danger of our enthrallment to technology. A man from America’s heartland who loved music and believed in the power of stories, Vonnegut wrote one of the world’s most arresting, provocative, and resonant antiwar novels. I reread Slaughterhouse-Five on the last day of 2006. I was drawn to it because I was struggling to express inchoate feelings about the future of reading and books, and because I was in despair over the Iraq War. The novel amazed me as it has each time I’ve read it. And each time, I’ve been struck by something different. During this reading, I lingered over Billy Pilgrim’s journey to the planet Tralfamadore. Strapped into a chair on a flying saucer, Billy asks for something to read. The only Earthling book in English the Tralfamadorians have on hand is Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls. After reading it, he “thought it was pretty good in spots.” But he doesn’t want to read it again, so he asks to see a Tralfamadorian book. He can’t read the language, “but he could at least see how the books were laid out––in brief clumps of symbols separated by stars. Billy commented that the clumps might be telegrams.” A voice explains: “There are no telegrams on Tralfamadore. But you’re right: each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message––describing a situation, a scene. We Tralfamadorians read them all at once, not one after the other. There isn’t any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.” Let us thank Kurt Vonnegut for many marvelous moments that will last for all time. Kurt Vonnegut has been compared to Mark Twain for his gift for meshing humor with gravitas. His great humanism illuminated our follies and tragedies, our yearnings and heroism. A mordant social critic and a brilliantly inventive storyteller, his irreverence balanced his sense of responsibility as he revealed the absurdity and horrors of war, and the thrill and danger of our enthrallment to technology. A man from America’s heartland who loved music and believed in the power of stories, Vonnegut wrote one of the world’s most arresting, provocative, and resonant antiwar novels. I reread Slaughterhouse-Five on the last day of 2006. I was drawn to it because I was struggling to express inchoate feelings about the future of reading and books, and because I was in despair over the Iraq War. The novel amazed me as it has each time I’ve read it. And each time, I’ve been struck by something different. During this reading, I lingered over Billy Pilgrim’s journey to the planet Tralfamadore. Strapped into a chair on a flying saucer, Billy asks for something to read. The only Earthling book in English the Tralfamadorians have on hand is Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls. After reading it, he “thought it was pretty good in spots.” But he doesn’t want to read it again, so he asks to see a Tralfamadorian book. He can’t read the language, “but he could at least see how the books were laid out––in brief clumps of symbols separated by stars. Billy commented that the clumps might be telegrams.” A voice explains:

“There are no telegrams on Tralfamadore. But you’re right: each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message––describing a situation, a scene. We Tralfamadorians read them all at once, not one after the other. There isn’t any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.”

Let us thank Kurt Vonnegut for many marvelous moments that will last for all time.

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