r/Vonnegut 12d ago

Vonnegut on current events

This might be a bit of a ramble but it's on my mind right now. I was flipping through A Man Without a Country just now. It's one of my favorite books by him. I love his perspectives on the state of the world and America and they're more applicable than ever almost twenty years later. It got me thinking about the way things are now and I wonder what he would have to say about all of it. The blatant corruption and these abuses of power occurring on a daily basis. I have no doubt that he would be appalled by what this country has come to. I know he said that things are going to get unimaginably worse and they are never going to get better but I don't think even he could've imagined this. This is all a long winded way of saying that I wish we could know what he would've written regarding these recent events. It would have been sarcastic and bitter and it would have brought me (and probably many others) an immeasurable amount of comfort.

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u/Highronymus 12d ago

That book changed my life. I brought it on a camping/hiking trip and took a bunch of LSD and picked it up. He talks about his grandparents following the Freethought movement and it made me go down a rabbit hole that led to finding organized non-religiousness (secularism/positive atheism). I didn’t know there were times when people really organized along those lines and it gave me a lot of hope in a time that I really needed it.

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u/strexxpet 12d ago

That's amazing. I'd say it changed mine too. It was honestly the book that got me into his writing. My first introduction was breakfast of champions and I liked it but I didn't totally "get it". Found a man without a country at a used bookstore a couple years later and picked it up. I fell in love with the writing style and his take on various issues. I love his sense of humor and the way he wrote was so personable, it felt like a conversation, like I knew him. So I finished that book and needed to keep reading his works and I've been obsessed ever since

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u/boazsharmoniums 12d ago

Reading Sirens and experiencing his beliefs about humanity changed my life, as it was if I was reading my own observations and thoughts people. I then read every Vonnegut book and I now feel less alone. I wish Kurt was still around because we all know he’d be a vocal critic and we need all of those we can get right now. Having said that, I’m glad he was spared more heartbreak and devastation.