From Mental Floss: “13 Humanizing Facts about Kurt Vonnegut”
Read HERE about 13 unusual facts that every Vonnegut fan should know! A few of them might even make you reconsider everything you thought you knew about Kurt Vonnegut.
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Paul Proteus
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, …
Player Piano in the Age of Trump | Shapshay on Player Piano
Sandy Shapshay Player Piano is THE novel to read in the Trump era. I’m no political scientist, but I have a keen suspicion that if this novel had been required reading for the Clinton campaign, we might not be in the Trump era right now. Allow me to make a case for these bold claims. Vonnegut’s foreword proclaims that …
“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 …