so it goes

[sanpaku_backup]

World's least original subject line today, but what else can you do. If I had one piece of advice to give to aspiring young writers today, it would be to stay the hell away from Kurt Vonnegut. The man could express ideas so clearly and so cleverly that one's attempts to do likewise always sounded ham-handed and false by comparison. Breakfast of Champions was one of the first novels that I "got" on a meta-level, being a crude yet completely brilliant meditation on the limits of communication, and I really think I never recovered. I read the KV oeuvre pretty thoroughly thereafter (well, everyone stops after about the mid-seventies, but whatever) and decided that the further writing of fiction by anyone was pretty much useless, a feeling I haven't entirely discarded.

Comments

[dvandva2.livejournal.com]

I agree with your assessment...I read timequake and wish I hadn't. It's trivial, but there is a notable story about Vonnegut fulminating against the semicolon in his classes, referring to it as a "hermaphrodite". That has always reminded me of his character and made me smile. :)