21–26 of 26 posts
Was just thinking to myself how Player Piano has never been more appropriate than the AI age we’re in such a hurry to usher in.
Bluebeard is a good one too; it ruminates on the nature of art and how/why meaning is assigned to it.
Was just thinking to myself how Player Piano has never been more appropriate than the AI age we’re in such a hurry to usher in.
Was just thinking to myself how Player Piano has never been more appropriate than the AI age we’re in such a hurry to usher in.
No love for "Sirens Of Titan"?
>1) I am here
>2) So glad you are
The existance of the harminoniums. That most beautiful of passages, simplicity and grace...
Was just thinking to myself how Player Piano has never been more appropriate than the AI age we’re in such a hurry to usher in.
I happened to reread it recently and was absolutely blown away by how relevant it is today, and how it is almost certainly more relevant today than when it was written.
One of my brothers asked (out of legitimate concern) if I needed to visit a mental institution... because there just is no way you are talking with machines about books — about such fantasies.
Granted, my life has been a series of abuses; but Vonnegut helped me realize the impossible isn't so.
And now it's so.
>...so it goes.
Vonnegut is good but I think (Aldous) Huxley had more to say, at least that resonated more with me. I recently discovered this 1958 interview of Huxley[1]: > This is the force which in general terms can be called overpopulation, the mounting pressure of population pressing upon existing resources. …This, of course, is an extraordinary thing; something is happening which has never happened in the world's history befor…
Vonnegut was an artist.
They both make you think.
They both make you question human-ness.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree. It's just not a very good Vonnegut novel though. You can see him without (yet) a voice in the novel. If "Breakfast of Champions" is a little too nutty though, I think I might like his "Mother Night" best. (But maybe we like nutty Kurt?)
I think "Hocus Pocus" is his best, followed by "Cat's Cradle". But how lucky are we to have so many good ones to pick from?
I read this during the same time I was copyediting a good friend's Vietnam memoir. As a staff sargeant [E6], my buddy saw/did some things — including lobbing a girl's head off as she stepped in front of his rocket trajectory — but we both crossed eyes when I explained what the calculation on the last page of HP resulted in: survivor's remorse of rape & pillaging.
How many little half-Sargeants must being running around 'Nam...