he was unique
@pauldauenhauer The first Vonnegut book I ever read was Cat's Cradle. I was maybe about 15. This was early 1980s. School had conditioned me to think "all good authors are dead" so when I finished it (I think I read it in the space of a lazy sunday afternoon), I thought "what a cool author. Too bad he's dead."
A few weeks later I was describing this Vonnegut guy to my uncle and he's like "oh yeah, love him too. He just came out with a new book."
Wut?
Very pleasant to realize he was not dead and producing new books (which I think was Galapagos... which wasn't that bad of a book either).
Some friends and I eventually went to see him give a talk in the Detroit area. I remember his advice for new writers working on their first book "throw out your first chapter".
Yeah, Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, and Frank Herbert were very influential on my early teen years.
Elise Huard
Paul Dauenhauer
John Shirley
vy
The Skeptic's Book of Lists