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Kurt Vonnegut

The Body Constant | Phillips on The Sirens of Titan

Sarah Phillips     Anthropologists think a lot about bodies. Biological anthropologists are interested in the adaptation, variation, and evolutionary history of humans and their relatives, looking at the bodies of humans and our ancestors, living and extinct. Medical anthropologists investigate the human body from a range of perspectives, focusing on how perceptions and experiences of the body and of …

Freedom, Purpose and Morality in The Sirens of Titan | Shapshay on The Sirens of Titan

The Sirens of Titan is a novel of ideas that takes the reader on an imaginative romp through the solar system. Three timeless philosophical questions are explored in the course of Malachi Constant’s space odyssey: the metaphysical question of whether free will is an illusion; the moral question of whether good ends can justify evil means; and, most prominently, the existential question of the meaning of life—that is, the question of whether an individual human life has a purpose, and, if so, what that purpose is.

The Sirens of Titan: Playfully Toying with Time | Van Kooten on The Sirens of Titan

Rick Van Kooten   As an undergraduate student, our friend Kurt Vonnegut studied mechanical engineering, chemistry, and biology, and subsequently worked as a publicist for General Electric in New York. He clearly enjoyed animated conversations with his brother, Bernard, an atmospheric scientist working at a GE research laboratory and credited with discovering that silver iodide could be used effectively in cloud seeding to produce snow and …

Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis receives grant for self-guided tour

The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis has received a grant from Indiana Humanities and Indiana Landmarks, one of 12 non-profits across Indiana this year to receive this significant recognition. The Library received $2,500 in funding (the maximum amount) to fund the creation, publication, and distribution of “a free visually appealing self-guided tour booklet of Indianapolis locations connected to the renowned author and …

Player Piano and Technology | Van Kooten on Player Piano

Should We Be Worried? Rick Van Kooten   Ah, to return to the days of the skinny black tie, white shirts, and horn-rimmed glasses of the Houston-we-have-a-problem-era engineers! First a digression on the difference between scientists and engineers, from personal experience: as an undergrad, I was in an “Engineering Science” program that straddled both fields. Despite this increased scope, I …

Of Ghost Shirts and Gizmos | Phillips on Player Piano

Anthropology in Vonnegut’s Player Piano Sarah D. Phillips   It is widely known that after the war Kurt Vonnegut studied on the GI Bill for a master’s degree in cultural anthropology at the University of Chicago. He struggled in the program and never wrote an accepted thesis, though the department awarded him the MA degree a full 25 years later, …

What Is the Soul of a Man? | Harriss on Player Piano

Vonnegut’s Ghost in the Machine M. Cooper Harriss   Reading Player Piano conjured an old song that I’ve enjoyed returning to for the past couple of weeks. Not unlike the way a player piano engineers sound from collected data, the record of an earlier performance replicated with some precision, I know this song as a mechanical reproduction of Blind Willie …

“To the Record” | Sandweiss on Player Piano

A Historian Sits at Vonnegut’s Piano Eric Sandweiss   “To the record.” It seems an oddly resigned cry with which to toast the failed revolution that closes Player Piano. Is this what it all comes down to—Paul Proteus’s final survey of the wreckage left by his comrades’ failed effort to upend the machinery of a soulless society, punctuated with a …

Angry Sordid Present | Elmer on Player Piano

Jonathan Elmer   An insurrection erupts, and is crushed. We are in the years following World War III, and the United States has emerged victorious again. Player Piano is set, more or less, in our present time (Vonnegut tells us that “the characters are modeled after persons as yet unborn, or, perhaps, at this writing”—1952—“infants”). Of course, there has not yet …

Death by Degrees | Comentale on Player Piano

Player Piano as Educational Dystopia Ed Comentale In a recent interview with Bloomberg News, billionaire investor Mark Cuban offered some surprising advice for college students and their future employers. “No finance,” he proclaimed, “that’s the easiest thing—you just take the data and have it spit out whatever you need. I personally think there’s going to be a greater demand in …

Proteus Dead Inside | Castronova on Player Piano

A reflection on Vonnegut’s Player Piano Ted Castronova   The Greek god Proteus changes like the sea. He can tell the future, but only if you can capture him. This is hard to do, because Proteus can change form at will, water to serpent to tree to lion to water. Changing with context: something we all do. Game researchers talk about …