What is the draw of vonnegut? I have had slaughter house five on my shelf for years, and I never got very far

What is the draw of vonnegut? I have had slaughter house five on my shelf for years, and I never got very far.

I have read Nabokov like Lolita, Pnin and Pale Fire and the elements of sick irony and satire were obvious and still held meaning today.

What am I missing about vonnegut?

He's witty. Cynical, but in a kind of cheesy way. His characters all have hearts. Even the antagonists. He can be dark, but exclusively with a message. Very grandpa-ish. Cozy, idealistic, purple, and sad-but-optimistic. Like Bradbury.
His books are worth reading, but I wouldn't take them as seriously as Nobokov or any classic lit for that matter

hmmmm

So basically Lolita set my "satire of 20th century america" bar too high with its 100% selfish, human, and evil characters.

Whats with all this space aliens from word salad planets stuff?

He is easy to read. Reading him requires little effort. Reading him still gives an impression of depth. You may not find him as easy to read in a certain case. That certain case is one in which you are used to good writing. Under that certain case, you also no longer get the impression that his writing creates depth. This might happen even if you like penis jokes.

>Very grandpa-ish
This summarizes Vonnegut pretty well. Would love to have had him as my grandpa

yeah, his characters are larger than life, he often does the whole "and then he saw the error of his ways and became a good guy" thing. Almost everyone is redeemable.

I don't actually remember much about Slaughterhouse 5, I read it a few years ago. I do remember that Sirens of Titan was notably better, but they're both quite cozy. Aliens are always a narrative device. Everythings a narrative device with that guy.

OP here.

Never knew vonnegut was a bad SNL writer. Thanks for tips.
>sirens
I'll check it out.

Bums me out that people can't appreciate or enthusiastically enjoy Vonnegut and still also enjoy harder reading and classic lit. It seems like a try hard attitude when every Vonnegut thread starts with "I read Sarte.... I read Pynchon.... I've been to Greece...." and then explains that they just don't get Vonnegut.

Have these people no levity in their heart?

What's the point of reading Slaughterhouse 5 when I've already read Catch 22

I feel like there's too much overlap; tell me how wrong I am.

The overlap being that they're set in WWII?

Read both and find out. Your time could probably be spent in worse ways.

"You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be portrayed in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs."

This was the quote in Slaughterhouse Five that made me keep reading to the end.

Oh god
the reddit invasion is real.

To be fair, my anonymous friend, while the messages of some books might be simple, it doesn't mean they lack depth. You're treading close to saying the problems of human compassion are basically shallow. Which I would agree with you on, if only he didn't have aliens.

Thanks for drawing my attention to this thread with your kindly bump. :^)

Vonnegut is fun, easy yet engaging reading. He's comfortable in a way that reading a familiar local Sunday column is comfortable, although it can be preachy.
At his best (Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, Bluebeard) this manifests in effective satire while still leaving some room for warmth and love. At his worst (Player Piano, Deadeye Dick, the first half of Galapagos), it can be painful and eyerolling.

You should read God Bless You Mr Rosewater

It's like when you're 12 but your mom just died. That's what Vonnegut books are like.

I have and honestly couldn't stand it at the time, although I was in a bad mood when I read it.

Mother Night is his best.


fight me.

why do you hate fire houses?

that is definitely a good one, probably in my top 5 as well

I found the protagonist to be really obnoxious. maybe it was because he reminded me of my brother in all the worst ways

he's supposed to be obnoxious, user. you're going to have to get over your charity worker prejudices about them all being lovely to hang out with.

>both set in WWII
>both are centered around the ludicrousness of modern war

that's already a lot of overlap, senpai


dammit

I dunno if Catch 22 is fun, but Grandpa irony always tells a fun tale.

Sounds like a bunch of mushy-minded Communist gibberish to me.

this

came here to say this. my familia

I can appreciate him as someone who mostly reads authors like Joyce, Nabokov, Hawkes, Gaddis, Pynchon, etc. but I only think of his books as goofy, amusing, sentimentalist little things to pass the time with while the aforementioned authors all have written books that resonated with me on a profound level.

