Talk:Kurt Vonnegut

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Contents 1 Suicide Attempt 2 Appearance on Daily Show 3 Sunscreen 4 Errata 5 Trivia 6 Quotes 7 Kazak's gender 8 Songs KV has written Lyrics for 9 Template 10 I knew it wouldn't take long... 11 List 12 Kurt Vonnegut's page is not for advertising fo the World Can't Wait) 13 Which Generation? 14 great author 15 Wherabouts 16 Marriage to Krementz 17 Friends? 18 Inline citations 19 Trivia - patents

[edit] Suicide Attempt

Does anyone have any info on his suicide attempt? I haven't researched it, but maybe more needs to be said about his suicide attempt and how that might have influenced his writing.

[edit] Appearance on Daily Show

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/TDS-Kurt-Vonnegut1.wmv This should somehow be referenced I think, particularly under politics. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by VarunRajendran (talk • contribs) 11:56, 5 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Sunscreen

I think something should be added about the whole sunscreen debacle.

http://www.wesselenyi.com/Vonnegutstory.htm

anyone???

-Andrew Markiewicz

[edit] Errata

In "Fates Worse Than Death" Vonnegut says his first wife's name is Jane Marie née Cox, not Jill. Jill is the second wife. He also mentions in the same book that Jane dies of cancer, so I don't know if your mention of divorce is accurate.

The "Family" section contradicts itself a tad. I don't know whether his daughter Lily is a biological relative or not (I don't really know anything about his family), but someone should look into that. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12.221.136.117 (talk • contribs) .

I reworded some of the Family section having to do with the adoptions; the previous language was very confusing. MCB 04:15, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia

Vonnegut smokes Pall Mall cigarettes.

Still? At the age of 82?

Yes. He chain smokes them, too, I've read. - 129.137.3.98 15:43, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I know his character does this in Breakfast of Champions, but the most that can indicate is that Vonnegut was a smoker in the early 1970s.

What makes you think being old is going to help stop a smoking addiction? Vonnegut attended self-help classes and actually did quit smoking for a while, but has since then decided to start again.

Anville 17:49, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

What makes me think that being old is going to stop a smoking addiction is that most people who smoke cigarettes, particularly high tar/high nicotine cigarette like Pall Mall, don't live to age 82. Crunch 02:17, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Is there a need for the trivia section too? Some of the stuff could be moved into other partics of the article but some of it doesn't seem worthy of an encyclopedia article. De we really need to know he smokes Pall Mall cigs or made a cameo appearance in a movie? Commonbrick 22:52, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think the chain smoking is relevant to understanding his personality. --Saforrest 15:00, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Vonnegut himself is always pointing it out (his smoking habit, and that he smokes Pall Malls). I remember reading something he wrote (sorry, can't source) where he refers to himself as "an old fart with my Pall Malls". I also remember reading an interview, maybe the Playboy Interview, where he said that he tried to give up smoking once but his weight doubled and he got all sorts of other problems so he took it up again.

I agree that a lot of the trivia can be merged into the rest of the article. It also needs verification. Crunch 01:52, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I've now added a new heading, "Vonnegut in pop culture" to house some of the items from the Trivia section. I still think we need a reference for the cigarette smoking detail: the fact that he smokes, the brand of the cigarettes and the quote attributed to him about smoking. I also find it unusual that an 83 year old man smokes Pall Malls without evidence of severe tobacco-related illness. Crunch 02:11, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I know it is unsourced but my girlfriend knows Kurt's grandson quite well and has met Kurt a few times: as of a few years ago he still smokes Pall Malls like a chimney. She says "about a pack an hour". This can definitely be sourced because almost every interviewer makes a comment about his smoking habit. Inoculatedcities 14:22, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

The Trivia section was almost entirely unsourced, and reads like the sort of folklore that pervades Internet trivia sites. Unfortunately, that does not meet Wikipedia guidelines for verifiability. I added citations where sources could be found, and attached {{fact}} where none could be easily located. If these items cannot be verified they should be removed. --MCB 06:21, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

The asterisk can also be found in Galapagos indicating the character is about to die. I haven't read Breakfast of Champions yet, so I'm not sure which meaning is more appropriate. User:Annonomous 04:33, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quotes

Is there a need for the quotes section? Shouldn't that be in wikiquote? 141.211.231.51 20:12, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it should be in Wikiquote. That there's a quotes section here means either Vonnegut doesn't have his own Wikiquote page or no one has added the template to link to it yet. -Seth Mahoney 21:33, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

But there is a page for him. The quotes here just need to be moved there. 141.211.231.51 22:56, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Go for it! -Seth Mahoney 08:07, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

