For the past few days, I have been reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Timequake. I must admit this has not been my favorite Kurt Vonnegut novel. This past summer I read Slaughterhouse Five and then Sirens of Titan. Out of the three I enjoyed Sirens Of Titan the most. Even reading Timequake there are moments I have to stop and marvel in some of the things he writes.
If you have never read anything by Kurt Vonnegut before I would suggest Sirens Of Titan. The story is pretty easy to follow. I can also promise you that it will be some of the most interesting reading you have done.
So why do i like his writing? It is simple. Vonnegut has his own style. It’s interesting, it is to the point and sometimes goes a bit all over the place in a cool way. Here are some of my favorite Vonnegut lines so far. Many of these lines are taken from There is no one else that writes like this.
“When the lethal bee buzzed past his ear” (talking about a bullet)
“The gun made a ripping sound like the opening on the fly of god almighty”
“now they were dyeing in the snow, feeling nothing, turning the color of the snow into raspberry sorbet.”
“potweet” – loved the way he used this in Slaughterhouse Five.
“So it goes”
“Another time Billy heard Rosewater say to a psychiatrist, “ I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren’t going to want to go on living.”
“before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn’t connected.”
“cleaning bird shit out of cuckoo clocks” (love this one)
“if your brains were dynamite, there wouldn’t be enough to blow you hat off.”
“A bald man made an attempt on Constant’s life with a hot dog, stabbed at the window glass with it, splayed the bun, broke the frankfurter–left a sickly sunburst of mustard and relish”
Finally what draws me most to Vonnegut’s writing was his confidence to write in his own style and have an opinion. There is an honesty in his work that confronts you. You are reading fiction based on truth. And you are being told just how it is.