Talk:Kurt Vonnegut/Archive 1

Quotes

Is there a need for the quotes section? Shouldn't that be in wikiquote? 141.211.231.51 20:12, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it should be in Wikiquote. That there's a quotes section here means either Vonnegut doesn't have his own Wikiquote page or no one has added the template to link to it yet. -Seth Mahoney 21:33, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

But there is a page for him. The quotes here just need to be moved there. 141.211.231.51 22:56, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Go for it! -Seth Mahoney 08:07, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

Done. Formely known as 141.211.231.51 Commonbrick 22:46, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Kazak's gender

I seem to recall that Kazak was female, at least as depicted in Galapagos. -- User:Xiaou 23:28, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Definitely male in Breakfast of Champions and The Sirens of Titan. Anville 10:11, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

There are problems with that entire paragraph. The dog in Galápagos was named Kazakh. The two Kazaks, in SoT and BoC, can't possibly be the same dog, since one is a mastiff and the other is a Doberman. Plus let's not forget that one of them was chrono-syncastic infundibulated and then blown out of the solar system. As for Francine Pefko, I'm assuming the sentence was meant to read "from Cat's Cradle." However, I also doubt strongly that the two Francine Pefkos are meant to be the same person, as the events in the final chapters of Cat's Cradle would seem to preclude the possibility that BoC could be taking place in the same world. Squidd 18:45, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

True enough. But the dog and Francine i'm sure are meant to be the same people, just in different universes. Vonnegut loves to reuse his characters by placing them in different literary contexts, which he often makes mention of as "universes." Kilgore Trout for example has been married, been in jail, died poor and lonely, died as a rich and respected man etc... The paragraph does make sense in that, Breakfast of Champions was meant to be a smashing of these universes where the characters would take on roles with "free will" which was obviously satirically limited by being creations. Thus Kazakh striking back for being cut out of an earlier draft is a perfectly reasonable conclusion, which makes a great deal of sense and is actually quite clever. Though admittedly, it really is only a theory so maybe it should be deleted/revised. I won't do it though, because i'm not sure how i feel on this particular issue. Is there any textual allusion to Kazak wanting to bite Vonnegut for tossing him out of an earlier draft? If so, keep it for sure. 70.48.54.27 05:20, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I knew it wouldn't take long...

...before the suicide bombers comments got deleted. "But...but he wrote my favourite book in high school! How dare you, you dirty fascist!" As James Lileks brilliantly put it, "What’s the matter with us? Do we excuse everything because it kicks Bush in the nuts?" [1] If it gets wiped out again, Wikipedia will be revealed as not just stridently left-wing, but terrorist apologists as well. RMc 13:49, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I deleted the suicide bombers section. Twice i might add. Why? Because an article about Kurt Vonnegut is meant to be (more or less) a BIOGRAPHY. Not a list of everything Vonnegut has ever had an opinion on. I could have cared less what the political leaniancies in his comments were. They weren't at all relevant to a biography page. If you would like to put it in his wikiquotes section, that would be more than acceptable. But this isn't wikiquotes. Vonnegut has said many things in his 80+ years of life. Should we include them all? Or should we include the ones that you feel represent your own personal political ideals? Wikipedia is meant to be as objective as possible in all respects. If you included perhaps a brief line about his stance on suicide bombing, i would have let it slide. But a whole section? Not going to happen. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.48.54.27 (talk • contribs) 21:09, November 25, 2005

I agree with the reasons for the deletion given above. This is an encyclopedia, not a place to cut and paste articles that pissed you off. If you want to put the effort into creating a career-long overview of Vonnegut's beliefs about war, religion and the value of human life, go for it. That would have some value in a biography. Gorilla Jones

Thanks for proving my point, Mr. Jones! The quote concerns a current event, and has a lot to do with Vonnegut's state of mind these days; it is very relevant to this article. And since the mainstream media has ignored this story, it's highly educational, too. I think people need to know that Vonnegut's hatred for George Bush is so strong he's actually praising the thugs who murder women and children. I could have cared less what the political leaniancies in his comments were. Bull. If Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly had made comments apologizing for suicide bombers, you'd be ripping them ten ways to Sunday (and rightfully so), so don't even try it. (Oh, and work on spelling, mmmkay?) Nobody's going to take Wiki seriously if you insist on defending the Kurt Vonneguts of the world, guys. Ever. RMc 00:15, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I can't speak for the author of the unsigned paragraph above the one I wrote, but I guess I'll just have to take that risk, champ. Personally, I don't care what Rush or O'Reilly (or Franken) have to say. Cable news sucks. But regardless of the blissful simplicity suggested by a world in which life, art and context can be discarded in favor of For Bush or Against Bush flags, cutting and pasting a newspaper article still isn't worthy of an entry in an encyclopedia. If that was common practice, nobody would find Wiki remotely useful, let alone worth taking seriously. Gorilla Jones