Done. Formely known as 141.211.231.51 Commonbrick 22:46, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Kazak's gender

I seem to recall that Kazak was female, at least as depicted in Galapagos. --Xiaou

Definitely male in Breakfast of Champions and The Sirens of Titan. Anville 10:11, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

There are problems with that entire paragraph. The dog in Galápagos was named Kazakh. The two Kazaks, in SoT and BoC, can't possibly be the same dog, since one is a mastiff and the other is a Doberman. Plus let's not forget that one of them was chrono-syncastic infundibulated and then blown out of the solar system. As for Francine Pefko, I'm assuming the sentence was meant to read "from Cat's Cradle." However, I also doubt strongly that the two Francine Pefkos are meant to be the same person, as the events in the final chapters of Cat's Cradle would seem to preclude the possibility that BoC could be taking place in the same world. Squidd 18:45, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

True enough. But the dog and Francine i'm sure are meant to be the same people, just in different universes. Vonnegut loves to reuse his characters by placing them in different literary contexts, which he often makes mention of as "universes." Kilgore Trout for example has been married, been in jail, died poor and lonely, died as a rich and respected man etc... The paragraph does make sense in that, Breakfast of Champions was meant to be a smashing of these universes where the characters would take on roles with "free will" which was obviously satirically limited by being creations. Thus Kazakh striking back for being cut out of an earlier draft is a perfectly reasonable conclusion, which makes a great deal of sense and is actually quite clever. Though admittedly, it really is only a theory so maybe it should be deleted/revised. I won't do it though, because i'm not sure how i feel on this particular issue. Is there any textual allusion to Kazak wanting to bite Vonnegut for tossing him out of an earlier draft? If so, keep it for sure. 70.48.54.27 05:20, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Songs KV has written Lyrics for

This seems to have been overlooked, does anyone have a list of songs / bands KV has written the lyrics for?

---

Vince S

[edit] Template

I've created a template that I'm going to add, of course, it's up for editing...one thing that I didn't put in was the dates of each novel/play/etc. I played around with it, but it looked kind of goofy I thought with the dates, but feel free to mess with it. Oh, and by "created" I mean of course "borrowed" from the Lemony Snicket Series of Unfortunate Events template... --Easter Monkey 16:03, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh, one other thing, let me know what you think of the template before I go through the process of adding to every other article...:) --Easter Monkey 16:18, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

After looking at several of the plays and various other works, I've decided to not add the template to a couple of them, such as histoire etc. as this is not strictly a Vonnegut piece and it would look weird to have this big box at the bottom, but as always I defer to the collective wisdom of the wikipedia. --Easter Monkey 14:09, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I knew it wouldn't take long...

...before the suicide bombers comments got deleted. "But...but he wrote my favourite book in high school! How dare you, you dirty fascist!" As James Lileks brilliantly put it, "What’s the matter with us? Do we excuse everything because it kicks Bush in the nuts?" [1]

If it gets wiped out again, Wikipedia will be revealed as not just stridently left-wing, but terrorist apologists as well. RMc 13:49, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I deleted the suicide bombers section. Twice i might add. Why? Because an article about Kurt Vonnegut is meant to be (more or less) a BIOGRAPHY. Not a list of everything Vonnegut has ever had an opinion on. I could have cared less what the political leaniancies in his comments were. They weren't at all relevant to a biography page. If you would like to put it in his wikiquotes section, that would be more than acceptable. But this isn't wikiquotes. Vonnegut has said many things in his 80+ years of life. Should we include them all? Or should we include the ones that you feel represent your own personal political ideals? Wikipedia is meant to be as objective as possible in all respects. If you included perhaps a brief line about his stance on suicide bombing, i would have let it slide. But a whole section? Not going to happen.

I agree with the reasons for the deletion given above. This is an encyclopedia, not a place to cut and paste articles that pissed you off. If you want to put the effort into creating a career-long overview of Vonnegut's beliefs about war, religion and the value of human life, go for it. That would have some value in a biography. Gorilla Jones

Thanks for proving my point, Mr. Jones! The quote concerns a current event, and has a lot to do with Vonnegut's state of mind these days; it is very relevant to this article. And since the mainstream media has ignored this story, it's highly educational, too. I think people need to know that Vonnegut's hatred for George Bush is so strong he's actually praising the thugs who murder women and children.

I could have cared less what the political leaniancies in his comments were.

Bull. If Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly had made comments apologizing for suicide bombers, you'd be ripping them ten ways to Sunday (and rightfully so), so don't even try it. (Oh, and work on spelling, mmmkay?)

