Apart from his writing, he was really good in Back to School. He looked about 84 then back in '84. Now he and Rodney are both gone. As are so many others.

One of my favorite lines from a movie was from the 80's teen flick called "Just one of the boys" where a girl dons boy drag to and goes to another high school. Her teenage brother is this little horndog and he is talking about a playboy centerfold he is drooling about and says.
"She despises Toxic waste and reads Vonnegut in the bathtub!"

Hey it got me into Vonnegut...

Loved Breakfast of Champions... Loved his concepts of the "LEAKS"

Poo-tee-tweet.

Mixed bag indeed on his work as a whole, and I very much disagreed with some of his strong views.

That said, he was a genius and much of his work entertains me quite a bit. Writers like him are few and far between, I always found it odd that he was a contemporary and I find it equally odd that he's gone.

Goodbye Kurt, you were one seriously cool dude.
 

In college my roomate had to write a critique of a "Breakfast of Champions". The teacher did not like his take on the book, gave him a bad grade and said his views were just wrong. So my roomie sent his paper along with the teachers comments to Kurt. About a month later he received back a message:

Dear John:

Your teacher is an asshole.

Sincerely
Kurt Vonnegut


(oops, I just noticed the other thread on this. Would someone merge this with that?)

I still consider Mother Night to be one of my favorite books.

I will miss his skewed point of view.

Dear World,

Kurt Vonnegut had serious writing chops. Thank God he let us read his stuff.

Sincerely,
Helen

What a great story. Farewell Kurt (in truth, I thought you'd gone already :blush: )

It's such a great story, I still remember the first time I heard it.


So either Vonnegut has called many a professor an "asshole" or Moonie's roommate is THE guy in the story I heard (read).

I would not be suprised if Kurt recived and responded in kind to many such letters. However in this case I did see the actual letter from Kurt. (Circa 1981 or so...). If you can find the refrence you saw please post it. I'd be interested to see if there is a connection.

Nice story. Interestingly, that was basically the bit in Back to School. Rodney hired Kurt Vonnegut to write his English paper on a Vonnegut novel. The snooty professor recognized that Rodney could not have written the essay and added that whoever did knows nothing about Vonnegut.

Professors being professors, you'd probably get the same result with whatever author you plugged in.