Actual genius with great commentary on society or a simple author people give too much credit and respect to?
simple author with great commentary on society
>>8107805
Jew. He is published because he is a jew
under appreciated on /lit/
over appreciated elsewhere
>>8107805
as a STEM student majoring in machining, his views in Player Piano felt very naive. As a novel it was well written, but his sentiments were surprisingly ham-fisted for a guy that worked in a machine shop before he started writing.
Sirens of Titan is my favorite. It's enjoyable, his narrative tone is always cozy and sub-plots are always entertaining.
He's just too damn naive. Somewhere between Bradbury and Huxley on the idealist-o-meter.
He was the Mark Twain of the second half of the 20th century
>>8107805
Neither. I'd say he's a mildly entertaining author with some interesting (but childish) ideas. The hate is an overreaction to his rabid fans, who are, admittedly, insufferable but don't reflect on his books themselves, which are ok as light reads inbetween doorstops or just more dense things in general.
>>8107839
>He's just too damn naive. Somewhere between Bradbury and Huxley on the idealist-o-meter.
>he apparently didn't read Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five, or Breakfast of Champions
>>8107916
None of those are really good counterexamples. He is naive, but in the way that a resigned, depressive child is naive.
Pynchon = /lit/
Vonnegut = reddit
>>8107932
Gaddis may have overtaken Pinecone as the king of meme/lit/ for the time being.
>>8107927
Naive because he believes that people *should* at least attempt to be good and kind?
>>8107949
Naive because he wants to believe they can eventually become those things even if it takes a lifetime of soul-crushingly humbling suffering to change them. Those sorts of experiences tend to just make people more bitter and assholish.
>>8107817
Vonnegut wasn't even Jewish.
>>8107808
the one guy who got it right
>>8107949
that would be Bradbury.
Bradbury wishes the world were better.
Vonnegut thinks he knows how to make it better.
Huxley's drug-addled brain took it to a whole new level, I couldn't even finish The Island.
>>8107959
This. Vonnegut's characters are always morally aware and internally ready and willing to change to become "better" people.
>>8107966
His characters or his protagonists? I don't feel like that's universally true. And I feel like even if it were there's still this overwhelming air of futility and fatalism that he surrounds all of his "lessons" in.
>>8107997
The ones that come to mind off-hand would be the protagonist of Sirens that was alone on the planet with the lil aliens, also his future wife, the protagonist of player piano and slaughterhouse, fucking Hitler in his Thank You Dr. Kevorkian (?) thing... I'm not sober enough to remember more and I don't have his books on me
>>8108015
I mean, I'm not sure he so much "believes" that other people "can eventually become good and kind after suffering etc etc" so much as he wishes it and tries to embody that ideal himself. Having been a prisoner of war and whatnot, and seeing his fair share of shit.
But what I'm trying to say is, reading his work, it felt to me like he held no illusions about how stupid and cruel people are, or how meaningless/useless the struggle for happiness/peace is, and what-have-you. I just find the criticism that he's "naive" to be a bit unfair, not to mention unduly cynical in itself. But if naive is just shorthand for idealistic, then I guess it's accurate.
>>8107805
i have no idea and i can guarantee that nobody else here does either
>>8108057
I'm >>8107959 and I didn't really mean it as a criticism so much as a description. To me his books still come off like fairy tales even if bad things happen to people in them or whatever, because the "shit" I've seen myself IRL has shown me that redemption through suffering is seldom found and even more rarely "takes" the way he shows for more than a couple of weeks or months.
I'm not saying this was his worldview IRL, just that it's the worldview of his books themselves. That isn't necessarily bad or anything, but it can be frustrating or come off as maudlin to those who've experienced things to the contrary.
>>8108057
>But if naive is just shorthand for idealistic, then I guess it's accurate.
admittedly, I see idealism as naivety and that's reflected in my opinion.
But also, I Player Piano he visualizes a future wherein automation has taken practically all of mankind's jobs and in doing so also took man's purpose(something he believed could happen in the future). I actually asked my PLC programming instructor what he thought about that and he just laughed at the idea of robots taking all of our jobs. He's the guy that programs said robots and he didn't believe it.
And the Shah of Bratpur(?) was an obvious and clumsy literary device to show a contrast of America's self-destructive industry and ideologies, and when the author no longer needed the device he literally left him in a gutter.
I actually really liked the book, it's extremely well written and well-thought, just too idealistic to be taken as a legitimate cautionary tale
>>8108126
To be fair, Vonnegut didn't think it was very good either because he gave it a "C" in that one book where he gives himself "grades" (relative to himself and not anyone else) for all of his works.