Nobody's going to take Wiki seriously if you insist on defending the Kurt Vonneguts of the world, guys. Ever. RMc 00:15, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I can't speak for the author of the unsigned paragraph above the one I wrote, but I guess I'll just have to take that risk, champ. Personally, I don't care what Rush or O'Reilly (or Franken) have to say. Cable news sucks. But regardless of the blissful simplicity suggested by a world in which life, art and context can be discarded in favor of For Bush or Against Bush flags, cutting and pasting a newspaper article still isn't worthy of an entry in an encyclopedia. If that was common practice, nobody would find Wiki remotely useful, let alone worth taking seriously. Gorilla Jones

You might want to put the gun away before you lose any more toes. RMc 01:16, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Ok, folks, let's put aside the personal attacks and work to make the article better...how about a compromise? A section titled "Political views" or "Politics" or some similiar wording (of course that would necessitate encompassing a great deal of more information from his lengthy career)? or even a sub-article on that subject with a brief summary on the main page? It seems to me that a biography on Vonnegut would necessarily contain some sort of mention of his politics, and not just because of this one recent incident. He has never shied away from political commentary, it's the very basis of much of his work, so why not include it, but in an NPOV, detached, factual way? --Easter Monkey 02:20, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree that a section like that would be in order. The paragraph currently in the 'Biography' section beginning "Vonnegut is a humanist..." might serve as part of such a section. And there wouldn't be anything wrong with including the comments about the suicide bombers in a career-spanning overview. Gorilla Jones

Ok? Can we all be friends again? Pretty please? --Easter Monkey 11:31, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

It's a bit late now so I won't bother arguing with RMc (who clearly has no idea as to what objectivity means.) I'd just like to say that the solution proposed was quite a good one and that Gorilla Jones wrote it equally well. 64.230.74.18 04:43, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I guess this issue has been settled as it has been over 6 months since the last salvo in the debate, but here are my twin coppers: Controversy is the life's blood of literature! Where would Capote, Mailer, Vidal, Martin Amis, or Salman Rushdie be without it? If Vonnegut said something that pissed people off enough to start some sort of debate then great. That's what a writer is supposed to do. I read the interview and it ain't pro-terrorist. It is in line with a historical long-view objectivity that Bill Maher used when he said it was braver to blow yourself up in front of your enemy than it is to launch an attack via cruise missle (I am paraphrasing of course). But I can certainly see why any variance from the lock-step mantra of terrorist = mental cause would offend folks who are attempting to justify an untenable narrative about a so-called "war against terror." It is because the interview was controversial and because Vonnegut is a famous writer that the incident should be well-recorded in any biographical article. Jackbox1971 01:54, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to jump in guys, but there was a few things I wanted to throw out there about Vonnegut. Firstly I just wanted to state that yes; Vonneguts political views are of huge relevance to understanding him as an individual and how it it turn, has shaped his writings, hence it should be there among biographical content.(Hell, try to do up a biography of the Ken Kesey and try not to mention the Prankster's opinion of acid.......it doesn't work) We can already see that Vonnegut is terribly anti-war from the overtones of Slaughterhouse 5 and even the way post-war America is portrayed in Player Piano. (Incidentally, this bleak outlook was how Vonnegut actually felt about the US post WWII, while he was working for General Electric) Regarding looking down upon Vonnegut for his comments about the "terrorists" all I can say is: I'm terribly sure Vonnegut does not advocate the creedo of suicide bombers (Purple Heart remember) and his respect does not wave past admiration for dying for a cause. We view suicide bombers as manical, religion crazed individuals who are only out to strike down ideals. The same happens here in North America. Here we view patriotism as the sole ideal and even though the devotion placed in a flag is strong enough to be sent overseas to die for, many people neglect the fact that the same emotions and same drive is what drove those planes into the towers. PS........anyone else see HUGE similarities between President Lynn and Bush?

[edit] List

No list of his works? Aww, man...

When I created the "Vonnegut" template I cut and pasted from what used to be a list of his works contained in the article. Is the template not working? Does for me though. --Easter Monkey 12:08, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't mean to knock the tamplate but I think it would be better if it listed the books with the year in an actual list not right after each other like it does here. Thoughts?--DannyBoy7783 00:06, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

To easy. I don't have the time right at the moment to add all of the dates for the ones that aren't already in the individual wiki article for those that I didn't get to. The template looks "cooler" then just a straight boring list. --Easter Monkey 11:18, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what "too easy" is supposed to mean. Either way, the site is about information and ease of searching not how cool it looks.--DannyBoy7783 21:11, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

In what respect would a list improve on the current template? It already has the dates of each book and the books themselves arranged in chronological order. How would a list be more informative or user-friendly than the template? A list would double the length of the article, which certainly would not increase the "ease of searching". Gorilla Jones 08:48, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

