verbava (vonnegut) все записи автора

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verbava (vonnegut) все записи автора

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verbava (vonnegut) все записи автора

отсюда

verbava (vonnegut) все записи автора Kurt Vonnegut as Billy Pilgrim's Case Worker: Slaughterhouse Five Reread for the Era of PTSD

by Neil Earle, American Popular Culture

“Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.” This simple declarative sentence takes readers of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five inside the mind of one of the most fascinating characters in American post-World War II fiction. It helps all aspiring writers to know that even the agile Vonnegut had to struggle for years to find a proper vehicle for conveying the horror of World War II. The author's own personal inciting event was, as is well known, the massacre of the German city of Dresden in February 1945, and the gruesome after-affects of war, any war, we are now learning. What is immediately significant about Slaughterhouse Five and Billy Pilgrim is that the very recently departed Vonnegut bears witness in this work to the fact that there are walking wounded still among us, suffering survivors from what has been called “the last good war.” Even that descriptor was challenged lately by World War II veterans of the “Greatest Generation” recently quoted on PBS. One articulate ex-serviceman suggested the characterization of the “necessary war” instead. This revisionist point hits home with jarring effect as military transports ferry back to our shores the severely traumatized victims of “Operation Enduring Freedom,” the very controversial invasion and occupation of Iraq, an operation that seems, at this date, very much stuck in time.

This essay briefly reviews evidence from within the text of Slaughterhouse Five that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is not only setting off Billy’s fantasy voyages to Tralfamadore but also lies behind the erratic, heavy-footed trajectory of his sad winding path through post-war life. It argues that Vonnegut has done the culture a favor by creating a superb literary portrait of the very archetype of the walking wounded – Billy Pilgrim. Vonnegut offers with his trademark wryness an at times bemused portrait of a man becoming psychologically disoriented from experiencing griefs simply too great to be borne, a theme in Western literature that could be profitably traced back to the beginnings of Western literature. It is at least possible to read the “heart-devouring anger” of Achilles over the death of Patroculus in Book IX of The Iliad and the almost spastic (for the Bible) “Lament” for David over Jonathan in Samuel-Kings as ancient evidences of PTSD. Thus the latent sub-theme inside Slaughterhouse Five advances the claim that this work can be profitably restudied alongside insights from two of the clearest-communicating psychologists of the late twentieth century, men whose work was appreciated on the popular level: Dr. M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, and Dr. Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning. First, it is good to seek some definitions: Exactly what is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?

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verbava (vonnegut) все записи автора


«Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons» – это не только сборник эссеистики Воннегута, но и альбом группы «Cap Santé!», которая играла что-то похожее на экспериментальный эмо-инди-панк-рок. Да, где-то так.

Треклист:
01) More Exciting Than a Weekend With Batman
02) Punch Amber in the Face (HULKSMASH!)
03) If You Need Me, I'll Be in Space
04) "What Do You Wanna Do About Utah?"
05) SEANPENN/BUMPNGRIND
06) FIRESALE! (Tom Hanks is an Unremarkable Man)

вот. ссылочка –
если все-таки вам хочется их послушать...

verbava (vonnegut) все записи автора Протест против закрытия отделения Random House Publishing в Нью-Йорке.
фото – Marty Lederhandler.

verbava (vonnegut) все записи автора В Индианаполисе (и вы ведь знаете, почему именно там)
открылась Мемориальная библиотека Курта Воннегута.



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verbava (vonnegut) все записи автора 15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will
by Scott Gordon, Josh Modell, Noel Murray, Tasha Robinson, and Kyle Ryan April 24, 2007
(via A.V. Club)

1. "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"

The actual advice here is technically a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's "good uncle" Alex, but Vonnegut was nice enough to pass it on at speeches and in A Man Without A Country. Though he was sometimes derided as too gloomy and cynical, Vonnegut's most resonant messages have always been hopeful in the face of almost-certain doom. And his best advice seems almost ridiculously simple: Give your own happiness a bit of brainspace.

2. "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."

