Korean Job Discussion Forums

[swetepete]

Kurt Vonnegut died today.
Even though he was really old, I'm bummed.

[mindmetoo]

[cbclark4]

Is Charles *beep* the same as Charles D1ckens?

cbc

[swetepete]

[JMO]

This is really sad news. I read Slaughterhouse-5 when i was 12, found it in our library room(just a normal room that had been overtaken by books). It really blew me away. As with alot of novels of this vein, I found it unbearably sad and not really funny at all. The part where he hears the german couple talking and his comparison to mary crying over jesus(its been a long time since i read it, so this may be off) made me for the first time really cry over a book.

One of the first authors that showed me that great literature could make you shiver, as he could with a single line. I read all of his books, personal fave would be sirens of titans although this changes quite a bit. A great man, a great writer. He will be missed. So it goes.

[swetepete]

BTW--if you can find it, the film they made of "slaughterhouse five" in the early 70's is good. It's got a Glenn Gould soundtrack.

[Rteacher]

I think I read Cat's Cradle in high school and was impressed by its humorous insights into human nature and socio-political institutions...

Bokononism (his man-made religion) seemed to make sense - if you could find the "wampeter" of your "karass" ...

The portrayal of the central scientist character conveyed the sense of increasing dehumanization that has come with accelerated scientific advancement ...

Here's some from the Wikipedia article on Cradle:

...The supreme act of worship of the Bokononists is called 'boku-maru', which is an intimate act consisting of prolonged physical contact between the naked soles of the feet of two persons.

It is supposed to result in peace and joy between the two communicants, and when detected, is of course punished with death by the dictator, who wishes his people to be as scared, isolated and oppressed as possible. This dictator, ironically, is hailed as "one of Freedom's greatest friends" by representatives of the American government.

The dictator has bribed a son of Felix Hoenikker with a high government appointment in exchange for a piece of ice-nine, and he uses it to commit suicide as he lies dying from inoperable cancer. Consistent with the properties of 'ice-nine' the dictator's corpse instantly turns into a block of solid ice at normal room temperature. A sudden airplane crash into the dictator's seaside palace causes his still-frozen body to tumble into the ocean, at which point all the water in the world's seas, rivers, and groundwater also turns into ice-nine in a gigantic chain reaction, which destroys the ecology of the earth and causes the extinction of practically all life forms, including humans, in only a few days...

In Vonnegut's own words: (from Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons)

� Dear Reader: The title of this book is composed of three words from my novel Cat's Cradle. A wampeter is an object around which the lives of many otherwise unrelated people may revolve. The Holy Grail would be a case in point. Foma are harmless untruths, intended to comfort simple souls. An example: "Prosperity is just around the corner." A granfalloon is a proud and meaningless association of human beings. Taken together, the words form as good an umbrella as any for this collection of some of the reviews and essays I've written, a few of the speeches I made.�

The title of the book derives from the string game "cat's cradle". Early in the book, we learn that Felix Hoenikker was playing cat's cradle when the atom bomb was dropped. The game is later referenced by Newt Hoenikker, Felix's midget son.

The character Felix Hoenikker was inspired by Irving Langmuir, a scientist at General Electric in Schenectady, New York, where Vonnegut worked in the 1950's, with the town of Ilium representing Schenectady in many of Vonnegut's works. Langmuir himself came up with the idea of ice-nine as a joke. In terms of characterization, however, Hoenikker is a composite figure assembled from Stanislaw Ulam and Edward Teller, the two scientists who finalized the math for the H-Bomb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat's_Cradle

Many years later, at a time when I was absorbed in artwork and seriously considering that I may be the reincarnation of Armenian-born Arshile Gorky (co-founder of American Abstract Expressionism) I picked up a copy of Vonnegut's Bluebeard whose main character was an Armenian abstract artist who lived in a beach house in East Hampton. (Coincidently, I was staying at my aunt's house near the beach in Southampton...)

He was among the early severe critics of Bushee:

In A Man Without a Country, he wrote that "George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography." He did not regard the 2004 election with much optimism; speaking of Bush and John Kerry, he said that "no matter which one wins, we will have a Skull and Bones President at a time when entire vertebrate species, because of how we have poisoned the topsoil, the waters and the atmosphere, are becoming, hey presto, nothing but skulls and bones..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#Writing_career

Hopefully, he'll get another human birth next life and a chance to progress spiritually - beyond mundane reality...

[that guy]

Harrison Bergeron

by Kurt Vonnegut (1961)

I'd like you to read this famous story and think about whether Nietzsche wasn't on to something when he criticized the naive idea of human equality.

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren�t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren�t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron�s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn�t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn�t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.

George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel�s cheeks, but she�d forgotten for the moment what they were about.

On the television screen were ballerinas.

A buzzer sounded in George�s head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.

�That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did,� said Hazel.

�Huh?� said George.

�That dance � it was nice,� said Hazel.

�Yup,� said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren�t really very good � no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn�t be handicapped. But he didn�t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.

George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.

Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself she had to ask George what the latest sound had been.

�Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer,� said George.

�I�d think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds,� said Hazel, a little envious. �All the things they think up.�

�Um,� said George.

�Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?� said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. �If I was Diana Moon Glampers,� said Hazel, �I�d have chimes on Sunday � just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion.�

�I could think, if it was just chimes,� said George.

�Well � maybe make �em real loud,� said Hazel. �I think I�d make a good Handicapper General.�

�Good as anybody else,� said George.

�Who knows better�n I do what normal is?� said Hazel.

�Right,� said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.

�Boy!� said Hazel, �that was a doozy, wasn�t it?�

It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.

�All of a sudden you look so tired,� said Hazel. �Why don�t you stretch out on the sofa, so�s you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch.� She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in canvas bag, which was padlocked around George�s neck. �Go on and rest the bag for a little while,� she said. �I don�t care if you�re not equal to me for a while.�

George weighed the bag with his hands. �I don�t mind it,� he said. �I don�t notice it any more. It�s just a part of me.

�You been so tired lately � kind of wore out,� said Hazel. �If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few.�

�Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out,� said George. �I don�t call that a bargain.�

�If you could just take a few out when you came home from work,� said Hazel. �I mean � you don�t compete with anybody around here. You just set around.�

�If I tried to get away with it,� said George, �then other people�d get away with it and pretty soon we�d be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn�t like that, would you?�

�I�d hate it,� said Hazel.

�There you are,� said George. �The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?�

If Hazel hadn�t been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn�t have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.

�Reckon it�d fall all apart,� said Hazel.

�What would?� said George blankly.

�Society,� said Hazel uncertainly. �Wasn�t that what you just said?�

�Who knows?� said George.

The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn�t clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, �Ladies and gentlemen � �

He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.

�That�s all right �� Hazel said of the announcer, �he tried. That�s the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard.�

�Ladies and gentlemen� said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound men.

And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. �Excuse me � � she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive.

�Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen,� she said in a grackle squawk, �has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under�handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous.�

A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen � upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.

The rest of Harrison�s appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever worn heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H�G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.

Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.

And to offset his good looks, the H�G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle�tooth random.

�If you see this boy,� said the ballerina, �do not � I repeat, do not � try to reason with him.�

There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.

Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.

George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have � for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. �My God �� said George, �that must be Harrison!�

The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.

When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.

Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.

�I am the Emperor!� cried Harrison. �Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!� He stamped his foot and the studio shook.

�Even as I stand here �� he bellowed, �crippled, hobbled, sickened � I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!�

Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.

Harrison�s scrap�iron handicaps crashed to the floor.

Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.

He flung away his rubber�ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.

�I shall now select my Empress!� he said, looking down on the cowering people. �Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!�

A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.

Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all, he removed her mask.

She was blindingly beautiful.

�Now� said Harrison, taking her hand, �shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!� he commanded.

The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. �Play your best,� he told them, �and I�ll make you barons and dukes and earls.�

The music began. It was normal at first � cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.

The music began again and was much improved.

Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while � listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.

They shifted their weights to their toes.

Harrison placed his big hands on the girl�s tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers.

And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!

Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.

They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.

They leaped like deer on the moon.

The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it. It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling.

They kissed it.

And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.

It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.

Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.

It was then that the Bergerons� television tube burned out.

Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George.

But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.

George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. �You been crying?� he said to Hazel.

�Yup,� she said,

�What about?� he said.

�I forget,� she said. �Something real sad on television.�

�What was it?� he said.

�It�s all kind of mixed up in my mind,� said Hazel.

�Forget sad things,� said George.

�I always do,� said Hazel.

�That�s my girl,� said George. He winced. There was the sound of a riveting gun in his head.

�Gee � I could tell that one was a doozy,� said Hazel.

�You can say that again,� said George.

�Gee �� said Hazel, �I could tell that one was a doozy.�

[Ryst Helmut]

[mack the knife]

No one ever mentions Deadeye D.i.c.k, which should always be mentioned alongside Crime and Punishment and Black Boy as one of the greatest novels of self-destruction ever written. Period.

I always liked his idea about wanting to die by crashing a plane into Mt. Kilamanjaro. That would be a spectacular way to go. So much sweeter than sticking a gun in your mouth.

[kimchi story]

I keep Harrison Bergeron as part of my grade ten currriculum. It primes my students nicely for what it takes to see Atticus Finch as more than just a hero.

[dutchy pink]

thanks for the topic. the title says it all.

[freshking]

He was one of my favorites through my late teens and early twenties. I'd have to say Galapagos was my favorite read by Vonnegut. His mix of wild imagination with social commentary were awesome. I'm sure he couldn't believe that he lasted as long as he did.

[RobertX]

He was my hero. I havent felt like this since Salvador Dali died (1989).

[jaderedux]

I can barely think about it...Was 14 when a VISTA volunteer gave me copy of Cat's Cradle. Made me want to read. I have read nearly every thing he has every published. Some of of it was great to mediocore but Slaughterhouse 5 should be required reading.

Got me interested in other writers like Jack Keroac, Gary Snyder, Lawerence Ferlingetti, A. Ginsberg...all the beats and crazies of their time. Tom Wolfe, Ken Kesey (Sometimes a Great Notion) is sublime.

I will honestly shed tears...a great mind is gone. Dammit!

Jade