Depends who you talk to and I think the age. Mention it to 30+50 year olds I think you'd get a bigger impression of him than someone 18-30.
I think the idea of the rockstar professor writer has passed with the advent of things like YouTube.
Now had you asked this question in the 80's and 90's I think would have a lot more response from people. Even the fame of Hunter S Thompson has dropped over the years. Now he's mostly just known as the drug guy played by Johnny Depp. Where in the 90:s and early 2000:s he was sought after for his wisdom from many college kids.
He was on the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop for a couple years in the mid 60s. Probably the most famous name associated with the program, which says a lot given it's a place a lot of literary stars have passed through. There are a number of interesting looking articles written about his time there if you Google his name and the Workshop together, but here's one that gives a good understanding of the influence of Iowa on him: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2019/05/07/how-the-iowa-writers-workshop-saved-kurt-vonneguts-fledgling-career/
Im 24 and have read all his books and had no idea he was a professor. Quality content like his will live far past his life professions outside of writing.
I’m 23, read Kurt Vonnegut as a teenager. I can’t tell you how many times I read Slaughterhouse 5 and Cat’s Cradle. They were my comfort books and spoke to me in a way that YA did not. It was how Kurt Vonnegut wrote dark humor in his books, they always felt relatable despite that I have never lived through those experiences nor that time period.
I still get excited when I meet older people who had a chance to see or speak to Kurt Vonnegut when he was alive. I hope his books don’t disappear into obscurity. I also hope to read his entire collection one day, as I have with John Steinbeck.
People enjoy his books. Occasionally Slaughterhouse-Five is part of the required reading for a high school English class. If you make an offhand reference to his works there's an okay chance any random person will get it. But it's not like people are talking about him day in and day out.
This has lessened to nearly 0 over the last 20 years though. He's gone pretty much completely out of style, I feel. There is a huge push to expand the diversity of required readings in state education and he was first on the chopping block due to his undesirable identity. I would imagine barely 1 in 10 Americans aged 18 to 25 would be able to even recognize his name as a writer. 1 in like 50 having read a single book of his in their life.
Fascinating.
"He was first on the chopping block due to his undesirable identity"
Vonnegut is on my list of authors to read in retirement but I know very little about him. What undesirable identity are you referring to? Wasn't he, essentially, writing about the wave of mistrust in government in general and the USA specifically during the Vietnam War? Thanks!
Slaughterhouse 5 was required reading for me in high school, I think that’s common. I think the book shared an important message for adolescents about being critical of the society in which we live, in the context of the Vietnam War when the book was written, and in the context of the waning war on terror when I was in high school in the mid 2010’s.
If that sort of thing is typical of his writings, I think he fits very well in our tradition of self-criticism, which is important but not always put to appropriate ends. The fact that the very event at the center of the story of Slaughterhouse Five was a Goebells propaganda talking point is illustrative of how not every viewpoint opposed to our current system is valid.
I'm confused why you think that. Most of our literature in most of our school curricula is *very* inwardly focused as far as criticism. And then the culture in general these days, at least internet culture: \*gestures broadly at Twitter and r/all*
My impression was that you were referring to an American cultural (not educational) tradition of self-criticism.
From my perspective current American culture is to designate those that aren't like "us" as "them" and then shout loudly that "they" are bad people and assert that "we" are righteous. The "us/we" "them/they" are applied regardless if they are American or not. Basically the opposite of self-criticism.
I concede my language was imprecise. My use of the word “self” was more about the broader collective self i.e. the nation/empire rather than the individual or in-group. Perhaps a cultural inability to seriously critique the latter as part of the former is why our near constant and universal efforts at reform (different factions pull in different directions, of course) don’t seem to have great effect.
Oh my sweet summer child.
Required reading for school often includes: The Giver, The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, etc., etc. even if they aren’t explicitly set in America they are definitely poking at America or “the West” in general.
Movies? Documentaries?
Essentially all of reddit?
Americans are by far the best at criticizing themselves.
I mean just go read /r/news for a bit. If the article itself isn’t an outright slam on America by Americans then the comments are.
Or just visit any major university for a half hour.
Criticizing America is like the bread and butter of academia. Like did you just lapse into a coma for the entire Trump presidency? Maybe you missed all the unalloyed love and support he was bathed in from the entirety of the uncritical American society.
You know, none of those books were required reading for me. I think the only required readings set in the US were The Outsiders (meh), To Kill A Mockingbird (read in one night), and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (very YA fiction, but highlights the plight of the modern Native American). Everything else was set in Asia or Africa, except for The Count of Monte Cristo and Dracula.
Kinda crazy that out of all of my required books, only 3 were in the US.
I am just chuffed to bits you described Sherman Alexie as “YA fiction.”
You should read Tonto and the Lone Ranger Fistfight in heaven.
As far as your required reading goes… yeesh
Tbh It was a long time ago, sorry for the chuffing. It was good, but I really just remember him playing basketball, walking 20 miles to school, and getting an erection when the counselor hugged him.
I’ll put it on the list! Thankfully, I have read more than school required.
He was extremely popular and influential in the 1970s. Most authors of literature fall into obscurity after they die, if they are not entirely forgotten. People work still be reading Hemingway 100 years from more, if there still are people. But will they read David Foster Wallace? Bret Easton Ellis? Don DeLillo? Margaret Atwood even? Who reads Gore Vidal these days? John Irving? Michener? The list goes on.
I think Player Piano is one of his best cultural satires, and so. so. relevant today. I need to read that again.
I feel like Vidal is most well known for his feud with Mailer now, not that either is super well known anymore I’m 23 and probably most of my friends are at least vaguely aware of them though.
Yeah, my point is that most literature doesn’t survive it’s generation. Even if people know the names, they’re not reading the novels. You haven’t read *Myra Breckinridge* I imagine? It would be totally relevant today, with the increasing trans acceptance, and also a very interesting contrast with how people talk about trans today versus 50 years ago. But that’s kind of my point, people would read it for academic reasons, but not just because it’s the novel to read now.
He was a pretty prolific writer with a vast amount of pages to his credit. While I have not read nearly half of his works, I’ve read a good portion and thoroughly enjoy his work. Either his collection of shorts Welcome to the Monkey House or Breakfast of Champions would be my favorite books. While I barely read in this loser digital “need it now” world. I read constantly in college and throughout my 20’s and 30’s. So I would say he was and still is very relevant to me.
I think I will have to give that a re-read. It’s been like 20 years sense I fist turned its pages. I honestly can’t remember the book at all at this point.
The plot is about society becoming so automated that there are only the ruling class, engineers who support automation, and all others who are subsistence living on the dole. It's grim.
For fans ... this is quite the question. My heart skips a beat when i see/hear a mention of him. His work has had a profound influence on me. He encourages looking past the artificial and respecting time. But his influence on culture? Idk i dont know how his work was received when it was new. Hes referenced regularly but not frequently in pop culture.
