NEW YORK - In books such as "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle," and "Hocus Pocus," Kurt Vonnegut mixed the bitter and funny with a touch of the profound.
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Vonnegut, regarded by many critics as a key influence in shaping 20th-century American literature, died Wednesday at 84. He had suffered brain injuries after a recent fall at his Manhattan home, said his wife, photographer Jill Krementz.
In a statement, Norman Mailer hailed Vonnegut as "a marvelous writer with a style that remained undeniably and imperturbably his own. ... I would salute him — our own Mark Twain."
"He was sort of like nobody else," said another fellow author, Gore Vidal. "Kurt was never dull."
Vonnegut's works — more than a dozen novels plus short stories, essays and plays — contained elements of social commentary, science fiction and autobiography. Hours after his death, "Slaughterhouse-Five" had jumped to the top 10 on Amazon.com, while "Cat's Cradle" and the nonfiction "A Man Without a Country" had reached the top 40.
Vonnegut's longtime friend and manager, Donald Farber, said there would be no public memorial, only a private gathering of family and friends. He also said that other Vonnegut books were likely to come out, but declined to offer specifics.
A self-described religious skeptic and freethinking humanist, Vonnegut used protagonists such as Billy Pilgrim ("Slaughterhouse-Five") and Eliot Rosewater ("God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater") as transparent vehicles for his points of view.
Vonnegut lectured regularly, exhorting audiences to think for themselves and delighting in barbed commentary against the institutions he felt were dehumanizing people.
"He was a man who combined a wicked sense of humor and sort of steady moral compass, who was always sort of looking at the big picture of the things that were most important," said Joel Bleifuss, editor of In These Times, a liberal magazine based in Chicago that featured Vonnegut articles.
Like "Catch-22," by Vonnegut's friend Joseph Heller, "Slaughterhouse-Five" was a World War II novel embraced by opponents of the Vietnam War, linking a so-called "good war" to the unpopular conflict of the 1960s and '70s.
Some of Vonnegut's books were banned and burned for alleged obscenity. He took on censorship as an active member of the PEN writers' aid group and the
American Civil Liberties Union.
The American Humanist Association, which promotes individual freedom, rational thought and scientific skepticism, made him its honorary president.
Vonnegut said the villains in his books were never individuals, but culture, society and history, which he said were making a mess of the planet.
"I like to say that the 51st state is the state of denial," he told The Associated Press in 2005. "It's as though a huge comet were heading for us and nobody wants to talk about it. We're just about to run out of petroleum and there's nothing to replace it."
Despite his commercial success, Vonnegut battled depression throughout his life, and in 1984, he attempted suicide with pills and alcohol, joking later about how he botched the job.
"I will say anything to be funny, often in the most horrible situations," Vonnegut, whose watery, heavy-lidded eyes and unruly hair made him seem to be in existential pain, once told a gathering of psychiatrists.
Vonnegut was born on Nov. 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, and studied chemistry at Cornell University before joining the Army. His mother killed herself just before he left for Germany during World War II, where he was quickly taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge. He was being held in Dresden when Allied bombs firebombed the German city.
"The firebombing of Dresden explains absolutely nothing about why I write what I write and am what I am," Vonnegut wrote in "Fates Worse Than Death," his 1991 autobiography of sorts.
But he spent 23 years struggling to write about the ordeal, which he survived by huddling with other POW's inside an underground meat locker labeled slaughterhouse-five.
The novel that emerged, in which Pvt. Pilgrim is transported from Dresden by time-traveling aliens, was published at the height of the Vietnam War, and solidified his reputation as an iconoclast.
After World War II, he reported for Chicago's City News Bureau, then did public relations for General Electric, a job he loathed. He wrote his first novel, "Player Piano," in 1951, followed by "The Sirens of Titan," "Canary in a Cat House" and "Mother Night," making ends meet by selling Saabs on Cape Cod.
Critics ignored him at first, then denigrated his deliberately bizarre stories and disjointed plots as haphazardly written science fiction. But his novels became cult classics, especially "Cat's Cradle" in 1963, in which scientists create "ice-nine," a crystal that turns water solid and destroys the Earth.
He retired from novel writing in his later years, but continued to publish short articles. He had a best-seller in 2005 with "A Man Without a Country," a collection of his nonfiction, including jabs at the Bush administration ("upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography") and the uncertain future of the planet.
