You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Home Front: Culture Wars
Kurt Vonnegut Now More Than Half-A-Bubble Off Plumb
2005-11-19
ONE of the greatest living US writers has praised terrorists as "very brave people" and used drug culture slang to describe the "amazing high" suicide bombers must feel before blowing themselves up.
"Like, wow, man! I'm, like, blowing up!"
Kurt Vonnegut, author of the 1969 anti-war classic Slaughterhouse Five, made the provocative remarks during an interview in New York for his new book, Man Without a Country, a collection of writings critical of US President George W. Bush. Vonnegut, 83, has been a strong opponent of Mr Bush and the US-led war in Iraq, but until now has stopped short of defending terrorism. But in discussing his views with The Weekend Australian, Vonnegut said it was "sweet and honourable" to die for what you believe in, and rejected the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs. "They are dying for their own self-respect," he said. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."
Somehow, though, only Muslims tend to feel that way, so I suspect religion may be involved in some small way. Otherwise people would be looking askance at Lutherans and Taoists and Jehovah's Witnesses.
Asked if he thought of terrorists as soldiers, Vonnegut, a decorated World War II veteran, said: "I regard them as very brave people, yes." He equated the actions of suicide bombers with US president Harry Truman's 1945 decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Kamikaze pilots, I could understand. Truman, I can't...
On the Iraq war, he said: "What George Bush and his gang did not realise was that people fight back." Vonnegut suggested suicide bombers must feel an "amazing high". He said: "You would know death is going to be painless, so the anticipation - it must be an amazing high."
Somehow, I don't imagine having your body ripped to shreds is painless. Admittedly, it's a brief experience, but there's a vast difference between brief and non-existent.
Vonnegut's comments are sharply at odds with his reputation as a peace activist and his distinguished war service. He served in the US 106th Division and was captured by German forces at the Battle of the Bulge. Taken to Dresden and held with other POWs in a disused abattoir, Vonnegut witnessed the appalling events of February 13-14, 1945, when 800 RAF Lancaster bombers firebombed the city, killing an estimated 100,000 civilians. The experience inspired his book Slaughterhouse Five - the title of the novel coming from the barracks he was assigned in the POW camp. The book became an international bestseller and made Vonnegut a luminary of the US literary left. But since Mr Bush was elected, Vonnegut's criticisms of US policy have become more and more impassioned.
"Impassioned" is apparently the same thing as "incoherent."
In 2002, he was widely criticised for saying there was too much talk about the 9/11 attacks and not enough about "the crooks on Wall Street and in big corporations", whose conduct had been more destructive. The following year he wrote that the US was hated around the world "because our corporations have been the principal deliverers and imposers of new technologies and economic schemes that have wrecked the self-respect, the cultures of men, women and children in so many other societies".
Even while putting money in their pockets...
But Vonnegut's latest comments are likely to make many people wonder if old age has finally caught up with a grand old man of American letters.
Posted by:Anonymoose

#14  I think the last thing I read and enjoyed by Kurt Vonnegut was "Chocolate covered manhole covers" - sometime in the early 1970's. Since then, I haven't been able to get past the first ten pages. I'd certainly not spend any money on anything he wrote after 1975 - even in a USED book store.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2005-11-19 22:41  

#13  . It's like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."

Well, at least he got that part about Arabs and Islam right.

I've always considered him to be rather tedious. Now I think I'll stop considering him at all.
Posted by: Zenster   2005-11-19 14:54  

#12  Vonnegut was an overrated bloated arse. Now he's an incoherent bloated arse.

Hurry up and die Kurt.
Posted by: Oldspook   2005-11-19 11:36  

#11  .com---you stole me thunder. My favorite book was Breakfast of Champions. Dwayne Hoover was a great character, and so was Kilgore Trout. He was the science fiction writer that could only get his stories published by being used as filler in porn magazines? Then there was Wayne Hoobler, whose only goal in life was to work at Dwayne Hoover's Pontiac dealership. Wayne would be by the lot from before sunup to after sundown. He would say, "Sun goin' up" and "sun goin' down," and that would be about it.
And Sugar Creek full of chemicals. That was an insane book, and very enjoyable.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2005-11-19 11:00  

#10  Surprised? Nahhh, not in the least. I'm a lomgtime Vonnegut reader, well wary of his mental states... Just having a little fun on this fine Sat morning. You don't happen to know Capt. Bringdown, do you? Just wondering - you sound quite a bit like him.

