...I. Introduction In his foreword to a collection of the radio scripts of comedians Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. endorses these entertainers as somehow new and different—and relevant—since they draw their humor from the plight of the (American) Common Man. In the process, Vonnegut offers us an insight into his own writing, and the philosophies that inform it. “They aren’t like most other comedians’ jokes these days,” Vonnegut writes, aren’t rooted in show business and the world of celebrities and news of the day. They feature Americans who are almost always fourth-rate or below, engaged in enterprises which, if not contemptible, are at least insane. And while other comedians show us persons tormented by bad luck and enemies and so on, Bob and Ray’s characters threaten to wreck themselves and their surroundings with their own stupidity. There is a refreshing and beautiful innocence in Bob’s and Ray’s humor. Man is not evil, they seem to say. He is simply too hilariously stupid to survive. And this I believe. Jerome Klinkowitz, in the introduction to his essay collection entitled Vonnegut in America, has used this quote—as he certainly should—to support his claim that Vonnegut’s humor has its roots in the comedic response to the Great Depression. But of course there is much more to it than that. The reader is left with a nagging question: Were humanity’s case really as Vonnegut describes it, and were this truly his belief, wouldn’t it seem that the...
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...BKurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is a confusing but meaningful story whose nontraditional form explains how meaningful life is. Kurt Vonnegut takes readers back into WWII with Billy’s wild encounters. Billy thinks about how life is meaningless and it never ends, just repeats and repeats. Kurt Vonnegut uses a lot of black humor and a lot of irony throughout this novel. Corresponding of this, readers are able to realize the disgust of the war, but at the same time laugh at some of the absurd situations Billy goes through. Vonnegut beautifully shows that life is simultaneously worthwhile and meaningless. All people react differently when it comes to calamities; some people mourn, some avoid the tragedy all together. In Slaughterhouse-five,...
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...ENG 503: CLASS PRESENTATION ASSIGNMENT Report Slaughterhouse Five–Ch. 1-5 For Professor David Copeland By Bill Shelson Alex Tramov Amani Vandeen-Brown Duncan Watt The Truth about Free Will Throughout the majority of this short novel we are introduced to characters who go through horrific situations that affect them physically and more importantly psychologically. Billy Pilgrim our main character is given the curse of travelling back and forth through time seeing his life events and reliving them as well. He loses control through this ordeal because he has no choice in what moments of his life that he is allowed to go back to. Billy also does not have the physical power to change any events that he is not fond of or prevent any future occurrences that he wishes had not happened. Billy is stripped of his Free Will on many occasions and eventually learns how to cope with it. The lack of control Billy endures over the experience of his life teaches him to truly appreciate the good moments he’s lived and to accept the inevitability of events. This story is about a man who witnesses and overcomes horrible situations but becomes aware that life will always throw things at you that are not preventable. In the first five chapters of Slaughter House Five our main character Billy finds his situation becoming increasingly dire in the war and beginning to experience his life out of order. "Billy is a spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips...
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...“Harrison Bergeron” Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1922, and ten years later The Great Depression began. In this time, Vonnegut had to adapt to living in impoverished conditions because of his father’s lack of financial means. The Great Depression was a crucial period in his childhood development; Vonnegut’s literary pieces are a reflection of what he observed the world to be through his own life experiences. The majority of his works are science fiction used to “[help] lend form to the presentation of this world view without imposing a falsifying causality upon it (Reed),” as Peter Reed mentioned in an autobiography about Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut believed that science fiction offers a perception into an everyday society, rather than escaping it. The extraordinary events he experienced throughout his life served as motivation and influenced him to write stories about the world; as a result, Vonnegut showed an immense appreciation about life in his literary pieces. Kurt Vonnegut continued to pursue his goal of demonstrating to the world how wonderful life is through creations in the graphic arts. In 1950, Vonnegut published his first short story, “Report on the Barnhouse Effect” followed by “The Sirens of Titan” (1959), “Cat’s Cradle” (1963), “Slaughterhouse-Five” (1969), and “Breakfast of Champions” (1973). The society in which Kurt Vonnegut was a part of highly valued the ideal of equality; the short story “Harrison Bergeron” was written to foreshadow the...
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...THE MARKET WIZARDS CONVERSATIONS WITH AMERICA'S TOP TRADERS JACK D. SCHWAGER HarperBusiness You've got to learn how to fall, before you learn to fly. —Paul Simon One man's ceiling is another man's floor. —Paul Simon If I wanted to become a tramp, I would seek information and advice from the most successful tramp I could find. If I wanted to become a failure, I would seek advice from men who had never succeeded. If I wanted to succeed in all things, I would look around me for those who are succeeding and do as they have done. —Joseph Marshall Wade (as quoted in a Treasury of Wall Street Wisdom edited by Harry D. Schultz and Samson Coslow) 2 Contents Preface...................................................................................................................................................4 Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................................5 Prologue ................................................................................................................................................6 My Own Story ......................................................................................................................................7 Part I-Futures and Currencies ...........................................................................................................9 Taking the Mystery Out of Futures.................................
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