David Masello has a rather nice essay in the Times about sightings of his neighbor Kurt Vonnegut in the vicinity of the United Nations (sort of a curiously appropriate area for him to have lived).
I've missed the boat on Vonnegut links, there's been a lot of very good stuff around the place, but I must take this moment to say that my favorite Vonnegut novels by far are Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse 5. I think of both of these novels quite often, and never without also a moment of remembering the person who introduced me to them, my beloved high school boyfriend Anton Segal. Anton was murdered in 1998, almost ten years ago now; he was the first person I really knew well and cared about to die violently by someone else's hand (he has since been joined in this sorry distinction by Natasha Fuentes and Helen Hill, and I hope it will be a very long time indeed--a never-type long time!--before I have to add another name to the list).
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I truly believe that "Slaugterhouse 5" changed the way I read and relate to literature
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed these two books of Vonnegut;s too, Jenny -- I also read a couple of his others. However, the titles of the others completely escape me, as does any of the content of Cat's Cradle. Slaughterhouse 5, however, sticks in the mind very clearly -- it was a "mould-breaking" book, I think.
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