Vonnegut wrote brilliant novels. This is mostly a collection of essays and speeches, rewritten slightly with some added bits. I planned to finish, but halfway through had to give up. So many rambling paragraphs with parenthetical comments that jumbled into nonsense.

One of the main themes of Vonnegut’s career, and of these essays, is that families, and from them our own personal psyches, have been devolved by modern life. The best we can do with its “rootlessness, mobility, and impossibly tough-minded loneliness” (35) is synthetic families, such as AA, the military, artists or (God-forbid) church. Most of this collection, in fact, critiques our modern (early 90’s) world, with a minor key given to the failures of Christianity. To the latter, “What I can’t stand are sermons which say that to believe in the divinity of Jesus is a way to win.” (239) Truly winning has nothing to do with it, but how fascinating that it takes someone who hates the religion to point it back on track!
To the former, oh, where to start! Statistics tend to distract a narrative, but in this case, Vonnegut’s gem facts make his argument without seeming like an ‘argument’. Namely these: that the average WW2 soldier who died was 26, the average Vietnam soldier was 20; the antebellum suicide rate for slave owners was higher than for slaves; the average American child watches 18,000 TV murders before it graduates from high school. We are a sad people…
What else is wrong with us?
“Our century hasn’t been as free with words of wisdom as some others, I think, because we were the first to get reliable information about the human situation.” (110)
“If Western Civilization were a person, we would be directing it to the nearest meeting of War Preparers Anonymous.” (135) And yet, “Should addicts of any sort hold high offices in this or any other country? Absolutely not, for their first priority will always be to satisfy their addiction, no matter how terrible the consequences may be—even to themselves.” (136)
“What other fates worse than death could I name? Life without petroleum?” (144)
“I listen to the ethical pronouncements of the leaders of the so-called religious revival going on in this country, including those of our president, and am able to distill only two firm commandments from them. The first commandment is this: ‘Stop thinking.’ The second commandment is this: ‘Obey.’” (158)
So how does one live in such an environment? Seven steps…
1.tReduce and stabilize your population.
2.tStop poisoning the air, the water, and the topsoil.
3.tStop preparing for war and start dealing with your real problems.
4.tTeach your kids, and yourselves, too, while you’re at it, how to inhabit a small planet without helping to kill it.
5.tStop thinking science can fix anything if you give it a trillion dollars.
6.tStop thinking your grandchildren will be OK no matter how wasteful or destructive you may be, since they can go to a nice new planet on a spaceship. That is really mean and stupid.
7.tAnd so on. Or else. (112)
And if you can manage that, and you want to write about it, Vonnegut often offers advice, although this is only one of two books I know of, in which that advice includes a) use the right words, regardless of how often or how simple (such as, “to be or not to be”, which wouldn’t pass in college writing today) and b) do not feel compelled to write a story in which nothing much happens.

I'm nearly done with this guy's catalog. Geesh!

Definitely the weakest of the autobiographical collage trilogy (Palm Sunday being the strongest, W,F&G being smack dab in the middle). But even at his most meh, my brain just loves the rhythm of Vonnegut’s writing… what else is there to say.

You’ve got to love Kurt. Even in a collection like this every line is crammed with whatever the hell it is that he does. It’s like magic. He throws out all these funny words and somehow it becomes something incredibly deep. He’s depressed, optimistic, sad and hysterical all at the same time. He can sum up the human condition, human history, in a single sentence. Everything in here is still totally relevant and should be read by everyone.

I enjoyed this book gosh darn too much.

to quote:

"Dah dah dah dah dah dah dah dah dah,

Dah dah dah dah dah dah dah dah dah!

Dah dah dah dah dah,

Dah dah dah dah dah!

Dah dah dah dah dah fucking cunt."

I love Vonnegut memoirs, and this one is right on par with Palm Sunday. As someone interested in religion, I appreciated how directly Kurt addresses his own atheism/sloppy Unitarianism, and what he perceives as the failures of Christianity. It always surprises me how much I enjoy the perspectives of this smoky old curmudgeon. This book was written at about the same time as his novel "Hocus Pocus," which is one of his most negative and weakly written novels. It's strange how this memoir then speaks with the "younger" (confident and likable) Vonnegut voice, as heard in novels like "Breakfast of Champions," and which returns later in "Timequake" in particular. I was lucky enough to purchase my copy of this one at the KV memorial museum in Indianapolis, which is worth a visit if you're ever in Indy.

Kurt Vonnegut’un diline hayranım. Çeşitli konular hakkında yazdığı yazılardan oluşan bir kitap. Çok beğendim

A jumble of Vonnegut (essays and such that don't always fit together) -- but still fascinating for fans of Vonnegut's perceptions and prejudices. And maybe these ramblings allow a bit more insight into the man. I think so.

Another book I re-read every few years (or maybe just "every year."). Favorite quotes:
"I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead."
"Where is home? I've wondered where home is, and I realized, it's not Mars or someplace like that, it's Indianapolis when I was nine years old. I had a brother and a sister, a cat and a dog, and a mother and a father and uncles and aunts. And there's no way I can get there again."
"He was a chain-smoking District Attorney for the first half of his career, and then a chain-smoking defense attorney until his death from cancer a little past midnight, June 9, 1990. I asked him when he was still a DA if he was doing much good by putting felons in prison. He said, "No, I think people have more than enough trouble without me piling on." -on his lifelong friend Bernard V. O'Hare

This witty collection of speeches given and essays written throughout the 1980s is Vonnegut through...clever, humorous, pessimistic and yet hopeful. If you ever read his Palm Sunday, this is the same sort of writings, only done through the next decade.

O nosso storyteller não convencional preferido? Fates Worse Than Death é uma colecção de retalhos de momentos históricos, familiares, anedotas, experiências, discursos de KV contados pelo próprio em retrospectiva, no início dos anos 90.

É uma continuação dos pensamentos soltos e autobiográficos de Palm Sunday. Uma excelente companhia para quem não tem medo de ser visto a rir sozinho com um livro na mão e para quem gosta de sublinhar um livro com frases poderosas.