Absolut Vonnegut
prof_rockwell
2,867 Posts
Had a request from a lurker for this when I mentioned it a while back, so I figured I'd share the link while it was still good. Kurt Vonnegut reading Cat's Cradle lpCat's Cradle side A Cat's Cradle Side B I tried desparately to find cover art for this online to no avail. I'll try to scan it later on. Until then, enjoy some of this great corporate sponsored artwork instead:
Comments
i've always wondered why they never made a shitty movie out of this or cats cradle. the singer from modest mouse stole my first copy.
because they made shitty movie versions of slaughterhouse five and breakfast of champions and decided to stop there.
although i hear the adaption of mother night to film is supposed to be good.
my favorite is probably slapstick or hocus pocus.
Probably the best.
Although the Happy Birthday Wanda June movie was pretty good. 60's Rod Steiger type business.
-e
good looking out. listened to it twice tonight at work (i'm hard up for new stuff). almost forgot i was listening to a record until it start skipping towards the end.
Vonnegut's writing repeatedly explores the themes of dehumanization in the face of technological advancement, the blunders and horrors of war, and humanist notions as alternatives... They're cute, witty, quick reads. He's a solid writer. Good stuff, indeed. But I gotta say, Em*l, to my mind, Timequake was his biggest failure. The book was quite obviously written, then edited, then rewritten, then poorly reassembled. No number of witty, intertexual references to this fact could correct the problems or distract me from the fact that it was just... sloppy compared to his other works. Some of my favorite Vonnegut titles include:
Player Piano
The Sirens of Titan
Cat's Cradle
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade
Gal??pagos
Hocus Pocus
Welcome to the Monkey House
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Quick story:
In July, 2000 I was on a flight from D.C. to to Indianapolis, sitting in a window seat reading from an anthology of postmodern short fiction. About half way through the flight, the woman in the aisle seat asked me what postmodern fiction was. I paused, trying to come of with an author with whom she might be familiar, when she asked, "...like Vonnegut?" Sure, like Vonnegut. It turned out that she was Kurt's first cousin and was returning to Indianapolis to visit some of their family still living in the city. I jotted down several details from the conversation, but I can't recall any at present, except that her son was sitting between the two of us and kept trying to show me his Magic - The Gathering cards, attempts which she gruffly discouraged in between bouts of motion sickness.
Thanks for sharing the recording. He's a hometown hero.
Nah, nah-- I'm just saying that it didn't blow me away like Vonnegut's "best novel" should. As a matter of fact, I'm planning to give it another read as I'm about to watch the much-praised Slaughterhouse film.
But yeah:
C**nt,
I trust your opinion on the well-written-ness of the written-ness, but if I recall correctly, "Timequake" was the first book I read by Vonnegut, which of course, makes for a slightly odd reading experience given that the thing is so deliberately intertextual. So, suffice it to say that I'm sure I missed a shit load of the references and what not. However, I was struck by the book's secular optimism. It was clear that Vonnegut wanted to write a book that summed up his existence without being too overly-sentimental and certainly without being at all religious, and the book was just a really peaceful portrait of a man who had come to grips with his mortality and had found a great deal of peace in his life. It was charming and, for some reason, it really hit me. Perhaps it was more a result of the emotional state I was in at the time (can't really remember what--if anything--i was going through at the time), but there was just something about the book that I found extremely touching and "important" (for lack of a better word). The sloppiness you speak of was never apparent to me and, to be honest, probably wouldn't bother me in the first place (the same way Madlib's sloppiness is endearing and instintcual instead of particularly off-putting).
-e
Yeah, those skips bug the shit out of me cause it's a minty record, and it skipped in different spots after I cleaned it, and there were no visible boogers or anything....boo!
I apologize for the seam - had to do it in photoshop cause I couldn't find my lady's usb cable for her camera...