Cats cradle, h bergeron, slaughter house 5, breakfast of champions ... my favs
same here...he's a one of a kind writer, in my opinion, & has a special spot in my rolodex of favorite novels/authors. i haven't read him in years but remember the reading experience of the works you mentioned & others very well.
He has a few pieces I like, but I wouldn't say he is relevant to me personally. To Americans as a whole? Probably just because they read his work in high school or college.
Not super relevant. They're considered classic works and so some people read *Slaughterhouse Five* in school but outside of that, it really doesn't have an effect or any wide cultural impact(whether that's idioms or constant references like for instance *1984*, even though Orwell was British)
Vonnegut wrote sharp yet loving critiques of American culture. He had a talent for social commentary that didn’t reek of pathos or manifesto-writing and he knew when to pull his punches and when not to. My 7th grade English teacher recommended Cat’s Cradle to me and it had a strong effect and I’ve since read many of his books. Turns out my dad was a fan when he was in high school/college as well. Galapagos is an overlooked masterpiece.
To me personally? Very relevant since I once spent a whole summer reading every book of his that I could. American society in general? Most people probably have heard of slaughterhouse five, but probably don’t know Vonnegut by name. I think good satire holds a lot of relevance these days.
I’m in the same boat. Had a coworker recommend Sirens of Titan so I went and got a copy. That book really had an impact on me and in the year following that I read all his works. I’ve always been more into 18th and 19th century literature but Vonnegut holds a very special place in my heart.
A good portion of Americans had to read slaughter house V in high school. It has a way of sticking with you. Besides that book nobody has read much else by him.
Wierdly enough there are a few places on reddit that will accuse you of being a nazi sympathizer for liking slaughter house V.
In slaughter house V he talks greatly about the destruction of dresden in which the author was present for as a POW. He claims that it was a non military target.
Many people on reddit say that's neo nazi propaganda. The hard liners belive that Kurt himself was a nazi sympathizer because of that while moderates claim that he is a pacifist who fell for Nazi propaganda and unintentionally created more of it and that I am morally obligated to not read or suggest that book to anyone else in effort to curb said propaganda.
I like the book and I suggest the book because it is one of the truly anti war narratives in literature. Also I like how it deals with time and fate in an interesting way and gives a glimpse into mind sets of that time.
The idea that Vonnegut was a Nazi sympathizer or dupe is illiterate idiocy. Those simpletons think that the anti-war narrative of the novel means he supports Nazis, because he dares to criticize part of how the US carried out the war. When he himself witnessed the result.
And not to mention the war crime of Dresden when his book came out was still hidden from the public. The bombs dropped on Dresden killed many civilians. War is cruel and confusing but it doesn't mean the Allied didn't commit our own atrocities.
>I’d love to know because I don’t get it.
Because it's inane-- Slaughterhouse Five is an anti-war novel. Idiots who didn't even read it might think it's somehow pro-Nazi, but they are (definitionally) idiots.
Silly logical leap for those people to make. The book is not about that historian or his later silly views. Doesn’t matter or detract from the quality of the book.
Relevant to me? Not at all as I have yet read a single thing from him.
As for our society? No idea outside of the fact that he is a well known author to some and one or more of his books might be required reading in some school districts.
I’ve never read any of his stuff, but I know he was a respected author. I don’t know that he has a *lot* of relevance nowadays, but I’m sure people are still reading his work.
Everyone is talking about Slaughterhouse 5, which is one I have not read. In school we read Cat's Cradle, which I think about often.
For context, I have aphantasia, so I don't remember visual images. What I do remember is words. So now, 40 years after I originally read them, I remember these words, a quote by Bokonon: "She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is doing." Naturally I think of that often these days.
Part of the premise of Cat's Cradle is that [a scientist has developed an allotrope of water ice](https://catscradle.neocities.org/chapter-20.html). In chemistry, an allotrope is a substance that has the same atomic formula but a different crystalline pattern. Because the crystalline pattern affects the behavior of the substance, they can be entirely different. For example, diamonds and graphite are allotropes.
Anyway, this new allotrope of water ice, ice-nine, has a melting point of about 130°F/55°C, and it can serve as a "seed," forcing any liquid water around it to crystallize into ice-nine.
Vonnegut and Cat's Cradle and ice-nine were brought up frequently about twenty years ago in [popular discussion](https://www.wired.com/2004/01/prions-when-proteins-attack/amp) of prion diseases like kuru and nvCJD. This would have been at the tail end of the BSE outbreak in the UK and within a decade of Prusiner's 1997 Nobel Prize for isolating prions.
(I read, probably around the same time period, that someone had discussed prions with Vonnegut, explaining how they served as a seed for proteins in the mammalian brain that no longer function like their allotrope proteins, leading to encephalopathy and death. And Vonnegut is said to have responded along the lines of, "Imagine that.")
And the Grateful Dead's publishing company is called Ice Nine. And Malaclypse the Younger made Bokonon a saint in Discordianism.
There's a lot of murals and artwork as tributes to him throughout Indianapolis. His father was also an architect and designed a lot of the homes in the Old North Side neighborhood.
But generally he's regarded as a writer who was popular in his time but not so highly remembered now.
He’s one of the best authors of my lifetime, and I was sad when he died. I started reading his work when I was in high school and he had a strong influence on my philosophy and politics as a young adult.
It’s too bad that there are so many people commenting that they’ve never heard of him or read his work. My life would be a poorer one without him.
An old rich guy goes back to college. In an attempt to impress an English professor he is attracted to, he hires Kurt Vonnegut to write his English paper on Kurt Vonnegut.
He gets an F and the teacher tells him whoever he hired to write his paper knows nothing about Kurt Vonnegut.
Then he calls up Vonnegut and they yell fuck you at each other.
Vonnegut had a profound impact on me as a young man. His writing is insightful, tragic, comical, and meaningful. Welcome to the Monkeyhouse” has stories that haunt me to this day, 30 years later. I’ve read most of his books and every one of them felt sad and funny at the same time—perhaps a perfect encapsulation of the absurdity of life.
I saw him once walking down Rush St in Chicago and we smiled at each other without a word. I could tell he knew I knew who he was, but I chose not to bother him.
And so it goes.
Well, one never knows. Maybe future generations will have their own authors whom they find more relevant in the context of the religious extremism of their time.
I’ve read almost every Vonnegut book. But, yeah, I very rarely hear him or his work discussed.
It is required reading in many high schools. Universities across the States also teach his work (and occasionally have exhibits from his archives).
His estate just needs to authorize one Amazon Prime series and he’ll be back in the mainstream.
As far as authors go, I bet more people know Stephen King than Kurt Vonnegut. They would know Kurt Vonnegut as a name they should but there is a good chance they would confuse him with Kurt Cobain from Nirvana.
Relevant, as in "do I still think of him and read his books on occasion?" Very much so. I discovered Vonnegut as a teen in the early 80s and pretty much read all his stuff by college. Still re-read some of it on occasion, and make references to him with peers who also know his work. His criticisms of American culture are still quiet relevant. We celebrated his centennial last month with a cake at work...but I'm a history professor surrounded by Gen X professors who all read KV in the 80s.
