Could death be a quality? A place? not an ending but an occurance that changes those it happens to? Only Kurt Vonnegut could make it so - in a new work of the imagination of great beauty & distinction that is funny, dazzling & disturbing.
read by: SCOTT BRICK
running time-approx 50 minutes.
DOLBY SOUND
read by: SCOTT BRICK
running time-approx 50 minutes.
DOLBY SOUND
Weird, but that is how Vonnegut writes. Very interesting, though.
These very brief vignettes are pure Vonnegut: droll, pithy, and sometimes priceless.
One of his weaker titles. But it can be funny at times.
There are few things in life more inspiring than a truly creative person, and Kurt Vonnegut never disappoints. This little (and I mean little: it's only about 80 pages) gem, which touches on timeless topics as only Kurt can, is no exception. I love his fiction, but I think I love these pseudo-autobiography-cum-memoir-cum-commentaries even more: one of my top three favorite books of all time is "A Man Without A Country." I could read it every day. This book is similar in many respects, but it's a bit more lighthearted. It's kind of a hybrid (or bastard child, if you prefer) of faux journalism, poetry and socio-political commentary, a volatile mix indeed, but KV pulls it off with humor and refreshing candor in his role as radio station WNYC's reporter on the Afterlife.
He also reveals a fair bit about family members who influenced him in this one, which I always appreciate, including Harvard-educated life insurance agent uncle Vonnegut, who used to sit under an apple tree, drinking lemonade, musing "if this isn't nice, what is?" And there's great-grandfather Vonnegut, ever the humanist, who likewise once pondered, "if Jesus was good, what does it matter whether he was God or not?" I think these semi-rhetorical musings deeply affected our beloved KV, such that he embarked upon an epic journey, courtesy of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, to speak with some dearly departed fellow humanists on the Other Side, including notables such as Shakespeare, the unconquerable John Brown, Isaac Newton, Adolf Hitler, his hero Victor Eugene Debs, and even one Dr. Mary D. Ainsworth, a retired and recently-dearly-departed developmental psychologist, who could discuss nature vs. nurture and what made Kurt, well, Kurt. Getting the Recently Deceased to psychoanalyze you is a creative endeavor, indeed.
What's "heaven" like in the KV universe? Well, first, there's no hell. I'm not sure if I'm relieved or enraged by that prospect. Babies who die before they have the chance to grow up are raised by surrogates, who dote on them until they turn out perfect: that is, they lavish them with love and attention until they grow up to become angels. That's where angels come from. And a New-Orleans-style brass band led by Louis Armstrong greets fortunate new arrivals with a rousing rendition of "When the Saint Go Marching In!" (but one has to be VERY special: only about 1 in 10 million are afforded that privilege) According to Peter Pellegrino, founder of the Balloon Federation of America, heaven can be approximated by the pre-deceased when flying in a hot air balloon over the Alps, so you might want to get cracking on that. Oh, and Hitler is remorseful, Thomas Jefferson is considered evil, and Saint Peter and Isaac Newton hang out at the end of the "blue tunnel," with the latter still attempting to conduct experiments on what makes the blue tunnel what it is. Saint Peter finally had to put the matter to rest, by quoting Shakespeare: "there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Amen.
It goes without saying that KV had to end with something from SciFi writers, including Kilgore Trout, who, when queried about his thoughts on the events in Kosovo, said: "NATO should have resisted the nearly irresistible temptation to be entertainers on television, to compete with movies by blowing up bridges and police stations and factories and so on." The last entry is an interview with the timeless science fiction writer who inspired the aforementioned character, Isaac Asimov, KV's predecessor as the president of the American Humanist Association. Kurt's eulogy at IA's memorial service apparently "had them rolling in the aisles," to the degree that it took several minutes to restore order. KV and he were certainly kindred spirits. KV recounted a story about him: "Isaac, you should be in the Guinness Book of World Records," he once told him, for writing some 500 books and innumerable academic articles and publications, to which IA replied: "to be immortalized along with a rooster named 'Weirdo' who weighed twenty-two pounds and killed two cats?" Touche. IA also said that "Hell itself would be bearable for me, as long as I could write all the time." Truer words hath ne'er been spoke, I suppose. Parting thought: KV asked him to what did he owe his prolific and unprecedented productivity. "Isaac Asimov replied with a single word. 'Escape.' And then he appended a famous statement by the similarly prolific French writer, Jean-Paul Sartre. 'Hell is other people.' I guess that sums it up, for many of us.
In sum, for me: God Bless You, Kurt Vonnegut! Maybe his epitaph should have read "This is Kurt Vonnegut, WNYC's reporter on the afterlife, signing off!" That would have been a good joke, too.
---------NOTABLE PASSAGES--------
If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake.
My epitaph in any case? "Everything was so beautiful. Nothing hurt."
WNYC does what no commercial radio or TV station can afford to do anymore. WNYC satisfies the people's right to know-as contrasted with, as abject slaves of high-roller publicists and advertisers, keeping the public vacantly diverted and entertained.
Freud said he didn't know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to.... What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn't get so mad at them. Why are so many people getting divorced today? It's because most of us don't have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a whole lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.