In Cat's Cradle, the narrator haplessly stumbles across the cynical, cultish figure Bokonon, who populates his religious writings with moronic, twee aphorisms. The great joke of Bokononism is that it forces meaning on what's essentially chaos, and Bokonon himself admits that his writings are lies. If the protagonist's trip to the island nation of San Lorenzo has any cosmic purpose, it's to catalyze a massive tragedy, but the experience makes him a devout Bokononist. It's a religion for people who believe religions are absurd, and an ideal one for Vonnegut-style humanists.

3. "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."

Another koan of sorts from Cat's Cradle and the Bokononist religion (which phrases many of its teachings as calypsos, as part of its absurdist bent), this piece of doggerel is simple and catchy, but it unpacks into a resonant, meaningful philosophy that reads as sympathetic to humanity, albeit from a removed, humoring, alien viewpoint. Man's just another animal, it implies, with his own peculiar instincts, and his own way of shutting them down. This is horrifically cynical when considered closely: If people deciding they understand the world is just another instinct, then enlightenment is little more than a pit-stop between insoluble questions, a necessary but ultimately meaningless way of taking a sanity break. At the same time, there's a kindness to Bokonon's belief that this is all inevitable and just part of being a person. Life is frustrating and full of pitfalls and dead ends, but everybody's gotta do it.

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verbava (vonnegut) все записи автора photo by John Mcdonnell

verbava (vonnegut) все записи автора Материала на еще один сборник рассказов Курта Воннегута собрали издатели и неравнодушные – и это уже третья книга писателя, вышедшая посмертно. Правда, они появляются довольно тихо (по крайней мере, две последние; эссеистика из «Armageddon in Retrospect», появившейся в 2008 году, уже по своей тематике требовала большой громкости обсуждений): писатель рассказов не жег, издавать их не запрещал, похоронить вместе с собой не просил... Да и рассказы – это далеко не такой случай, как случайно найденный неоконченный роман.
Впрочем, среди четырнадцати текстов «Look at the Birdie» почти не было невнятных – будем надеяться, что и в случае с «While Mortals Sleep», где шестнадцать рассказов, результат получился не хуже (ну и, конечно, иллюстрации самого Вонегута – всегда праздник). А пока – небольшой отзыв на книгу из «Washington Post».

Book review: "While Mortals Sleep" by Kurt Vonnegut
By William Sheehan
Tuesday, February 15, 2011

The late Kurt Vonnegut was one of the great humanist voices of the 20th century. A former prisoner of war and a witness to the firebombing of Dresden in 1945, he was also a profoundly pessimistic man with a bleak worldview fueled by what he described as "disgust with civilization." Paradoxically, though, the general tenor of his fiction was neither bleak nor bitter. It was humane, consistently funny and filled with rueful, hard-earned wisdom.

As readers of "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" will remember, he famously advocated kindness in all human dealings and was fond of quoting a remark made by his like-minded son, Mark, author of "The Eden Express": "We are here to help each other through this thing, whatever it is."

Since his death in 2007, Vonnegut has, to our great good fortune, remained a persistent literary presence. To date, three volumes of previously unpublished early writings have appeared, and they have all been uniquely valuable. The first, "Armageddon in Retrospect" (2008), is largely notable for the title story, which gave hints of the idiosyncratic style that would eventually emerge, and for "Wailing Shall Be in All Streets," an earnest, angry nonfiction account of the bombing of Dresden. Next came "Look at the Birdie" (2009), 14 vivid, often comic slices of life in postwar America.

Now we have "While Mortals Sleep," which contains 16 stories, numerous sui-generis illustrations by the author himself and an introduction by Dave Eggers that is a model of its kind: smart, sympathetic and scrupulous in its assessment both of the stories at hand and of Vonnegut's overall place in American culture.

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verbava (vonnegut) все записи автора Трехстраничне письмо Курта Воннегута, датированное маем 1945 года.

Вложение: 3851296_vonnegutletterhome.pdf

verbava (vonnegut) все записи автора via PHD (Piled Higher and Deeper)
(короткая университетская речь Курта Воннегута)