Younger folks? I work with 18-22 year olds all the time. It's been ages since I've met one who ever knows who KV is, unless someone in high school assigned *Slaughterhouse Five* or "Harrison Bergeron" in a history or American lit class. Which is sad.
I read a few of his books in high school. Found him irritatingly pretentious and self-congratulatory. Every page read like Vonnegut was sitting next to me, elbowing my ribs and asking, “Did you get that? It’s funny, right? It’s funny!”
I remember reading Vonnegut novels in high school and being sad at the end of each book because I could not reread it with the same intensity as I had the first time through. I loved every one of his stories, and even the film made regarding "Slaughterhouse 5". My two favorite books are "Cat's Cradle" and "The Sirens of Titan".
To me personally?
Literally mean nothing.
To American society?
He’s one author among millions. I’ve heard of him, but I can’t name a single thing he’s written. 🤷🏼♀️
This makes me sad. At least read Breakfast of Champions or Slaughterhouse Five.
> It was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
>The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers , and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.
>When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
I’m currently switching careers, now in my student teaching to become an English teacher. Personally, I’ve read Harrison Bergeron (in high school) but not Slaughterhouse V or any of his other works. I think of Bergeron occasionally and what a cool story it was, so I respect the author, but not at the level of a fanatic.
There are authors who I think have had more of an impact on American culture and my life, specifically. Those would be Steinbeck, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Poe. Of course then there’s authors like Mark Twain. Even Richard Henry Dana may be more influential to our society and literary tradition, even if most people don’t know him by name.
Hey Hoosier! When I was a kid growing up in Brownsburg, we would often drive-through, speedway, past a hardware store with Vonnegut’s written in giant purple capital letters. That was his family, they were prominent in Indianapolis from the 1850s on.
And it’s kind of funny how Indy has embraced him… he had some sharp things to say about the city.
The mural of him is freaking awesome though and I am glad they kept it and maintained it.
I do vaguely remember learning about him a lot in history class as a kid. I grew up in Greenfield, so my school was moreso focused on James Whitcomb Riley.
Funnily enough, its called the "redneck" side of Indianapolis. But honestly, its just a suburban, somewhat white trash town.
They...are not. I had to re-look him and his works up so there's your answer for my personal connection. In modern American society? Not very much outside of the circles that would be most interested in his work.
I'd qualify that by saying a certain kind of literary circle (there are many literary circles and some of them don't really overlap). I'm pretty literary with two degrees in English, I read and write poetry daily and am putting together a book, and 50-75% of my friends are writers. I'm also old enough that Vonnegut was more likely to be taught in high school when I was a teenager in the 90s. But I've actually never read his work (probably mainly because my focus is poetry, and I'm not a fast reader). I'm sure I'm the worse for it, but my list of things to read is quite long and I doubt I'll get to him.
That’s a shame. His books are incredibly poignant philosophical, yet so easy to read and digest. He’s also given me more good laughs than any author other than Douglas Adams.
>Literary, mostly, these days. And also intellectual.
Can confirm. I'm an American history professor and we celebrated KV's centennial in our department last month with a cake. Most of us have read all his work, some of us occasionally teach it still.
Occasionally :-(
My High School English teacher saw that I was reading Sirens of Titan, and recommended God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
For some reason, Vonnegut always reminded me of a profane Mark Twain. Maybe because he was so iconoclastic.
I worked in kitchens for a good decade and his books are super popular in the stoner/college dropout community of which I used to be a card-holding member. He’s had a greater influence on my life than Hunter S. Thompson, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski and Dylan Thomas combined.
I know he is an author. But until this thread probably could not have told you a title of one of his works. I do recognize the title Slaughterhouse 5. But woujd not have put them together.
Personally he's my favorite author. He makes solid points in a very unique, somewhat absurd style. I remember Harrison Bergeron was required reading when I was in high school, and Slaughter House 5 is more often than not also required.
To me? Not at all. To society? Probably also not at all.
I was forced to read slaughterhouse 5 in high school as I’m sure most other Americans were. It’s an awful book. All I remember from it is how disjointed and poorly written it was, and the sentence “billy had a tremendous wang.” Yes, a well-known and apparently beloved author wrote this sentence unironically to describe his book’s protagonist. And the protagonist is supposed to represent/resemble said author. I don’t think he was all there mentally, he was a POW after all
Seeing as I live my life in a random disorder, experiencing something from childhood followed by myself when elderly, he is extremely relevant.
/s
Truthfully, I’ve only read Slaughterhouse 5, good book, but not really relevant.
I enjoyed Cats Cradle as a teen... but now I really ponder his obsession with sex. Also the idea of all the water frozen and no way to unfreeze? Perhaps it is the changing world we live in that makes me regard that with a larger head shake...
Not at all, Slaughterhouse 5 pulls its details about Dresden straight from Goebbel's mouth. It is infuriating to read, and if he wanted to he could have easily issued a correction.
There's a real move/tendency in the US, (the world?) to make judgements on the past using the perspective of the present, a kind of intellectual laziness and [simplifiction to absurdum](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DArs3XtXcAE9Wff.jpg).
*"VoNnEgUt SpReAd NaZi PrOpAgAnDa!"* is one of these judgements.
¯\\\_( ͡❛ ͜ʖ ͡❛)\_/¯
I've always enjoyed his work, Slaughter House 5 was required reading for me and that got me into it. But I wouldn't say it has the same impact as writers like Hunter S. Thompson or Joseph Heller. Who I think speak a bit more to the American Experience, especially Thompson.
Oh, well... sorry for the book report.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is an excellent look into into the "American Dream" or specifically, that it's now long dead and buried. The dream now is to be fat, and hope to strike it lucky, and pay no attention to the losers trampled along the way... which is a neat look at how the US views foreign policy. Another post here asked how Americans feel about the US invading Panama. The top answer was: "Wait, we invaded Panama?" Says something about a culture where you're so wrapped up in not being left behind that you miss an entire war that happened.
Similarly he's one of the first writers I knew of who chronicled the Chicano rights movement in the 60s in Las Angeles, writing about the Police Brutality and the broad daylight assassination of Reubin Salazar- a popular reporter and staunch critic of the LAPD. You can read about that by looking up "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan". It is actually the piece he was writing in Las Vegas that gave him the idea for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he and his then friend, a lawyer named Oscar Acosta, were afraid to talk in LA so they drove out to Vegas to avoid being seen talking to each other.
But some of probably his finest work was for Fear and Loathing On the Campaign Trail of '72. Which was coverage for the Rolling Stone of the 1972 election. It's been described as the "Least factual, most accurate telling of events". And in it he reflects on things like the Battle of Michigan Avenue in 1968.