I asked [a] heroic pet lover [who saved his beloved dog from a vicious pit bull attack, but who died from a heart attack in the process] how it felt to have died for a schnauzer named Teddy. He was philosophical. He said that it sure as heck beat dying for absolutely nothing in the Viet Nam War.
"Without the shedding of blood... there is no remission of sin." It turns out that's in the New Testament. Hebrews 9:22.
Justice systems anywhere, anytime, have never cared whether justice was achieved or not. Like Roman games, justice systems are ways for unjust governments - and there is no other sort of government - to be enormously entertained with real lives at stake.
He also reveals a fair bit about family members who influenced him in this one, which I always appreciate, including Harvard-educated life insurance agent uncle Vonnegut, who used to sit under an apple tree, drinking lemonade, musing "if this isn't nice, what is?" And there's great-grandfather Vonnegut, ever the humanist, who likewise once pondered, "if Jesus was good, what does it matter whether he was God or not?" I think these semi-rhetorical musings deeply affected our beloved KV, such that he embarked upon an epic journey, courtesy of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, to speak with some dearly departed fellow humanists on the Other Side, including notables such as Shakespeare, the unconquerable John Brown, Isaac Newton, Adolf Hitler, his hero Victor Eugene Debs, and even one Dr. Mary D. Ainsworth, a retired and recently-dearly-departed developmental psychologist, who could discuss nature vs. nurture and what made Kurt, well, Kurt. Getting the Recently Deceased to psychoanalyze you is a creative endeavor, indeed.
What's "heaven" like in the KV universe? Well, first, there's no hell. I'm not sure if I'm relieved or enraged by that prospect. Babies who die before they have the chance to grow up are raised by surrogates, who dote on them until they turn out perfect: that is, they lavish them with love and attention until they grow up to become angels. That's where angels come from. And a New-Orleans-style brass band led by Louis Armstrong greets fortunate new arrivals with a rousing rendition of "When the Saint Go Marching In!" (but one has to be VERY special: only about 1 in 10 million are afforded that privilege) According to Peter Pellegrino, founder of the Balloon Federation of America, heaven can be approximated by the pre-deceased when flying in a hot air balloon over the Alps, so you might want to get cracking on that. Oh, and Hitler is remorseful, Thomas Jefferson is considered evil, and Saint Peter and Isaac Newton hang out at the end of the "blue tunnel," with the latter still attempting to conduct experiments on what makes the blue tunnel what it is. Saint Peter finally had to put the matter to rest, by quoting Shakespeare: "there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Amen.
It goes without saying that KV had to end with something from SciFi writers, including Kilgore Trout, who, when queried about his thoughts on the events in Kosovo, said: "NATO should have resisted the nearly irresistible temptation to be entertainers on television, to compete with movies by blowing up bridges and police stations and factories and so on." The last entry is an interview with the timeless science fiction writer who inspired the aforementioned character, Isaac Asimov, KV's predecessor as the president of the American Humanist Association. Kurt's eulogy at IA's memorial service apparently "had them rolling in the aisles," to the degree that it took several minutes to restore order. KV and he were certainly kindred spirits. KV recounted a story about him: "Isaac, you should be in the Guinness Book of World Records," he once told him, for writing some 500 books and innumerable academic articles and publications, to which IA replied: "to be immortalized along with a rooster named 'Weirdo' who weighed twenty-two pounds and killed two cats?" Touche. IA also said that "Hell itself would be bearable for me, as long as I could write all the time." Truer words hath ne'er been spoke, I suppose. Parting thought: KV asked him to what did he owe his prolific and unprecedented productivity. "Isaac Asimov replied with a single word. 'Escape.' And then he appended a famous statement by the similarly prolific French writer, Jean-Paul Sartre. 'Hell is other people.' I guess that sums it up, for many of us.
In sum, for me: God Bless You, Kurt Vonnegut! Maybe his epitaph should have read "This is Kurt Vonnegut, WNYC's reporter on the afterlife, signing off!" That would have been a good joke, too.
---------NOTABLE PASSAGES--------
If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake.
My epitaph in any case? "Everything was so beautiful. Nothing hurt."
WNYC does what no commercial radio or TV station can afford to do anymore. WNYC satisfies the people's right to know-as contrasted with, as abject slaves of high-roller publicists and advertisers, keeping the public vacantly diverted and entertained.
Freud said he didn't know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to.... What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn't get so mad at them. Why are so many people getting divorced today? It's because most of us don't have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a whole lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.
I asked [a] heroic pet lover [who saved his beloved dog from a vicious pit bull attack, but who died from a heart attack in the process] how it felt to have died for a schnauzer named Teddy. He was philosophical. He said that it sure as heck beat dying for absolutely nothing in the Viet Nam War.
"Without the shedding of blood... there is no remission of sin." It turns out that's in the New Testament. Hebrews 9:22.
Justice systems anywhere, anytime, have never cared whether justice was achieved or not. Like Roman games, justice systems are ways for unjust governments - and there is no other sort of government - to be enormously entertained with real lives at stake.
Short essays, very enjoyable to cheer the reader up. Do not miss the one about James Earle Ray.
