Letters to the Editor
-
@Terry Anastassiou
You got lucky, or whatever, with Germany. Japan is a different matter, however. While Japan has become quite pacifistic, people also are fairly remorseless and many are unabashedly nationalistic.
-
Um
For those of you smirking about that quote, you do realize that it's a thought about the U.S., not Germany, don't you? It's commenting on what we did in Dresden, not on what Germany might or might not become. THAT is why it's prophetic, and why it fits the current situation. Nobody can say what will happen henceforth in Iraq, but we can all pretty much agree that it's in the state it's in because of us.
Oh and count on surgarman to come up with a choice bit of nastinesss. Good show, dude. Let everyone be sure to know your opinion on a great writer. By the way, how many innocent corpses have you carried in your time? Maybe spending a few days surrounded by the torn and rotting bodies of your country's art of war will bring you just a tad bit of compassion for an enemy. But methinks I may be hoping for too much, there.
-
Well we DID nuke the WRONG country
Kind of a shame, really.
-
Can Dresden and Iraq be compared?
Interesting article and equally interesting readers' comments. So Vonnegut became a pacifist after the war. Only a scoundrel wouldn't after what he went through. The citizens of Dresden had it coming, as one comment says? We nuked the wrong country? Perhaps should have nuked Dresden? Dresden had been declared an open city and was full of refugees. Vonnegut claims 250,000 dead. Probably too high but he didn't get that figure from Irwin. In reality nobody will ever be able to say how many exactly perished. Many had just arrived after a long trek from the East and the fires were so hot that nothing was left of the corpses. Finally, Vonnegut was wrong with his statement of "Germany 20 years later" but we must draw a comparison to Iraq. True, Iraq is not Germany but if there is to be a chance of normality there we must get out and hope for the best. We could still be holding the course in Vietnam. And look at our relationship with Vietnam now. One of our more important trading partners in the Pacific.
-
So it goes.
n/t
-
lc sez
I know that you have suffered, lad
But suffer this awhile:
Whatever makes a soldier sad
Will make a killer smile.
-
Our Kurt Vonnegut
Here in Iowa City, at the University of Iowa, one of the world's literary capitals, we nurture the legend -- which is at least partially true -- that Vonnegut wrote "Slaughterhouse 5" in a brick house on the city's north side that is now a guest house called the "Vonnegut Mansion." (He actually went back to Germany on a research grant right AFTER his stint as a teacher in the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where one of his students was John Irving.) He's OUR Kurt Vonnegut, a notion reinforced when he stopped back here on one of his reading tours and said, "It's good to be home," and expressed his relief at being somewhere he did not have to inhabit the public persona of Kurt Vonnegut, famous writer -- a role as entertainer that he was very good at, in his own estimation. He was depressed, as he tended to be, and as he read from new, unpublished work, he frequently paused for self-critical asides wondering why he even wrote any more, in a world doomed to environmental catastrophe. His scientist friends, he said, had told him it was already too late.
Vonnegut said he was tempted to stop writing once before, frustrated by his lack of commercial success and pressed by the practical imperatives of life, but he was rescued by the unexpected invitation to teach at the Workshop -- a leap from the obscurity of the sci-fi ghetto to literary prestige. Did we make it possible for him to finally write "Slaughterhouse 5," one of the great novels America has produced? Or would the breakthrough popularity of "Cat's Cradle" have buoyed his spirits and provided new opportunities? No one knows, but of course we will continue to believe that we had something to do with it.
-
Vonnegut And Friends
A truly powerful panel discussion involving Kurt Vonnegut occurred some years ago on C-Span.
Vonnegut appeared with Willam Styron and Joseph Heller. All were World War II veterans and, during this discussion, all were in top form as they reflected on what war did to them and how what war did to them eventually led to their individual achievements in American fiction.
As Nietzsche said: look into the abyss and eventually the abyss will look into you.
Clearly, there were dues to pay, as with Vonnegut's struggle to turn rage into hilarity in the service of story; but it's a great tribute to all three that they were able to live to tell their tales.
Somehow.
-
glad Xran got a star
I consider the book to be about the non-linearity of time and what time means to our lives. It's about finding the importance of the mundane, and the mundane in the important.
Well said.
-
Using Post-War Germany as a model for Iraqi reconstruction is completely idiotic
Germany had a well-educated populace, along with democratic and legal institutions stretching back in some form to the mid-1800's. Iraq had no such thing.
Germany also had a diverse economy and industrial base which, although it was destroyed by WWII, needed only material to reconstitute... not human knowledge. Material is much more easily obtainable.
Finally, the political situation leading up to occupation was completely different. Germany was occupied following a War that they started and lost. The surrounding nations were all allied with and the US, and opposed to German aggression. On the other hand, we aggressively invaded Iraq, totally unprovoked, and are surrounded by nations that have reason to hate us and resent our interference in the region.
To assert that we should be able to create a vibrant liberal democracy along Western lines in Iraq in the same short time frame Germany was rebuilt takes a certain level of ignorance that deserves only contempt.
-
The University of Indiana
Members of the media - Salon included - need to stop mentioning the university located in Bloomington as the "University of Indiana." There is no such institution. The school is called Indiana University, and it's pretty well known.
I don't know why so many publications make this basic mistake. Even when the toy company Hasbro put out a commemorative G.I. Joe doll several years ago honoring WWII journalist Ernie Pyle, the toys had to be pulled off the shelf because of the embarrassing blunder on the package, mentioning Pyle's connection with "The University of Indiana."