Hell I'll admit it - I'm in a fairly good mood... After yesterday's vote, I think we can expect RC's Good News Law to kick in this weekend, so put on your Troll Gear, lol.
Posted by: .com   2005-11-19 08:21  

#9  You guys sound suprised to hear shit like this from a liberal. I don't, they are desperate to get back to power and will say anything to further their perverted cause.
Posted by: bigjim-ky   2005-11-19 07:50  

#8  Need a good laugh? Check out this Dallas Observer review of the movie - from 1999. DO was a semi-underground 8 pager piece of self-indulgence that was most popular for the personal ads. Every "major" city has (had?) one of these, right? The clowns and kooks who wrote for them, decades past, are now the Kool Aid-swilling MSM staffers we know and love today. They polished their amatoor skillz doing moronic pre-Moonbat movie reviews and political punt pieces, wanking out magnificent total hash, such as this. Perfect training, no? Now they're professionals, Lol.

BTW, my favorite personal ad from the DO, the Men Seeking Women section, circa 1980-something, was:

man seeks woman
- minimalist

Indeed. Lol.
Posted by: .com   2005-11-19 07:14  

#7  Heh, KT was his "sane" alter ego. You know, the one who thought mirrors were leaks...
Posted by: .com   2005-11-19 06:59  

#6  Continuing this RB literary criticism thread, what's with the whole Kilgore Trout thing? It's years since I read Vonnegut, but I never got KT.
Posted by: phil_b   2005-11-19 06:50  

#5  "Bad chemicals."
- Breakfast of Champions - a reference used frequently to describe episodes of insane behavior by the character Dwayne Hoover.

Lol... Dwayne Hoover is a Pontiac dealer doomed to go insane because of the bad chemicals in his system. It's easy see the autobiographical parallels, and personal demons, Kurt invested in Dwayne... For example, did you know Vonnegut once ran a Saab dealership? That would cause most people to consider suicide, heh. Note, giving Kurt his due here, the wife of Dwayne Hoover commits suicide by eating Drano. Heard that one anywhere? Lol.

Vonnegut rides the razor blade above the "pit" of self-doubt, self-loathing, and self-indulgence - modern Western insanity - a Moonbat stew personified in Dwayne Hoover. I think he created Dwayne to describe his frequent falls. Consider that he got this published in 1973 - more than 30 years ago... a fact which impresses me, anyway. Vonnegut's another brilliant, but deeply disturbed and flawed man who projects his internal dementia and doubts.

He projects upon his characters, of course, when he writes, which entertains and enlightens us - about him and ourselves. He projects upon others, particularly those whom he can't quite fathom for their confidence and daring, when he speaks - offending everyone who chooses not to indulge aged demented adolescents. Not being able to connect the dots is one thing... Bad chemicals is something else, entirely.

He has said he was mortally terrified of failure, well beyond what most would consider the norm, and that he is completely stupefied by success. A heavy guilt and certainty that others should be wary of his unedited words lurks therein, methinks. It shows clearly when he's speaking instead of writing. We can easily forgive his characters. It's something else to forgive him.

I love to read him, and I read everything we wrote up through 2000. I don't think I'd much enjoy talking to him... when he's off his meds.

Bad chemicals.

My take.
Posted by: .com   2005-11-19 06:04  

#4  Cat's Cradle probably made Vonnegut famous and was definitely his best book. Slaughterhouse-Five wasn't that good and most of the rest of what he wrote was tedious and self-indulgent.
Posted by: phil_b   2005-11-19 02:52  

#3  Suicide bombing was going on long before Bush was President. I think the Beruit Barracks attack was in 1983 and I don't doubt someone on this board can pull out an attack long before that.

Kurt is not a peace advocate, he is just for the other side. Bush derangement syndrom takes another. Beyond Slaughterhouse Five, a funny cameo in Back to School, and the misappropriation of the Sunscreen graduation speech what has Vonnegut done to be famous anyway?
Posted by: rjschwarz   2005-11-19 00:52  

#2  because our corporations have been the principal deliverers and imposers of new technologies and economic schemes that have wrecked the self-respect, the cultures of men, women and children in so many other societies".

kurt, Kurt: You're an idiot.

People hate corporations so much they work for them others buy their products and still others sell products and service. If people hate corporation I guess they don't hate them enopugh not to take jobs buy products and provide supplies, huh?

And let us at the top of every statement, article and debate state without equivocating that the left has zero idea what bravery is, if they consider sicide bombers brave and anything other than nihilistic bastards.

I believe it is important to point out that the left admires those who kill Americans, far more than the military folks fighting for Kurt's right to relive this feverish and maserbatory fantasy about Iraq being just like Viet Nam.

Kilo Mike Alpha, Kurt.
Posted by: badanov   2005-11-19 00:29  

#1  (Vonnegut).... used drug culture slang to describe the "amazing high" suicide bombers must feel before blowing themselves up.
Perhaps the reason for the 'amazing high' is the opiates fed to the splodydopes by their handlers?
Posted by: GK   2005-11-19 00:17  

00:00