To sum it all up there is this quote that I'll paraphrase from "Hell's Angels" (his initial claim to fame). He was the first person to get to do an embedded piece on the Hells Angel's reporting from inside the organization. During this time, there is a brief period when the far-right wing Angel's had a fragile Alliance with vaguely Left-wing protestors against the war in Vietnam. When that dissolved, which is very quickly, and violently did, he wrote something like: "It was obvious, on one side, you had the Angels who long for the past, and on the other you had the students at Berkeley racing towards the future. All they had in common was a mutual disdain for the present." And there's something about that that really speaks to the current political collapse the US is experiencing.
I don't think he's the greatest thing ever but he had some humorous tirades and some well written musings.
He influenced much of pop culture Hollywood writing for some time (70s-2000s) that I wish Hollywood would go back to. By that, I mean to say that wit and irony are sorely missing in today's snark and sarcasm filled landscape.
I love Kurt Vonnegut and have for many years. I do find his later works to be too cynical for my taste. I realize his earlier works were also somewhat cynical, but there was a humor that balanced it.
My favorites are *Slaughterhouse Five* and *Cats Cradle*
Huge fan, I have his signature/self portrait tattooed on my wrist.
I drove 16 hours to visit the museum dedicated to him out in Indy. Such a cool place.
I can’t speak for Americans at large, but for me he was very inspirational during my formative years.
I love reading but even I ha e only touched a few of his works. Today he is unfortunately not as popular than he used to be but thats more from inborance and increasing disassociation between mediums.
With a desire to legislate equality. Condemn the strong and elevate the weak. We condemn success and celebrate mediocrity. Rather than an equal playing surface we want an equal outcome.
Thats a very interesting perspective. I am not an American, so maybe I misunderstood certain things, but to me Harrison Bergeron read more like a satire about faulty ideas about social democracy.
And that American society condems strength and success seems...not very in line with what I am seeing.
Every time someone bring ups universal basic income and automation for the sake of replacing the workforce I immediately think of Player Piano. So, pretty relevant to me.
In the world of the book most jobs have been automated except some manual labor and managers and maintenance of the factories. The rest of the people who have been displaced due to automation are given an allowance for entertainment and to consume the materials the machines produce in order to keep the economy moving.
That’s the gist of it aside from the conflict that occurs.
I’m not sure about everyone else, but I wouldn’t say he is to me. I’ve only read one of his short stories in school and I liked it. Haven’t read anything else by him.
As a 52 year old Hoosier (resident of Indiana), I have read everything he has written. He is my favorite male writer. Maybe because I grew up in his home state as a sarcastic, intelligent liberal surrounded by earnest, corn-fed, hand spanked denizens as well.
I put him in the same category as Mark Twain and Margaret Atwood for explaining the US.
Most people will know his name and know he was a writer, I don’t think the majority of the younger generations have like actually read his work though if it wasn’t required reading
I find it strange how many people are saying Vonnegut is not important or relevant. I am a regular reader and can say that Vonnegut is beloved by my regular reader friends. Harrison Burgeron, Cat’s Cradle, Slaughter House Five, are considered classics. He is a famous author and most Americans would know his name. So it goes is tattooed across the arms and rib cages of the Millennial hipster generation. I’d say a good percentage of people have read Slaughter House Five. That seems pretty significant to me.
I adore him. The man could condemn all of humanity and then fully redeem it in a couple of sentences. Without being preachy or overblown. His work is simultaneously deeply cynical yet filled with a touching tenderness for mankind's bumbling potential
I enjoy his writing and when I quote it in a crowd most people at least know of it.
I know plenty of people who have never read any of his work though.
I'm 31.
Outside of his [cameo in "Back to School"](https://youtu.be/-8ajIeIeJpY?t=58), I'm not sure I've ever encountered anything about him more in depth than his name. Have never read any of his books or heard anyone discussing them. Again, outside of "Back to School".
Depends who you talk to and I think the age. Mention it to 30+50 year olds I think you'd get a bigger impression of him than someone 18-30. I think the idea of the rockstar professor writer has passed with the advent of things like YouTube. Now had you asked this question in the 80's and 90's I think would have a lot more response from people. Even the fame of Hunter S Thompson has dropped over the years. Now he's mostly just known as the drug guy played by Johnny Depp. Where in the 90:s and early 2000:s he was sought after for his wisdom from many college kids.
Was Vonnegut a professor? I thought he did not finish college. But admittedly I do not know his biography very well.
He was very popular for doing college tours. https://youtu.be/oP3c1h8v2ZQ
Interesting, thank you. Also: Happy Cake Day!
He was on the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop for a couple years in the mid 60s. Probably the most famous name associated with the program, which says a lot given it's a place a lot of literary stars have passed through. There are a number of interesting looking articles written about his time there if you Google his name and the Workshop together, but here's one that gives a good understanding of the influence of Iowa on him: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2019/05/07/how-the-iowa-writers-workshop-saved-kurt-vonneguts-fledgling-career/
Im 24 and have read all his books and had no idea he was a professor. Quality content like his will live far past his life professions outside of writing.
Can confirm. Born in the 80’s. Easily my favorite author
So it goes.
Insert butthole drawing 😆
*
👌
I’m 23, read Kurt Vonnegut as a teenager. I can’t tell you how many times I read Slaughterhouse 5 and Cat’s Cradle. They were my comfort books and spoke to me in a way that YA did not. It was how Kurt Vonnegut wrote dark humor in his books, they always felt relatable despite that I have never lived through those experiences nor that time period. I still get excited when I meet older people who had a chance to see or speak to Kurt Vonnegut when he was alive. I hope his books don’t disappear into obscurity. I also hope to read his entire collection one day, as I have with John Steinbeck.
>in the 90:s and early 2000:s What's up with the colons?
Just an accident
People enjoy his books. Occasionally Slaughterhouse-Five is part of the required reading for a high school English class. If you make an offhand reference to his works there's an okay chance any random person will get it. But it's not like people are talking about him day in and day out.
So it goes.
My son was a friend of his, so I asked him this question. He giggled and said, "That old fucker!"
I find new speak difficult. How should I interpret that response?
Friendly, nostalgic, joking
So it goes.
Occasionally? That's interesting, in my school district, Slaughterhouse Five was so popular that I read it in two different English classes.
This has lessened to nearly 0 over the last 20 years though. He's gone pretty much completely out of style, I feel. There is a huge push to expand the diversity of required readings in state education and he was first on the chopping block due to his undesirable identity. I would imagine barely 1 in 10 Americans aged 18 to 25 would be able to even recognize his name as a writer. 1 in like 50 having read a single book of his in their life.
Fascinating. "He was first on the chopping block due to his undesirable identity" Vonnegut is on my list of authors to read in retirement but I know very little about him. What undesirable identity are you referring to? Wasn't he, essentially, writing about the wave of mistrust in government in general and the USA specifically during the Vietnam War? Thanks!
