Fish Stories

"Venus on the Half-Shell is a science fiction novel by Philip José Farmer, writing pseudonymously as 'Kilgore Trout,' a fictional recurring character in many of the novels of Kurt Vonnegut. This book first appeared as a lengthy fictitious 'excerpt'—written by Vonnegut, but attributed to Trout—in Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965). With Vonnegut's permission, Farmer expanded the fragment into an entire standalone novel (including, as an in-joke, a scene that incorporates all of Vonnegut's original text).
     Farmer's story was first published in two parts beginning in the December 1974 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The plot, in which Earth is destroyed by cosmic bureaucrats doing routine maintenance and the sole human survivor goes on a quest to find the 'Definitive Answer to the Ultimate Question,' bears some resemblance to the later Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [by Douglas Adams] series."
— Wkipedia
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“'Trout doesn’t really exist. He has been my alter ego in several of my other novels' These are the words of the author Kurt Vonnegut in his introduction of his… novel, Timequake, his latest work to feature the character of Kilgore Trout, a gifted writer who is comparable in many ways to his creator. Says Vonnegut, 'for better of worse, I have always rigged my stories so as to include myself For the most part, these inclusions have been in the form of Kilgore Trout.'
     Trout, who has appeared in Vonnegut’s novels God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions, Jailbird, Galapagos, Hocus Pocus, and Timequake, is for the most part a chronically under-appreciated science fiction writer of some 117 novels and 2.000 short stories. The details of his life fluctuate endlessly, according to the needs of the novel.
     In Timequake, he is an only child whose father, a college professor and researcher of ornithological methods of evolution other than Natural Selection, had murdered his mother when Kilgore was twelve. In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, he is a Jesus figure. In Jailbird he is Dr. Robert Fender, serving a life-sentence in prison for treason, and publishing fiction under pen names such as Frank X. Barlow and Kilgore Trout . In Breakfast of Champions, he has been married three times, but currently lives alone with a parakeet named Bill. In Galapagos he has had a wife, who left him, and an estranged son Leon, a deserter from the United States Marines in the Vietnam War who died in an accident while working as a wielder in a Swedish shipyard. Sometimes, as in Breakfast of Champions and Timequake, he rises to prominence before his end—in the former as a pioneer in the field of mental health, advancing his ideas disguised as science fiction and winning a Nobel prize for Medicine and, in the latter, as a celebrated hero."
— everything2
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Riffing on Mothers

“...this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, from his novel Mother Night (from Goodreads)

"The new adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's American classic/required high school reading The Great Gatsby is exactly how I remember the book: With a hip-hop-tinged drunken pillow fight in 3-D starring sweaty Tobey Maguire.
     As an elevator pitch, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Baz Luhrmann's ultra-modern take on The Great Gatsby. His thoroughly modern update of Shakespeare—which, like Gatsby, stars Leonardo DiCaprio—is a joy. Plus, the timelessness of the 1925 novel makes any playful anachronisms (rap and rock music in the soundtrack, grinding dancing, and so forth) all the less suspicious.
     But the result is almost unforgivably terrible, gratingly earnest in a way that the novel never was. When classic lines of narration from the beloved book start floating directly at your face as a 3-D special effects gimmick, it's a challenge not to groan audibly in your seat."
― Asawin Suebsaeng, Mother Jones
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"Kate Moss, a widely known supermodel, was given this ring by her fiancé Jamie Hince who is a member of the well known band The Kills. According to the grapevine, Jamie Hince chose the ring after going through a whole variety of engagement rings because he specifically wanted to propose to her with an engagement ring worn by Zelda Fitzgerald. Apparently, he scoured the city for a genuine diamond ring worn by Zelda Fitzgerald, before finally giving up and purchasing an expensive replica. The devotion to find an engagement ring linked to Zelda comes from the fact that Kate Moss is a sort of a fan of the free spirit that was Zelda. Additionally, both Jamie Hince and Kate Moss have revealed that their favorite book is The Beautiful and the Damned written by Zelda’s husband.
     The ring mimics the wedding band worn by Zelda Fitzgerald who is quite famous for her wild and free attitude. The original engagement ring was given to her by the famous author F Scott Fitzgerald who has written legendary works like This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and the Damned, Tender is the Night and The Great Gatsby. Zelda was proposed to by Scott in March of 1921. However, the original engagement ring actually dates further back because Scott proposed to Zelda with his mother’s ring. Therefore, the design of the ring that Jamie Hince gave to Kate Moss dates even further back than 1921."
— Abazios Diamonds
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Unstuck

From: Manhattan Rare Book Company

"A new biography [And So It Goes, by Charles Shields] of acclaimed American author Kurt Vonnegut, beloved by fans worldwide for his work's warm humour and homespun Midwestern wisdom, has shocked many with a portrayal of a bitter, angry man prone to depression and fits of temper. [...]
     'It is a little naive to be surprised by this,' said Gregory Sumner of the University of Detroit Mercy, who recently wrote a book exploring Vonnegut's work, called Unstuck In Time. 'Personal relationships were difficult for him. He had a lot of survivor's guilt.'
     Vonnegut definitely had survived a lot. His once wealthy family was impoverished by the Great Depression, causing grim strains in his parents' marriage. His mother committed suicide. His beloved sister died of breast cancer, a day after her husband was killed in a train accident. But the defining horror of Vonnegut's life was his wartime experience and surviving the Dresden bombing, only to be sent into the ruins as prison labour in order to collect and burn the corpses. The ordeal cropped up continually in his work, but most notably formed the basis of Slaughterhouse-Five, the book that made Vonnegut famous.
     But there was more to it than just coping with such traumatic situations. In later life, despite being hailed by so many as an American genius, Vonnegut felt that the literary establishment never took him seriously. They interpreted his simplistic style, love of science fiction and Midwestern values as being beneath serious study." — Paul Harris, Guardian
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“The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.” – Oscar Wilde

"Ray Bradbury says that one of the main inspirations for Fahrenheit 451 came when he was out walking with a writer friend, and 'a police car pulled up and the policeman got out and asked us 'What are you doing?' Bradbury explained that they were out walking ('putting one foot in front of the other' was his first 'smartaleck' response.) The policeman didn't like it. 'Don't do it again!' he told Bradbury – which sent the writer into such a rage that he went home and wrote the short story The Pedestrian, imagining a time in which everyone who walked was considered a criminal. Later, he took his 'midnight criminal stroller' for another walk around the future city – and Fahrenheit 451 was born."
— Sam Jordison, Guardian
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"In 1973, the Drake, North Dakota school board condemned Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse Five, as obscene, and had copies of the book burned in the high school furnace. The author then sent a letter to the head of the school board stating, 'I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school. Certain members of your community have suggested that my work is evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to me. The news from Drake indicates to me that books and writers are very unreal to you people. I am writing this letter to let you know how real I am.' "
— AssociatedContent
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