Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Goodbye Blue Monday
Farewell Kurt Vonnegut Jnr.. It feels as if I have lost a long time friend.
I read Player Piano , his first novel, when I was about 16.
I remember being lent this by Martin Ace , a now aging rocker, who used to live in the flat above my Father's shop at Humphrey street in Swansea, whilst having guitar lessons from him. He was short of rent, and I wanted to play Rocky Racoon. His claim to fame was as an original, and now current member of Man, the only rock band to come out of swansea at the time.
I then had a bit of a Kurtfest, reading Welcome to the Monkey House, Slaughterhouse-Five
and of course Breakfast_of_Champions.
Oh how 'grown up' I felt.
Since then, some of the ideas and stories have stayed with me in a way that other novelists have not. Harrison Bergeron , and 'Long Walk to Forever' for example, stay with me to this day, and I think also do with Nick, who also blogged Kurt's passing today . In fact, you could say Kurt introduced us.