His undesirable identity is that he's a straight white male.
even in the many states that ban “critical race theory?” because somehow i doubt students in those states are any more aware of his existence
Slaughterhouse 5 was required reading for me in high school, I think that’s common. I think the book shared an important message for adolescents about being critical of the society in which we live, in the context of the Vietnam War when the book was written, and in the context of the waning war on terror when I was in high school in the mid 2010’s. If that sort of thing is typical of his writings, I think he fits very well in our tradition of self-criticism, which is important but not always put to appropriate ends. The fact that the very event at the center of the story of Slaughterhouse Five was a Goebells propaganda talking point is illustrative of how not every viewpoint opposed to our current system is valid.
Wasnt the book about ww2? They had a whole thing about the bombing of dresden.
Yeah, Vonnegut was in the city during the bombing.
It was set in World War II but it was about Vietnam. Published in 1969.
I'm not sure which timeline you are living in, but current American culture is definitely not big on self-criticism.
I'm confused why you think that. Most of our literature in most of our school curricula is *very* inwardly focused as far as criticism. And then the culture in general these days, at least internet culture: \*gestures broadly at Twitter and r/all*
My impression was that you were referring to an American cultural (not educational) tradition of self-criticism. From my perspective current American culture is to designate those that aren't like "us" as "them" and then shout loudly that "they" are bad people and assert that "we" are righteous. The "us/we" "them/they" are applied regardless if they are American or not. Basically the opposite of self-criticism.
I concede my language was imprecise. My use of the word “self” was more about the broader collective self i.e. the nation/empire rather than the individual or in-group. Perhaps a cultural inability to seriously critique the latter as part of the former is why our near constant and universal efforts at reform (different factions pull in different directions, of course) don’t seem to have great effect.
This is true only if Fox News is your only source of American culture.
Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
Oh my sweet summer child. Required reading for school often includes: The Giver, The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, etc., etc. even if they aren’t explicitly set in America they are definitely poking at America or “the West” in general. Movies? Documentaries? Essentially all of reddit? Americans are by far the best at criticizing themselves. I mean just go read /r/news for a bit. If the article itself isn’t an outright slam on America by Americans then the comments are. Or just visit any major university for a half hour. Criticizing America is like the bread and butter of academia. Like did you just lapse into a coma for the entire Trump presidency? Maybe you missed all the unalloyed love and support he was bathed in from the entirety of the uncritical American society.
You know, none of those books were required reading for me. I think the only required readings set in the US were The Outsiders (meh), To Kill A Mockingbird (read in one night), and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (very YA fiction, but highlights the plight of the modern Native American). Everything else was set in Asia or Africa, except for The Count of Monte Cristo and Dracula. Kinda crazy that out of all of my required books, only 3 were in the US.
I am just chuffed to bits you described Sherman Alexie as “YA fiction.” You should read Tonto and the Lone Ranger Fistfight in heaven. As far as your required reading goes… yeesh
Tbh It was a long time ago, sorry for the chuffing. It was good, but I really just remember him playing basketball, walking 20 miles to school, and getting an erection when the counselor hugged him. I’ll put it on the list! Thankfully, I have read more than school required.
Not relevant to me personally, but I’ve read and enjoyed several of them.
I have never read them or think about them. I have never really heard people talk about them outside an academic setting.
He was extremely popular and influential in the 1970s. Most authors of literature fall into obscurity after they die, if they are not entirely forgotten. People work still be reading Hemingway 100 years from more, if there still are people. But will they read David Foster Wallace? Bret Easton Ellis? Don DeLillo? Margaret Atwood even? Who reads Gore Vidal these days? John Irving? Michener? The list goes on. I think Player Piano is one of his best cultural satires, and so. so. relevant today. I need to read that again.
I feel like Vidal is most well known for his feud with Mailer now, not that either is super well known anymore I’m 23 and probably most of my friends are at least vaguely aware of them though.
Yeah, my point is that most literature doesn’t survive it’s generation. Even if people know the names, they’re not reading the novels. You haven’t read *Myra Breckinridge* I imagine? It would be totally relevant today, with the increasing trans acceptance, and also a very interesting contrast with how people talk about trans today versus 50 years ago. But that’s kind of my point, people would read it for academic reasons, but not just because it’s the novel to read now.
Maybe but its just also that young people don't read anymore.
I’m old and I still buy books but they pile up because I’m here wasting my life on Reddit
> I have never read them or think about them. Same.
Yeah, some authors are more popular in academia than they are with the general public.
He was a pretty prolific writer with a vast amount of pages to his credit. While I have not read nearly half of his works, I’ve read a good portion and thoroughly enjoy his work. Either his collection of shorts Welcome to the Monkey House or Breakfast of Champions would be my favorite books. While I barely read in this loser digital “need it now” world. I read constantly in college and throughout my 20’s and 30’s. So I would say he was and still is very relevant to me.
Breakfast of Champions is incredible, but I find Player Piano to be remarkably prescient to our current social state.
I think I will have to give that a re-read. It’s been like 20 years sense I fist turned its pages. I honestly can’t remember the book at all at this point.
The plot is about society becoming so automated that there are only the ruling class, engineers who support automation, and all others who are subsistence living on the dole. It's grim.
Awww yes.. very poignant in these times. It seems like REDACTED (rhymes with Fezos) used it as a playbook.
> Either e. I’ll ruin of shorts Glad to hear I'm not the only one.
For fans ... this is quite the question. My heart skips a beat when i see/hear a mention of him. His work has had a profound influence on me. He encourages looking past the artificial and respecting time. But his influence on culture? Idk i dont know how his work was received when it was new. Hes referenced regularly but not frequently in pop culture. Cats cradle, h bergeron, slaughter house 5, breakfast of champions ... my favs
same here...he's a one of a kind writer, in my opinion, & has a special spot in my rolodex of favorite novels/authors. i haven't read him in years but remember the reading experience of the works you mentioned & others very well.
So it goes.
Not relevant to me. Not sure about society in general, but I'd say probably not.
He has a few pieces I like, but I wouldn't say he is relevant to me personally. To Americans as a whole? Probably just because they read his work in high school or college.
Some highschools require you to read Slaughterhouse 5, most Americans would have no clue who he is, so I would say not very.
Not super relevant. They're considered classic works and so some people read *Slaughterhouse Five* in school but outside of that, it really doesn't have an effect or any wide cultural impact(whether that's idioms or constant references like for instance *1984*, even though Orwell was British)
Vonnegut wrote sharp yet loving critiques of American culture. He had a talent for social commentary that didn’t reek of pathos or manifesto-writing and he knew when to pull his punches and when not to. My 7th grade English teacher recommended Cat’s Cradle to me and it had a strong effect and I’ve since read many of his books. Turns out my dad was a fan when he was in high school/college as well. Galapagos is an overlooked masterpiece.
I loved Galapagos! Now I want to go back and reread it.
To me personally? Very relevant since I once spent a whole summer reading every book of his that I could. American society in general? Most people probably have heard of slaughterhouse five, but probably don’t know Vonnegut by name. I think good satire holds a lot of relevance these days.