If I'm less enthusiastic about Vonnegut than those guys, it's not because I don't like him, but because he comes off like a sideshow attraction to me when placed next to them. There's nothing wrong with that kind of thing, but it doesn't have the same impact as the main event.

i get that but literature is just like art - just because you don't get it doesn't mean there's nothing to take away from it. i don't think vonnegut ever meant to be profound in some lofty intellectual sense. the bulk of his work was intended to address the question "what does it mean to be human?" it's just that vonnegut was always truthful about answering this question, even if it showed us to be absurd, sentimental, or simple. his candor is really what sets him apart from most writers.

As some who's read a lot more and difficult postmodernism than you, I've got to agree with the guy who says it comes across as a pretentious lack of levity, Not everything is going to resonate with everyone to the same extent, but I'd wager you missed a lot of levity in Nabokov and Joyce if you dismiss Vonnegut as just little things to pass the time with. There's a snobbishness there that makes me think of O'Brien's article on getting people in to crack your book spines.

This sums him up pretty well.

No. I --get-- what he did, how he did it, and why. I appreciate and like him, but only up to a point. Not because he's not less serious or less important, but just because he's a lot clumsier and less obsessed than any of those names.
I'm not trying to start a pissing contest or anything but actually I find Joyce and Nabokov a lot funnier than Vonnegut. Like Vonnegut wouldn't spend nearly 20 years coming up with the best dick joke like Joyce or write a book about a delusional psychopath who "analyzes" his dead "friend's" poem to make it all about the imaginary country he comes from. That's what I mean about his books being goofy little things: he doesn't take anything as far as any of those guys did, whether it's a joke or a serious moment or anything really.

>Like Vonnegut wouldn't spend nearly 20 years coming up with the best dick joke like Joyce
bless. see this is the kind of thing that O'Brien mocks in readers. it gets funnier when you realise that O'Brien and Joyce fell out because Joyce maintained that kind of snobbishness without skill or genuine analysis even when others evidenced his lack of skill in languages and base humour. it gets side splittingly good when you compare your praise of Joyce with Vonnegut planning the whole thing in crayon 20 years after he started thinking about writing it for SH5.

I think you're trying to rely on reputation more than evidence for both Joyce and Vonnegut. So, I'm sticking by that you missed a lot of Joyce and Vonnegut and Nabokov, along with broader postmodernism and writers who were contemporaries with Joyce.

Precisely. DFW-meme status aside, the quote from IJ about hip cynicism really just being a fear of being human, naiive, "goo-prone" is something I always thought Kurt really was aware of and something I always thought encompasses all his books. Kurt has always appealed to me because of his honesty in conveying what it feels like to be human, without shame and always with a light heart and a smile.

nailed it familia

Catch-22 is centered on the ludicrousness of war.
Slaughterhouse 5 is centered on the Dresden bombings and the horrors war leaves with people.

They are both very different books told in a dissimilarly jovial manner. In Catch 22 the characters know they're mad. In Slaughterhouse 5 the characters wonder if they're mad.

He's a good author to recommend to someone who doesn't know much about literature or who is looking to get into it. His work is very accessible and easy to read without being completely empty.

He writes in an entertaining way while occasionally flirting with somewhat interesting ideas. But ultimately, his novels are still shallow and made shallower by the fact that he makes little effort to hide his own political biases.

But if you're more into reading, especially harder books like Pale Fire (though I'm not sure why we're comparing Nabokov to Vonnegut all of the sudden), you may find his work unsatisfying.

That said, Slaughter House Five is a pretty good book and really doesn't take much time to read, so I would recommend finishing it.

>if you're more into reading, especially harder books
Is this why all the kids who claim to love Nabokov hate Pnin and never read his short stories?

>though I'm not sure why we're comparing Nabokov to Vonnegut all of the sudden
probably because Nabby is the go-to example of paying attention to Prose, arguably the weakest point in Vonnegut's novels, and something he probably never even thought of