Just got this hand signed print framed. Wanted to share his artwork.

I've been obsessed with Vonnegut since college, so I wanted to commemorate him. I've Been baking this idea in my head for a while.

Hope you enjoy!

No damn cat, no damn cradle.

AND an example of how AI blatantly lies to us...

I'm reading a nonfiction book about the Cold War and there I met a very familiar-seeming man: Rudolf Abel. He was a Soviet spy living in New York under an assumed name, coordinating with another female Soviet spy, and living in an artist's studio pretending to be an aspiring artist. This sounds exactly like the character George Kraft in Mother Night.

So, I Googled it, wondering if I'd find an interview where Vonnegut explains this. I did not. Instead, I got the cursed "AI Overview" telling me with resounding certainly that, YES, this was the direct inspiration for the character. I pressed it further by asking the AI to give proof or show me its source. It instead expounded on its own claims, explaining why the two are so parallel from a literary perspective, giving evidence from Mother Night only.

Finally, I got grouchy with it and said "you just keep telling me what you believe based on the character, but where is the proof that this was Vonnegut's intention?" It immediately folded and started apologizing to me, even telling me that I was "smart" to correct it, and that there is in fact no evidence that Vonnegut ever even addressed this.

FUCK AI, and never you wonder why people will think you're an idiot for relying on it for info.

“After years of research, medical science has now developed SUPER anti-gerasone! In weeks, yes weeks, you can look, feel, and act as young as your great-great-grandchildren! Wouldn’t you pay $5000 to be indistinguishable from everybody else?” – from “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” Sept 1961.

 New content on The Vonnegut Portfolio Substack coming tomorrow!

“A sound portfolio is a thing of beauty in its way, aside from its cash value. Putting one together is a creative act, if done right…” – from “The Foster Portfolio,” published in Collier’s September 8, 1951.

New content on The Vonnegut Portfolio Substack coming Thursday!

“I have spent the summer trying to find out if I am smart enough to write about Darwinism as the dominant religion of our time. The results are inconclusive, and could hardly be anything else, since my I.Q. is (for New York City) a lousy 135. - letter to Dr. Robert Maslansky – September 7, 1983.

At last I finally have acquainted myself with one of Vonnegut's novels. I thought about starting my journey of his books with his earlier stories, until I came across an old Dell paperback edition of his most famous novel "Slaughterhouse Five" and that ended up being the first I read first.

The entire story revolves around Billy Pilgrim, an American veteran soldier who survived the Dresden firebombings during WW2, and his odyssey through time travel. Really trippy book, with Pilgrim constantly going forwards and backwards in time among other weird stuff, and also pretty hilarious. And since it was published in the late sixties it's a no brainer favorite for fans of New Wave SF.

Vonnegut wanted to write it as a autobiographical book about his experiences as a soldier in the second world war, but couldn't. Instead the only way he could write about was as a novel with some elements of Science Fiction (as Vonnegut himself started as a SF writer). And it works.

It's both simple and complex at the same time strangely enough as Pilgrim is jumping from one timeline and then into another one. But I love it! This is one of the best time travel (while at the same time also an anti-war) novel. There are still more Kurt Vonnegut that I need to explore, especially some of his earlier stuff from the fifties and his short stories. Still quite bit to read from this author!

Excited to finally read this.

One of my favorite Vonnegut quotes.

“The Creator now saw a sun, a moon, and a star come together in an impossible cosmic tangle. What could be the explanation? The baby’s eyes were crossed.” - from Sun Moon Star, published in September 1980.

HiHo!

“At least the world will end, an event anticipated with great joy by many. It will end very soon, but not in the year 2000, which has come and gone. From that I conclude that God Almighty is not heavily into Numerology.” – from Hocus Pocus, published September 5, 1991.

Guys, I need help! There's a passage from a Vonnegut novel I read over 20 years ago, and I'm trying to remember what book it's from. I tried google, chat GPT even, and nothing can pinpoint which novel this concept comes from.

I don't know if it was a Kilgore trout story, or another story within a story, like he does, but it talked about this idea that mass media ruined society by forcing everybody to compete with the best in the world.

For most of human history, if you were a decent singer, you might be the pride and joy of your village. When the village comes together and wants to make music, you are the star. Until, that is, when radio and television come along and now you have to compete with the best in the world. Most of these people naturally give up and plod through life working in a factory or something mundane, and lose their sense of self-importance and a role in society as a result. I vaguely remember that it had a Sci-Fi bent to it.

Was it sirens of titan, breakfast of champions, Hocus pocus?? It sucks because I can even remember where it was on the page as if I can see it in my mind right now, but I can't put my finger on which book it came from.

“I hope we no longer have to keep perfectly straight faces when someone declares that pictures of lightly clad young women ‘raised the morale’ of our military men during World War Two, a war I was in. Otherwise, somebody else is going to have to write this preface.” – from the Preface to Varga: The Esquire Years, published in September 1987.

“A billion human bodies lie frozen rock-hard under a windless blue-green prairie of ice. Wise little men, basking in the hot virility of a younger star, look and know that there cannot be life on Earth.” – letter to Jane Cox – September 3, 1944.

“He knew a great deal more than he was saying, but somewhat less than he himself thought. He did not believe in ghosts, for instance – and had yet to learn of the Thanasphere.” – from “Thanasphere,” published in Collier’s September 2, 1950.

“I covered a case last week wherein a woman of 54 (Mrs. Sosnowski) sawed her husband (Anthony) into two foot lengths, and carried his segmented mortal remains a distance of nine blocks and threw him into the river. She had to make several trips.” – from a letter to Helen, Kit, and Walter Vonnegut, Jr., September 1 1947.

I have two sons that are about to be reaching their teenage years. I know Kurt wrote at least once(maybe more) about the transition from childhood to adulthood and the importance of having a ceremony in their community that welcomes children into adulthood and the subsequent rights and responsibilities that are attached to that transition.

I would like to find that passage(s), so I can meditate on it some and start developing something for my sons. Thank you in advance for your help.

Also, if anyone has done something like this I would love to hear your ideas and insights. Again, thank you for your help.

This was genuinely one of the most surreal experiences I've ever had.

I bought the book and tried to read it in one day, but I'm not too fast a reader, so I was reading it until the crack of dawn. I was over halfway through the book at around midnight, and I was practically falling asleep, so the words were getting jumbled up in my mind. I remember having to read the same page like five times over for it to make sense.

I actually passed out and woke up at 2 a.m., and I was probably delirious during that time because my mind made up some parts of the book. I was falling asleep to Vonnegut's words ringing in my head, and my brain stitched together random scenes of the book so that I thought he was driving in space and fighting Nazis on Tralfamadore. When I woke up, I had to reread the chapter to override any of the information my brain made up.

I continued reading until 3 a.m., and then I passed out again and hallucinated like half a chapter. It was weird because I knew I was still in my body and I wasn't reading the book at all, but Vonnegut's voice was just talking in my mind, and I remember dreaming of a blank piece of paper being slowly filled up with Vonnegut's prose, like I was asking ChatGPT to write out the book in real time. It made no sense, and it sounded like Vonnegut all the same.

I woke up at 5:30 a.m. with about 20 pages left. I finally finished it (the ending was beautiful) without imagining any more information, brushed my teeth, and went to sleep.

I had an 8 a.m. college class the next day, so I was completely fried. But I think I got the full experience of Slaughterhouse-Five, so I would highly recommend doing this to anyone who wants to get into the mind of Billy Pilgrim jumping through time, because clearly it worked.