Happy Birthday

Kurt Vonnegut has a birthday today. This is from my son's blog, b/c he has read and discussed many Vonnegut books with his Dad and some of his Worldviews Class friends. Vonnegut is definitely not for everyone...

Vonnegut (1922-)

"Today, my friends, is Kurt Vonnegut's birthday. In celebration (more or less) of this fact, is an essay paragraph concerning the intellectuality of his works. Kurt Vonnegut is the 20th century Mark Twain, a witty black (dark) humorist never without science fiction or social satire. From his first short stories to his latest essay collections (A Man Without A Country, 2005), his themes remain those of all Americans, specifically from 1950-1990: racism, humor, depression, insanity, morals, labor, religion, cigarettes, and family. He is a humanist (as well as a postmodernist and an absurdist) who is not in denial, perhaps, of the beauty of the world and the possibility of something more. He captures the struggle between the flesh and the spirit (Christian stuff) in his novel, Bluebeard: "My soul knows my meat is doing bad things, and is embarrassed. But my meat just keeps right on doing bad, dumb things." He touches on man's intellectual dilemma in Cat's Cradle: "Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand." Over all, he seems the kind of man that may be dying off, the one that knows tolerance is not a perfect ideal, but who scathingly criticises while keeping in mind the concept of respect for others. As many of the back covers of his books would say, he's a moralist with a whoopee cushion, a satirist with a heart; but more than that, he's a master of irony who just might be begging the question of what it means to be alive.

Thus, I heavily recommend his works; namely Player Piano, Cat's Cradle, Hocus Pocus, and Bagombo Snuff Box. Happy birthday, Mr. Vonnegut. I certainly wonder what the 21st century "Mark Twain" will look like. These are two of my favorite Vonnegut quotes of all time: "Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules -- and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress." "Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic."
~ jonathan.

It is also Fyodor Dostoyevski's B-day, as well...more on him later!

Javamom