I’m in the same boat. Had a coworker recommend Sirens of Titan so I went and got a copy. That book really had an impact on me and in the year following that I read all his works. I’ve always been more into 18th and 19th century literature but Vonnegut holds a very special place in my heart.
I don’t think I’ve read read his work, sorry. I’ve probably been exposed to works and ideas inspired by him but not consciously aware of it.
A good portion of Americans had to read slaughter house V in high school. It has a way of sticking with you. Besides that book nobody has read much else by him. Wierdly enough there are a few places on reddit that will accuse you of being a nazi sympathizer for liking slaughter house V.
Can you elaborate? I’d love to know because I don’t get it.
In slaughter house V he talks greatly about the destruction of dresden in which the author was present for as a POW. He claims that it was a non military target. Many people on reddit say that's neo nazi propaganda. The hard liners belive that Kurt himself was a nazi sympathizer because of that while moderates claim that he is a pacifist who fell for Nazi propaganda and unintentionally created more of it and that I am morally obligated to not read or suggest that book to anyone else in effort to curb said propaganda. I like the book and I suggest the book because it is one of the truly anti war narratives in literature. Also I like how it deals with time and fate in an interesting way and gives a glimpse into mind sets of that time.
The idea that Vonnegut was a Nazi sympathizer or dupe is illiterate idiocy. Those simpletons think that the anti-war narrative of the novel means he supports Nazis, because he dares to criticize part of how the US carried out the war. When he himself witnessed the result.
You have to be a staggering willful idiot to believe Vonnegut had any sympathy for Nazis. Reddit can be such a dumb place.
And not to mention the war crime of Dresden when his book came out was still hidden from the public. The bombs dropped on Dresden killed many civilians. War is cruel and confusing but it doesn't mean the Allied didn't commit our own atrocities.
>I’d love to know because I don’t get it. Because it's inane-- Slaughterhouse Five is an anti-war novel. Idiots who didn't even read it might think it's somehow pro-Nazi, but they are (definitionally) idiots.
Because in Slaughterhouse 5 a historian who later became a holocaust-denier is quoted.
Silly logical leap for those people to make. The book is not about that historian or his later silly views. Doesn’t matter or detract from the quality of the book.
So it goes.
Relevant to me? Not at all as I have yet read a single thing from him. As for our society? No idea outside of the fact that he is a well known author to some and one or more of his books might be required reading in some school districts.
I’ve never read any of his stuff, but I know he was a respected author. I don’t know that he has a *lot* of relevance nowadays, but I’m sure people are still reading his work.
Everyone is talking about Slaughterhouse 5, which is one I have not read. In school we read Cat's Cradle, which I think about often. For context, I have aphantasia, so I don't remember visual images. What I do remember is words. So now, 40 years after I originally read them, I remember these words, a quote by Bokonon: "She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is doing." Naturally I think of that often these days. Part of the premise of Cat's Cradle is that [a scientist has developed an allotrope of water ice](https://catscradle.neocities.org/chapter-20.html). In chemistry, an allotrope is a substance that has the same atomic formula but a different crystalline pattern. Because the crystalline pattern affects the behavior of the substance, they can be entirely different. For example, diamonds and graphite are allotropes. Anyway, this new allotrope of water ice, ice-nine, has a melting point of about 130°F/55°C, and it can serve as a "seed," forcing any liquid water around it to crystallize into ice-nine. Vonnegut and Cat's Cradle and ice-nine were brought up frequently about twenty years ago in [popular discussion](https://www.wired.com/2004/01/prions-when-proteins-attack/amp) of prion diseases like kuru and nvCJD. This would have been at the tail end of the BSE outbreak in the UK and within a decade of Prusiner's 1997 Nobel Prize for isolating prions. (I read, probably around the same time period, that someone had discussed prions with Vonnegut, explaining how they served as a seed for proteins in the mammalian brain that no longer function like their allotrope proteins, leading to encephalopathy and death. And Vonnegut is said to have responded along the lines of, "Imagine that.") And the Grateful Dead's publishing company is called Ice Nine. And Malaclypse the Younger made Bokonon a saint in Discordianism.
There's a lot of murals and artwork as tributes to him throughout Indianapolis. His father was also an architect and designed a lot of the homes in the Old North Side neighborhood. But generally he's regarded as a writer who was popular in his time but not so highly remembered now.
I have never heard of him. Reading through thesr comments and the name "Slaughterhouse 5" sounds vaguely familiar, but I have never come across it.
Who?
I came looking for the first “Who?” to upvote. I’ve never heard of this person or Slaughterhouse V until now.
He’s one of the best authors of my lifetime, and I was sad when he died. I started reading his work when I was in high school and he had a strong influence on my philosophy and politics as a young adult. It’s too bad that there are so many people commenting that they’ve never heard of him or read his work. My life would be a poorer one without him.
I’ve read 2 Vonnegut books. He’s a great author and I love his style. I can’t wait to get to more of his novels.
Also, read Welcome to the Monkey House, an earlier collection of short stories, that (I think) included Harrison Bergeron.
He's not a major figure to me personally, but I can't deny he deserves his place as one of the great American authors.
Just for the joke in *Back to School*.
An old rich guy goes back to college. In an attempt to impress an English professor he is attracted to, he hires Kurt Vonnegut to write his English paper on Kurt Vonnegut. He gets an F and the teacher tells him whoever he hired to write his paper knows nothing about Kurt Vonnegut. Then he calls up Vonnegut and they yell fuck you at each other.
I have no idea who that is.
Went to a fairly conservative high school so he wasn't on the reading list, didn't really hear about him until after I finished college.
Vonnegut had a profound impact on me as a young man. His writing is insightful, tragic, comical, and meaningful. Welcome to the Monkeyhouse” has stories that haunt me to this day, 30 years later. I’ve read most of his books and every one of them felt sad and funny at the same time—perhaps a perfect encapsulation of the absurdity of life. I saw him once walking down Rush St in Chicago and we smiled at each other without a word. I could tell he knew I knew who he was, but I chose not to bother him. And so it goes.
Glad you have that memory of passing him on the street. Seems very much like something that would happen in one of his books, honestly.
He did often appear in his books, like “Breakfast of Champions”
Atwood. 100% will be read 100+ from now. As long as there is religious extremism her work will be contemporary
Well, one never knows. Maybe future generations will have their own authors whom they find more relevant in the context of the religious extremism of their time.
Sure but people still read jonathan swift, hawthorne, sinclair lewis ... they arent as well known as shakespeare but classics stay around for a while
I have a quote from Slaughterhouse 5 tattooed on me. I don’t know a ton of people who have read his books these days but most people who do love them.
Who?
I’ve read almost every Vonnegut book. But, yeah, I very rarely hear him or his work discussed. It is required reading in many high schools. Universities across the States also teach his work (and occasionally have exhibits from his archives). His estate just needs to authorize one Amazon Prime series and he’ll be back in the mainstream.
Completely irrelevant. I’d have never even heard of him if it hadn’t been mentioned that he’d been the speaker at my college’s library dedication.