"To easy" in that you want dates, you got dates. As Gorilla said, it's already in chrono order anyway. And if we can get an element of coolness and still convey the info, why the heck not? I can't imagine what you mean by "ease of searching" --- if you're looking for a Vonnegut book, search for Kurt Vonnegut, look for the list of his works, click on the link, and there you are. Sounds easy enough to me. --Easter Monkey 02:50, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kurt Vonnegut's page is not for advertising fo the World Can't Wait)

Agreed. Nor is it for advertising Cornell University, the U of Chicago, or Slaughterhouse 5. Shall we remove those references too? His endorsement of a statement comparing the Bush Agenda to fascism is a snapshot of his mind and a significant act, and thus a worthwhile contribution to the Politics section of this page. Why do you assume that posting this information is an endorsement or an advertisement? Did it ever occur to you that someone opposed to WCW might consider this information important? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 63.199.155.82 (talk • contribs) .

• You are correct, and that is why nobody has gone around adding highly POV statements about Cornell, U Chicago, etc to the pages of every notable graduate of these schools. There are countless endorsers to this petition and the effort to place a lengthy description of it on every endorser's article obviously amounts to an attempt to spam Wikipedia to increase the petitions visibility. If there were anything notable about his endorsement, if he talked about it publicly in an interview, if there was media coverage of it, etc. then there would be reason to add it. Also, please sign your comments by typing four tildes (~) at the end. Thanks. Fightindaman 23:27, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Your characterization of the document as a "petition" shows that if you have even bothered to read it, you have not understood it. It is not a petition. It is a call to action outside the normal channels of political activity. What exactly about the description is "highly POV"? It is an objective characterization of what the statement is about. 63.199.155.82 23:43, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

• I have read it and I do understand it and that is really irrelevant to the matter. The fact is that the statement and links which you have gone around adding to countless articles read like advertisements. Calling the group anti-fascist is a POV statement because calling Bush a fascist is POV. Fightindaman 23:49, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Which Generation?

The intro originally read that Vonnegut was born to fourth-gen German American parents, and an anon recently changed it to fifth gen. I took this as an opportunity to confirm the original before reverting, but what I found described Vonnegut as "A fourth-generation German-American now living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod..." So wouldn't this mean that he was born to third-generation German-American parents? Fightindaman 16:58, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] great author

Kurt Vonnegut I believe is a great author, with a great insight. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Libertinesfan13 (talk • contribs) .

[edit] Wherabouts

The biography says that Vonnegut moved to Massachusetts following the fire at his townhouse. A recent entry says that he has moved back to Manhattan. Could we have a cite for the latter claim? And if its true, the sentence about him living in Massachusetts needs to be updated to the past tense. Anson2995 15:50, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Best I could find is a reference to a 2006 interview that mentions talking to Vonnegut in his Manhattan apartment. [2] I'll presume that as the authoritative cite unless somebody offers something else, and I'll make the necessary clarification in the article. Anson2995 19:39, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Marriage to Krementz

Somebody added an entry that said Vonnegut and Kremenz had divorced in 1991. It was reported that they filed for divroce but that the petition was later withdrawn.[3] They are still married. Anson2995 02:29, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Friends?

I took out part of this statement "In 1974, Venus on the Half-Shell, a book by Philip José Farmer aping the style of Vonnegut and attributed to Kilgore Trout, was published. This action caused a falling out of the two friends and some confusion amongst readers." It is my understanding that Vonnegut hardly knew Farmer. He said in an interview that he had never met him. They were not friends.

[edit] Inline citations

There is only one inline citation (recently added) while all of the other citations are mere links in this format: [4] (btw, does anyone know what these are called?) So I think the single inline citation should be removed unless we can change all of the citations to inline citations. JianLi 23:25, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia - patents

Kurt Vonnegut seems to hold a patent for an easy-clean tobacco pipe, filed in 1944. See: http://www.google.co.uk/patents?vid=USPAT2395596&id=naVWAAAAEBAJ&pg=PP1&dq=kurt+vonnegut#PPP1,M1

Interesting. Is this the author's patent or his father's? Doctormatt 07:45, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

It must be his father, the architect Kurt Vonnegut, Sr.. The author was in the army from 1943-1945 and most certainly not pursuing patent applications. In Fates Worse Than Death, the author writes: "The truth was that the Great Depression and then World War II, during which almost all building stopped, came close to gutting [my father] as an architect. From the time he was forty-five until he was sixty-one he had almost no work." (ie, 1929-1945). Anson2995 16:10, 2 January 2007 (UTC)