He called the book's success "a nice glass of champagne at the end of a life."
Vonnegut, who had homes in Manhattan and the Hamptons in New York, adopted his sister's three young children after she died. He also had three children of his own with his first wife, Jane Marie Cox, and later adopted a daughter, Lily, with his second wife, Krementz.
Vonnegut once said that of all the ways to die, he'd prefer to go out in an airplane crash on the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. He often joked about the difficulties of old age.
"When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon," Vonnegut told the AP.
"My father, like Hemingway, was a gun nut and was very unhappy late in life. But he was proud of not committing suicide. And I'll do the same, so as not to set a bad example for my children."
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- Re: 冯内古特去世 Author Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84posted on 04/12/2007
七格的小说有 Kurt Vonnegut 的风格。 - Re: 冯内古特去世 Author Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84posted on 04/13/2007
Every war survivors has been transformed, one way or another, and none of that was easy to bear. Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" was his way out of that darkness, the heavy absolute darkness from war, and he came out with a kind of invincible black humor.
- posted on 04/13/2007
《第五屠宰场》好像是他的第一本中译本。
张洁和王蒙对他的评价极高。
《第五号屠场》
冯内古特的代表作是根据他本人亲身经历写成的《第五号屠场》,背景是1945年盟军对德国德累斯顿的大轰炸。
当时冯内古特本人是名战俘,他与其它盟军战俘一起躲在地下的一个藏肉柜中得以逃生。
在这次大轰炸中,13万5千人死亡。轰炸结束以后,他与其它盟军战俘被迫在瓦砾中挖掘尸体。
在《第五号屠场》中,德累斯顿大轰炸成为千百年来战争的残酷与毁灭性的象征。
作品于1969年发表,当时美国正经历反越战浪潮、种族骚乱等一系列社会文化重大事件。
"纽约时报"对这部作品的评价是:"这是一部我们必须阅读、反复阅读的书籍"。
去年,出于对美国总统布什的"鄙视", 冯内古特发表了新作《没有国家的人》。
冯内古特一生与忧郁症搏斗。1984年,他曾试图以药物和烈酒自杀。自杀失败以后,他自嘲说"活没有干好"。
冯内古特的妻子是摄影师克莱门丝,仍健在。冯内古特与现任克莱门丝育有一女。冯内古特此外还另有六个孩子。
- posted on 04/13/2007
库尔特·冯内古特(Kurt Vonnegut,Jr.,1922年11月11日—2007年4月11日),美国作家,黑色幽默文学代表人物之一。
《猫的摇篮》(1963)是黑色幽默的代表作之一。其背景是个虚构的岛国“山洛伦佐”。此国的统治者是宗教领袖博克侬和政治领袖、暴君麦克凯布,他们两人表面上势不两立,实际上互相利用,根本目的是要把社会推入巨大的恐怖之中。书中到处都有自相矛盾、违反学理的幽默,如博克侬填写表格时,在“业余活动”一栏里填写的是“活着”,而在“主要职业”下面填写的却是“死亡”。
《冠军早餐》——以虚构的科幻作家Kilgore的许多荒诞的短篇小说和他的遭遇,对人类的生存状态进行冷嘲热讽,但在戏谑中充满着作家严肃的真诚。以后现代主义的创作手法著称,描写了作者本人“进入小说干涉结局“的场景。全书充满着冯内古特的个人风格,堪称该风格的代表作。
《囚鸟》——以一个人的遭遇串起美国20世纪中期各个重大事件,包括麦卡锡主义、水门事件等,揭露美国社会的黑暗一面。
《五号屠场》(1969)——黑色幽默的类科幻作品,以二次世界大战中遭盟军轰炸的德国城市德累斯顿(Dresden)的惨状拟题 (德累斯顿轰炸),在社会上引起争议,曾多次遭禁。后来成为黑色幽默的反战作品中的经典。
《时震》——本人声称该书为封笔之作。写的是时间突然倒回了十年,而所有人不得不把这十年里发生的事情一模一样的再做一遍。作品中充满着后现代写作手法与辛辣的黑色幽默,《冠军早餐》中的Kilgore再次在这里出现,以他的短篇小说为作者“代言”。
- Re: 冯内古特去世 Author Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84posted on 07/23/2007
提--今天搬家装箱看到这本书“Slaughterhouse-Five”。
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