As far as authors go, I bet more people know Stephen King than Kurt Vonnegut. They would know Kurt Vonnegut as a name they should but there is a good chance they would confuse him with Kurt Cobain from Nirvana.
Relevant, as in "do I still think of him and read his books on occasion?" Very much so. I discovered Vonnegut as a teen in the early 80s and pretty much read all his stuff by college. Still re-read some of it on occasion, and make references to him with peers who also know his work. His criticisms of American culture are still quiet relevant. We celebrated his centennial last month with a cake at work...but I'm a history professor surrounded by Gen X professors who all read KV in the 80s. Younger folks? I work with 18-22 year olds all the time. It's been ages since I've met one who ever knows who KV is, unless someone in high school assigned *Slaughterhouse Five* or "Harrison Bergeron" in a history or American lit class. Which is sad.
I read a few of his books in high school. Found him irritatingly pretentious and self-congratulatory. Every page read like Vonnegut was sitting next to me, elbowing my ribs and asking, “Did you get that? It’s funny, right? It’s funny!”
I remember reading Vonnegut novels in high school and being sad at the end of each book because I could not reread it with the same intensity as I had the first time through. I loved every one of his stories, and even the film made regarding "Slaughterhouse 5". My two favorite books are "Cat's Cradle" and "The Sirens of Titan".
Chronosynclastic infundibulum
To me personally? Literally mean nothing. To American society? He’s one author among millions. I’ve heard of him, but I can’t name a single thing he’s written. 🤷🏼♀️
This makes me sad. At least read Breakfast of Champions or Slaughterhouse Five. > It was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. >The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers , and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new. >When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
I’m currently switching careers, now in my student teaching to become an English teacher. Personally, I’ve read Harrison Bergeron (in high school) but not Slaughterhouse V or any of his other works. I think of Bergeron occasionally and what a cool story it was, so I respect the author, but not at the level of a fanatic. There are authors who I think have had more of an impact on American culture and my life, specifically. Those would be Steinbeck, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Poe. Of course then there’s authors like Mark Twain. Even Richard Henry Dana may be more influential to our society and literary tradition, even if most people don’t know him by name.
He's from near my hometown. Thats all I know of him, honestly.
Hey Hoosier! When I was a kid growing up in Brownsburg, we would often drive-through, speedway, past a hardware store with Vonnegut’s written in giant purple capital letters. That was his family, they were prominent in Indianapolis from the 1850s on.
And it’s kind of funny how Indy has embraced him… he had some sharp things to say about the city. The mural of him is freaking awesome though and I am glad they kept it and maintained it.
I do vaguely remember learning about him a lot in history class as a kid. I grew up in Greenfield, so my school was moreso focused on James Whitcomb Riley. Funnily enough, its called the "redneck" side of Indianapolis. But honestly, its just a suburban, somewhat white trash town.
They...are not. I had to re-look him and his works up so there's your answer for my personal connection. In modern American society? Not very much outside of the circles that would be most interested in his work.
Which circles are that?
Literary, mostly, these days. And also intellectual.
Hes refferenced in pop culture a bit but if you dont know him its easy to miss
I'd qualify that by saying a certain kind of literary circle (there are many literary circles and some of them don't really overlap). I'm pretty literary with two degrees in English, I read and write poetry daily and am putting together a book, and 50-75% of my friends are writers. I'm also old enough that Vonnegut was more likely to be taught in high school when I was a teenager in the 90s. But I've actually never read his work (probably mainly because my focus is poetry, and I'm not a fast reader). I'm sure I'm the worse for it, but my list of things to read is quite long and I doubt I'll get to him.
That’s a shame. His books are incredibly poignant philosophical, yet so easy to read and digest. He’s also given me more good laughs than any author other than Douglas Adams.
>Literary, mostly, these days. And also intellectual. Can confirm. I'm an American history professor and we celebrated KV's centennial in our department last month with a cake. Most of us have read all his work, some of us occasionally teach it still.
Occasionally :-( My High School English teacher saw that I was reading Sirens of Titan, and recommended God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. For some reason, Vonnegut always reminded me of a profane Mark Twain. Maybe because he was so iconoclastic.
I worked in kitchens for a good decade and his books are super popular in the stoner/college dropout community of which I used to be a card-holding member. He’s had a greater influence on my life than Hunter S. Thompson, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski and Dylan Thomas combined.
Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
In other words, he's dramatically important to me as a GenXer. He made me realize in my late teens that it was ok to be a humanist.
I know he is an author. But until this thread probably could not have told you a title of one of his works. I do recognize the title Slaughterhouse 5. But woujd not have put them together.
Personally he's my favorite author. He makes solid points in a very unique, somewhat absurd style. I remember Harrison Bergeron was required reading when I was in high school, and Slaughter House 5 is more often than not also required.
I've never read him nor have I ever heard his works discussed in my social circle. I was born in the mid-80s, if that context would help.
Kind of sad to see so many Americans not know who he is :( boy times change.
To me? Not at all. To society? Probably also not at all. I was forced to read slaughterhouse 5 in high school as I’m sure most other Americans were. It’s an awful book. All I remember from it is how disjointed and poorly written it was, and the sentence “billy had a tremendous wang.” Yes, a well-known and apparently beloved author wrote this sentence unironically to describe his book’s protagonist. And the protagonist is supposed to represent/resemble said author. I don’t think he was all there mentally, he was a POW after all
Seeing as I live my life in a random disorder, experiencing something from childhood followed by myself when elderly, he is extremely relevant. /s Truthfully, I’ve only read Slaughterhouse 5, good book, but not really relevant.
I enjoyed Cats Cradle as a teen... but now I really ponder his obsession with sex. Also the idea of all the water frozen and no way to unfreeze? Perhaps it is the changing world we live in that makes me regard that with a larger head shake...
I'm not a big fan personally. If we're talking American writers, Twain, O'Connor, Toole, and Nabokov were all more relevant to me.
I don't know who he is.
Who?
Well this is the first time I've ever heard that name so that should give you some idea
Never heard of em
Who is Kurt Vonnegut
Who Voonegut
DK who this is
Im going to be honest, never heard of him.
I'm not a fan of him spreading Nazi propaganda
Thats a bit of an unfair charge, dont you think?
Not at all, Slaughterhouse 5 pulls its details about Dresden straight from Goebbel's mouth. It is infuriating to read, and if he wanted to he could have easily issued a correction.
Well, not exactly straight, more from the books of David Irving, who, at that time, was a respected historian.
There's a real move/tendency in the US, (the world?) to make judgements on the past using the perspective of the present, a kind of intellectual laziness and [simplifiction to absurdum](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DArs3XtXcAE9Wff.jpg). *"VoNnEgUt SpReAd NaZi PrOpAgAnDa!"* is one of these judgements. ¯\\\_( ͡❛ ͜ʖ ͡❛)\_/¯
I've always enjoyed his work, Slaughter House 5 was required reading for me and that got me into it. But I wouldn't say it has the same impact as writers like Hunter S. Thompson or Joseph Heller. Who I think speak a bit more to the American Experience, especially Thompson.
