"A leftist anti-authoritarian of sorts, he exposed the horrors of totalitarianism as he saw them, including on the left. His political and economic blindspots are hardly a blemish for this libertarian reader, who enjoyed his wonderful and scathing attacks on moral hypocrisy and atrocity. In Slaughterhouse Five, he took on morally nihilistic determinism and the terror bombing of Dresden, where he had been an American POW. In his often-neglected work of brilliance, Mother Night, Vonnegut discussed the moral dilemmas of being an agent who had infiltrated the Nazis and served as a Nazi propagandist — all on behalf of the Allies, but with the effect of bolstering the National Socialist regime. Throughout many of his books and short stories, the latter of which can be read in Welcome to the Monkey House, he examined various forms of modernist dystopianism and displayed a charming quality of shunning the PC orthodoxy when old-fashioned sensibility would better serve. Many readers might most appreciate his short story "Harrison Bergeron," an anti-egalitarian masterpiece that takes place in "2081, and everybody was finally equal." Vonnegut was a great writer with a great sense of humanity."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
AbsurdistsNovelists from the United StatesAcademics from the United StatesHumanistsAgnostics from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Anthony Gregory, in "Kurt Vonnegut, RIP" at LewRockwell.com (12 April 2007)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Kurt Vonnegut
1922 – 2007
US-amerikanischer Schriftsteller
344 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Kurt Vonnegut →
Related Quotes
"1. Find a subject you care about. 2. Do not ramble, though. 3. Keep it simple. 4. Have the guts to cut. 5. Sound like…"
"You learn about life by the accidents you have, over and over again, and your father is always in your head when that…"
"My brother got his doctorate in 1938, I think. If he had gone to work in Germany after that, he would have been helpi…"
"I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for…"
"Literature is idiosyncratic arrangements in horizontal lines in only twenty-six symbols, ten arabic numbers, and abou…"
"What television does is rent us friends and relatives who are quite satisfactory. The child watching TV loves these p…"
"All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remem…"
"What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create st…"
"Well, I've worried some about, you know, why write books … why are we teaching people to write books when presidents …"
"The telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangero…"