I do love Kurt Vonnegutt Jnr – I adore his perceptiveness, light touch and humour.
I am reading Armageddon in Retrospect for the third time. I thought I’d share an extract from the intro by his son Mark on his father:
‘He couldn’t help thinking that all the money we were spending blowing up things and killing people so far away, making people the world over hate and fear us, would have been better spent on public education and libraries. It’s hard to imagine that history won’t prove him right, if it hasn’t already.’
Exactly. Quite how we’ve come this far down the evolutionary chain and basically stopped ourselves in our tracks due to just a few megalomaniac tyrants is beyond me. How and why do we let them in power? How stupid are we when amassed as a whole? We seem to be fine on our own, but as a mass we crumble into blithe stupidity. I can’t understand it.
I think it is mass psychology to blame – some primitive tribal thing – a left-over from when we were in small groups and needed a real brainless nutter to stand up to the sabre-toothed tiger. We seem to always elect them.
Is it Kurt’s son you’re talking about?
Yes or whoever wrote that short text.
I’ve never read anything by Vonnegutt despite seeing books in friends homes.
I’ve got a pile of 6 currently awaiting me and I never get around to anybody new to me. Also 6 are repeat prescriptions.
Too bad. Kurt Vonnegut is a terrific writer.
Well that’s 2 immediate recommendations. I’ll put him on my hit list next time I’m in Waterstones.
He was my favourite writer for quite a while. His short stories – Welcome to the Monkey House were brilliant – Ice Nine was superb – so humorous but serious.
He sure is.
I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Kurt’s son Mark wrote that in the intro about his father.
So with you on Vonnegut! Can’t resist quoting this from my favourite of his, Slaughterhouse Five. Sorry about the length:
“It was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers , and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.”
That is a great quote. Absolutely brilliant – if only!
Hi Dave – So that’s why I prefer women over men!
He says upon return home from an excellent Angel Olsen gig.
So do I, Andrew, although the fair sex are fast catching up with us in the nasty competition! Will check our AO, cheers for that …