Kurt Vonnegut... RIP

lookingglass

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To the author that shapped much of my teen years, and was a master at his craft RIP.

I can't wait for us to meet so I can tell you how much of an infuence you had on me.
 

mirinae

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It took several hours after I saw his death announced on TCS before it made it to my local online news source. I don't remember hearing anything about his accident, though.

RIP Kurt Vonnegut ... You had a big impact on my writing and on my life.
 

natalie_ca

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I have never heard of him. I went to the official website I found online but it seems that whoever is in charge of it wasted no time in removing everything but a born-died page.

My prayers go to his family and friends.
 

skippymjp

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Kurt Vonnegut was also known for quite a few controversial personal views as well. He had his own way of doing and looking at things.
 

ryn

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RIP, Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse 5 is a wonderful book.
 

zissou'smom

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Oh no. How sad. At least he said he'd had a good time.

Fly away, dear.
 

swampwitch

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This is sad news. I believe I've read all his books.

I have a funny story about him, though. I used to work with a man named Harlan J. Smith, and he was friends with Kurt Vonnegut when they were both in New York (going to Cornell, I believe). These men and their wives were all friends, very poor students, and Dr. Smith and his wife, Joan, lived in a cummy basement apartment. He said the toilet never worked right; somehow it would shoot water UP when you'd flush it! So, Kurt Vonnegut dubbed the toilet "Mount Vesuvius" and everybody got a lot of laughs out of that, and it became the best feature of the apartment.


RIP Harlan Smith and Kurt Vonnegut.
 

godiva

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He was from Indianapolis... my husband went to the same school that he did! We both love Vonnegut. He was getting kind of old, though. May he rest in peace.
 

carolpetunia

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At UT Austin in the mid-'70s, I was lucky enough to get into a standing-room-only lecture by Kurt Vonnegut at the Texas Union. He was wonderful! He talked very informally, but passionately, about what it means to be a person of integrity in the world, alive and aware and caring, paying attention to what's going on, putting thought into what it means, taking action according to what you think.

He was especially intense when he talked about the beauty of the vision of America as it was originally conceived, and how sharply we had departed from that vision (already, 30 years ago), and how we must all, if we value our nation, devote our energies to restoring that great vision.

One of my favorites among his many Big Ideas was from The Sirens of Titan: he called it the UWB, the [I]Universal Will to Become.[/i] I imagine it symbolized by the lone dandelion you always see growing up, against all odds, through the tiniest crack in the sidewalk. The UWB is the tendency of things to do rather than not do, to be rather than not be. It's the wonderful way the Universe has of saying YES a little more often than NO.

To me, that's the most perfect emblem of Vonnegut's legacy, that simple belief in the positive.
 
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