Mildly interesting: there's this oft-shared Vonnegut quote, "We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."
I believe the sense you get from that quote is a kind of hedonic nihilism - there's no point to life but hey, let's fart around. In fact, the quote comes after a long anecdote on how computers broke his connection with his typist, a dear friend who he used to talk to and joke with a lot. The full passage is:
"Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals.
How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."
In other words, the "fart around" quote isn't a sort of broad statement on human existence. It's a particular statement about how constant improvement to efficiency has gotten in the way of community.
If only Vonnegut were something other than self-important, self-obsessed asshole I can't take seriously. Also his fiction is exactly what I don't like in that field.
@nitpicking@ZachWeinersmith It is interesting that you feel he is a "self-important, self-obsessed asshole." and that therefore you cannot take his work seriously. Are you deeply into literary criticism? Can you mention a specific book or article? I myself do not think of him as an asshole. But, yes, he is a bit "self-obsessed". Would you say the same about Hemingway?
I know very little about Hemingway, beyond machine-gunning sharks and other weirdly performative macho.
I've read just enough Vonnegut (mostly required in school) to find him and all his characters far too navel-gazy (in a non-mystical way) to be interesting, much less sympathetic. Novels of introspection are fun for some people, and I am not criticizing them, just stating my own reaction (as an introvert).
@nitpicking@ProfHansBakker@ZachWeinersmith So what you're saying is you didn't have anything to add here, but just wanted to take an opportunity to shit on a writer the OP clearly appreciates. Nice job, Carl !
@ProfHansBakker@nitpicking@ZachWeinersmith I am a fan of both Vonnegut and Hemingway. Hemingway's spare prose is brilliant and Vonnegut's capture of the absurd nature of life (done with surreal humour) is also brilliant. I did not know Vonnegut had demons, but he did. Hemingway was also maladjusted. But I suspect the great writers are frequently depressive and ego driven. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/dec/03/kurt-vonnegut-biography
Which great writers? Shakespeare? No evidence of such. Dickens? Nope. Jane Austen? No. Etc. You have to be careful about cherry-picking, especially when there are such huge subjective factors.
I'm speaking of his writing. I never met him, but his writing puts me off. I mentioned Hemingway's real life because that is what I know about him. Lived in Key West, was performatively macho. I read several of his stories in school, and I remember only their being almost deliberately boring and so unmemorable that, well ... was one of them about a person who was sad and went camping? That's literally it, I remember no other element of any of his stories.
@ZachWeinersmith would be interesting to hear the side of the typist. It might have been rather one-sided and electronic communities do make it easier to drop out. But mutually respectful online communities can work work fine for "farting around".
@ZachWeinersmith Vonnegut suffered what we now call PTSD ("shell shock") and that resulted in his famous book: Slaughterhouse 5. (I think that is the title.) It was an actual abattoir in a city in Germany. The only reason for the bombingt of that historic city was in a way to alert the Soviet army the Allies could do that. The "Cold War" started in a sense in the Hot War we call WWII.
Add comment