Sunday, May 23, 2010

Kurt Vonnegut




Do college students still read and revere Kurt Vonnegut like we did in the 70s at Berkeley?  Perhaps we were enamored with him because the anti-war opinions from Slaughterhouse Five were particularly meaningful to us then, but I don't know.  As I recall, one of my friend Jared's favorite lines from Slaughterhouse Five (maybe the movie and not the book) was "Are you mating now?"  He used this line, always with great comedic effect, at the most random times.  Like "A dingo ate my baby" (see here for reference to use of this line in popular culture), it may have been inculcated into the vernacular of the day, or it was just a shared experience for a small group of friends. If he used it today, most of us would know exactly what he was referring to, and laugh.

I remember being enamored with both Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five, and reading Breakfast of Champions at a later date.  It's interesting to me that when I looked the three books up, I recalled Slaughterhouse Five ("Schlachthof Fünf") vividly but remembered very little about either of the other two books. 

My friend, Steve, sent me this postcard, which appeared to have been tacked to a bulletin board.  I assume, given that we went to high school together and are therefore the same age, that he was a fan of the author at the same time as well.

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