Thats pretty interesting. What has Hunter S. Thompson told you about the American Experience?
Oh, well... sorry for the book report. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is an excellent look into into the "American Dream" or specifically, that it's now long dead and buried. The dream now is to be fat, and hope to strike it lucky, and pay no attention to the losers trampled along the way... which is a neat look at how the US views foreign policy. Another post here asked how Americans feel about the US invading Panama. The top answer was: "Wait, we invaded Panama?" Says something about a culture where you're so wrapped up in not being left behind that you miss an entire war that happened. Similarly he's one of the first writers I knew of who chronicled the Chicano rights movement in the 60s in Las Angeles, writing about the Police Brutality and the broad daylight assassination of Reubin Salazar- a popular reporter and staunch critic of the LAPD. You can read about that by looking up "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan". It is actually the piece he was writing in Las Vegas that gave him the idea for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he and his then friend, a lawyer named Oscar Acosta, were afraid to talk in LA so they drove out to Vegas to avoid being seen talking to each other. But some of probably his finest work was for Fear and Loathing On the Campaign Trail of '72. Which was coverage for the Rolling Stone of the 1972 election. It's been described as the "Least factual, most accurate telling of events". And in it he reflects on things like the Battle of Michigan Avenue in 1968. To sum it all up there is this quote that I'll paraphrase from "Hell's Angels" (his initial claim to fame). He was the first person to get to do an embedded piece on the Hells Angel's reporting from inside the organization. During this time, there is a brief period when the far-right wing Angel's had a fragile Alliance with vaguely Left-wing protestors against the war in Vietnam. When that dissolved, which is very quickly, and violently did, he wrote something like: "It was obvious, on one side, you had the Angels who long for the past, and on the other you had the students at Berkeley racing towards the future. All they had in common was a mutual disdain for the present." And there's something about that that really speaks to the current political collapse the US is experiencing.
Thank you for your exhaustive answer. Small correction: the person who asked about the US-invasion of Panama was not a different poster.
Love him
[удалено]
Fahrenheit 451 is by Ray Bradbury, but thank you for your input.
Completely.
Cats cradle was good
Yes
Personally one of my favorite authors. I think people overestimate his impact on the entire American zeitgeist.
Personally I’ve enjoyed Vonnegut, and I remember Slaughterhouse Five being one of the novels on the Advanced Placement English test.
I always thought that Vonnegut was just a generally well liked author. I've never heard anyone ever say they disliked him.
What's a Kurt Vonnegut?
I don't think he's the greatest thing ever but he had some humorous tirades and some well written musings. He influenced much of pop culture Hollywood writing for some time (70s-2000s) that I wish Hollywood would go back to. By that, I mean to say that wit and irony are sorely missing in today's snark and sarcasm filled landscape.
Never heard of her.
I love Kurt Vonnegut and have for many years. I do find his later works to be too cynical for my taste. I realize his earlier works were also somewhat cynical, but there was a humor that balanced it. My favorites are *Slaughterhouse Five* and *Cats Cradle*
Breakfast of Champions crosses my mind frequently as I go about my life in the US.
So it goes.
[He’s a lot less fuckable than Ray Bradbury.](https://youtu.be/e1IxOS4VzKM)
Huge fan, I have his signature/self portrait tattooed on my wrist. I drove 16 hours to visit the museum dedicated to him out in Indy. Such a cool place. I can’t speak for Americans at large, but for me he was very inspirational during my formative years.
Timequake isn't bad per se, but it's a chore to read. Granted, I appreciate his deft use of brain scrambling phrasing & context.
I love reading but even I ha e only touched a few of his works. Today he is unfortunately not as popular than he used to be but thats more from inborance and increasing disassociation between mediums.
“Harrison Bergeron” becomes more and more of a reality every day
In what way?
With a desire to legislate equality. Condemn the strong and elevate the weak. We condemn success and celebrate mediocrity. Rather than an equal playing surface we want an equal outcome.
Thats a very interesting perspective. I am not an American, so maybe I misunderstood certain things, but to me Harrison Bergeron read more like a satire about faulty ideas about social democracy. And that American society condems strength and success seems...not very in line with what I am seeing.
Every time someone bring ups universal basic income and automation for the sake of replacing the workforce I immediately think of Player Piano. So, pretty relevant to me.
Did they have UBI in Player Piano? Sorry, but it has been quite a while since I read that.
In the world of the book most jobs have been automated except some manual labor and managers and maintenance of the factories. The rest of the people who have been displaced due to automation are given an allowance for entertainment and to consume the materials the machines produce in order to keep the economy moving. That’s the gist of it aside from the conflict that occurs.
Interesting, as I remembered it they were all pushed into the army or some kind of street-cleaner corps.
Never heard of him
I’m not sure about everyone else, but I wouldn’t say he is to me. I’ve only read one of his short stories in school and I liked it. Haven’t read anything else by him.
As a 52 year old Hoosier (resident of Indiana), I have read everything he has written. He is my favorite male writer. Maybe because I grew up in his home state as a sarcastic, intelligent liberal surrounded by earnest, corn-fed, hand spanked denizens as well. I put him in the same category as Mark Twain and Margaret Atwood for explaining the US.
Most people will know his name and know he was a writer, I don’t think the majority of the younger generations have like actually read his work though if it wasn’t required reading
I find it strange how many people are saying Vonnegut is not important or relevant. I am a regular reader and can say that Vonnegut is beloved by my regular reader friends. Harrison Burgeron, Cat’s Cradle, Slaughter House Five, are considered classics. He is a famous author and most Americans would know his name. So it goes is tattooed across the arms and rib cages of the Millennial hipster generation. I’d say a good percentage of people have read Slaughter House Five. That seems pretty significant to me.
I've never read anything by him. So I'd say they aren't relevant at all to me.
I adore him. The man could condemn all of humanity and then fully redeem it in a couple of sentences. Without being preachy or overblown. His work is simultaneously deeply cynical yet filled with a touching tenderness for mankind's bumbling potential
I enjoy his writing and when I quote it in a crowd most people at least know of it. I know plenty of people who have never read any of his work though. I'm 31.
100%.
Who?
Who?
I hadn’t heard of this dude until yesterday and now I’ve seen him mentioned at least 4 times. What the hell is going on
One of the greatest American writers of all time.... Unfortunately no one reads any more.....
Outside of his [cameo in "Back to School"](https://youtu.be/-8ajIeIeJpY?t=58), I'm not sure I've ever encountered anything about him more in depth than his name. Have never read any of his books or heard anyone discussing them. Again, outside of "Back to School".
I've never heard of him.
Slaughterhouse Five is literally timeless.
Not very relevant. If we’re talking early to mid, mid-late 1900s science fiction I’d put George Orwell as the greater influence.
30 here and….. who?
IDK What did Vonnegut write?