Tuesday 15 July 2008

Vonnegutting

One of the things I miss about reading for study is the sensation of falling for an author and devouring them - among others, Douglas Coupland shaped my sixth-form existence and my third year of university was made all the more perverted and perverse by Chuck Palahniuk.

Last year I read The Sirens of Titan about two weeks before Kurt Vonnegut's death (completely co-incidentally, honest) and enjoyed it so much that I'm planning a bit of a Vonnegut-fest for this autumn. Anyway, here's a choice quote from Mother Night to give you a measure of the man:

Drawn crudely in the dust of three window-panes were a swastika, a hammer and sickle, and the Stars and Stripes. I had drawn the three symbols weeks before, at the conclusion of an argument about patriotism with Kraft. I had given a hearty cheer for each symbol, demonstrating to Kraft the meaning of patriotism to, respectively, a Nazi, a Communist, and an American. "Hooray, hooray, hooray," I'd said.

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