You might want to put the gun away before you lose any more toes. RMc 01:16, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Ok, folks, let's put aside the personal attacks and work to make the article better...how about a compromise? A section titled "Political views" or "Politics" or some similiar wording (of course that would necessitate encompassing a great deal of more information from his lengthy career)? or even a sub-article on that subject with a brief summary on the main page? It seems to me that a biography on Vonnegut would necessarily contain some sort of mention of his politics, and not just because of this one recent incident. He has never shied away from political commentary, it's the very basis of much of his work, so why not include it, but in an NPOV, detached, factual way? --Easter Monkey 02:20, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree that a section like that would be in order. The paragraph currently in the 'Biography' section beginning "Vonnegut is a humanist..." might serve as part of such a section. And there wouldn't be anything wrong with including the comments about the suicide bombers in a career-spanning overview. Gorilla Jones

Ok? Can we all be friends again? Pretty please? --Easter Monkey 11:31, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

It's a bit late now so I won't bother arguing with RMc (who clearly has no idea as to what objectivity means.) I'd just like to say that the solution proposed was quite a good one and that Gorilla Jones wrote it equally well. 64.230.74.18 04:43, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I guess this issue has been settled as it has been over 6 months since the last salvo in the debate, but here are my twin coppers: Controversy is the life's blood of literature! Where would Capote, Mailer, Vidal, Martin Amis, or Salman Rushdie be without it? If Vonnegut said something that pissed people off enough to start some sort of debate then great. That's what a writer is supposed to do. I read the interview and it ain't pro-terrorist. It is in line with a historical long-view objectivity that Bill Maher used when he said it was braver to blow yourself up in front of your enemy than it is to launch an attack via cruise missle (I am paraphrasing of course). But I can certainly see why any variance from the lock-step mantra of terrorist = mental cause would offend folks who are attempting to justify an untenable narrative about a so-called "war against terror." It is because the interview was controversial and because Vonnegut is a famous writer that the incident should be well-recorded in any biographical article. Jackbox1971 01:54, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to jump in guys, but there was a few things I wanted to throw out there about Vonnegut. Firstly I just wanted to state that yes; Vonneguts political views are of huge relevance to understanding him as an individual and how it it turn, has shaped his writings, hence it should be there among biographical content.(Hell, try to do up a biography of the Ken Kesey and try not to mention the Prankster's opinion of acid.......it doesn't work) We can already see that Vonnegut is terribly anti-war from the overtones of Slaughterhouse 5 and even the way post-war America is portrayed in Player Piano. (Incidentally, this bleak outlook was how Vonnegut actually felt about the US post WWII, while he was working for General Electric) Regarding looking down upon Vonnegut for his comments about the "terrorists" all I can say is: I'm terribly sure Vonnegut does not advocate the creedo of suicide bombers (Purple Heart remember) and his respect does not wave past admiration for dying for a cause. We view suicide bombers as manical, religion crazed individuals who are only out to strike down ideals. The same happens here in North America. Here we view patriotism as the sole ideal and even though the devotion placed in a flag is strong enough to be sent overseas to die for, many people neglect the fact that the same emotions and same drive is what drove those planes into the towers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 156.34.28.224 (talk • contribs) 14:25, June 13, 2006

Template

I've created a template that I'm going to add, of course, it's up for editing...one thing that I didn't put in was the dates of each novel/play/etc. I played around with it, but it looked kind of goofy I thought with the dates, but feel free to mess with it. Oh, and by "created" I mean of course "borrowed" from the Lemony Snicket Series of Unfortunate Events template... --Easter Monkey 16:03, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh, one other thing, let me know what you think of the template before I go through the process of adding to every other article...:) --Easter Monkey 16:18, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

After looking at several of the plays and various other works, I've decided to not add the template to a couple of them, such as histoire etc. as this is not strictly a Vonnegut piece and it would look weird to have this big box at the bottom, but as always I defer to the collective wisdom of the wikipedia. --Easter Monkey 14:09, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Songs KV has written Lyrics for

This seems to have been overlooked, does anyone have a list of songs / bands KV has written the lyrics for? - Vince S —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.90.64.198 (talk • contribs) 20:59, November 14, 2005