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From Stephen Elliott
If you, like Kurt Vonnegut, are a fan of Adobe Books, you’ll be happy to hear that after all the twists, turns, and loop-de-loops of the past few months, the beloved bookstore has raised enough money to stay open as a cooperative.
...moreHere’s a lovely addition to the ongoing up-again-down-again saga of Adobe Books: Herbert Gold describes Kurt Vonnegut’s last trip to San Francisco, during which the two visited the “eternal no-rent bookshop.”
Vonnegut ended up signing a $1.95 used copy of Slaughterhouse Five, which the store’s owners were able to sell “to a collector for enough to cover the threat of eviction for a month or two.”
The trip also included burritos, which is the obvious food choice in the Mission, of course, but the image of Kurt Vonnegut snarfing a burrito under that “bristle of mustache” is somehow surprising and delightful.
...moreBrain Pickings continues the conversation on Kurt Vonnegut.
It all started with the recent publication of We are What We Pretend to Be: The First and Last Works followed by our interview with Vonnegut’s daughter Nanette. In ongoing musings on authors in love, Brain Pickings referenced The Rumpus.
...moreIf you spent the weekend honoring the veterans in your life or otherwise celebrating Veterans Day, you may have missed these excellent Rumpus pieces. Don’t worry, it’s not too late to read them!
On what would have been his 90th birthday, we spoke with Kurt Vonnegut’s daughter Nanette about her father’s writing, family life, and PTSD.
...moreThree years ago yesterday, in honor of Kurt Vonnegut’s birthday, we reprinted Steve Almond’s homage to the late author, “Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt.”
“The main thing was that Vonnegut made an impact on readers. He wasn’t one of those recluses who hid behind coy fictional guises.
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To commemorate what would have been Kurt Vonnegut’s 90th birthday, The Rumpus sits down with Nanette Vonnegut for an exclusive interview about her father, his legacy, and his writing…
...moreSylvia Plath may not be best known for her paper dolls, but we don’t usually envision Mark Twain as an avid fan of scrapbooking, either.
Check out this cool collection of the artwork of famous authors, which also includes William Burroughs’s gunshot paintings and Charles Bukowski’s watercolors.
...moreWilliam Dereseiwicz’s luminous response to Kurt Vonnegut’s oeuvre recently printed by the Library of America, is a critique as much as it is hero-worship.
Dereseiwicz confronts Vonnegut’s novels from his earliest to his last, focusing on Vonnegut’s zenith in moral seriousness and the long, personal road to Slaughterhouse-Five.
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Five years ago on a tiny island in the Aegean, I cried for Kurt Vonnegut as I sat in the tub, holding in one hand the long, low-pressure shower hose and in the other, a coffee mug full of red wine.
In The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson has not only visited a nation curtained from the rest of the world, but has recreated it with compassion and humanity. The result is a relentless examination of what it means to be human in an inhumane world.Twenty years before Slaughterhouse-Five, a broke Kurt Vonnegut came up with an idea for an atomic bow-tie. While he became known for his environmentalism later in life, in 1950, Vonnegut—like America at large—seemed ready to cash-in on the atomic.
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(Yet Another) Rumpus Lamentation:
It’s a sunny winter day in Tucson, Arizona. There’s an event being held in the parking lot of a supermarket called Safeway.
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If he had not been such a pacifist, Kurt Vonnegut would have made a hell of a boxer.
I say this knowing full well that Vonnegut was not an impressive physical specimen. His posture was miserable, his countenance was haggard and his lungs were lacquered with so much tar from smoking unfiltered Pall Malls you’d have thought he’d spent his life paving interstate highways.
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“Arts & Letters,” the Spring issue of Lapham’s Quarterly, is perhaps the magazine’s most unabashed celebration of nostalgia yet, which is saying a lot for a publication that indulges as much in the work of Sappho and Seneca as it does in that of contemporary writers, artists and thinkers.
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The year I met Steve Almond was also the year I picked up (Not That You Asked) and the year I read his gorgeous homage to Kurt Vonnegut, “Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt.”
Still have to work out a few minor tech problems, but we’re back.
On eco-peril and how the Nazca caused their own collapse.
Kurt Vonnegut’s book covers redesigned at last.
How does one measure the distance between stars, planets, galaxies?
...moreGood morning, world. This week, the blogs are full of fun. Many of them had wondrous posts having to do with lovable, humorous, classic sci-fi authors like Vonnegut and Bradbury and Adams. It was a week made for me.
Also, apologies in advance for the sparse posts today.
...moreThis week, the book blogs are full of answers. Listen to them.
Vonnegut knew why we are all such drama queens (there are charts involved).
A thought-provoking take on writing a satisfying ending.
The Book Bench points out that CNN somehow knows what future libraries smell like.
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There’s Something Wrong with Sven combines imaginative leaps worthy of Calvino and Vonnegut with tragicomic irreverence of the George Saunders variety.
I began reading Kurt Vonnegut after I had slid too far down to climb back up the slide of becoming a full-blown pessimist.
I remember feeling this during a month long trip to Mexico. I saw villages with homes made of cardboard boxes and sheet metal.
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