Oh, Those Sirens

When I was digging around for Vonnegut images the other day I found this book cover of Sirens of Titan from his early, less-renown days. The artwork is less about the actual story and more about sexed up aliens and probey things. This is one of those instances where I love something for it's visual style and vintage '60's flavor, and hate it because Dell is manipulating the buyer at the expense of the author. Of course, if you as the author are trying to break out, I'm sure you'd favor anything that got the books off the shelves. But the same thing goes for some of Kerouac's early printings. I'll post more when I find them.

Vonnegut, RIP

I first read on Boing Boing that Kurt Vonnegut passed away. The web is being loaded down with remembrances, so I thought I would add mine. I had read several of his novels before I got to Sirens of Titan, which was the second he wrote. But this is the one that really spoke to me, for reasons that are a little vague to me now. I suppose I should read it again, but the part of the story that always comes back to me is when they are marooned in the bowels of Mercury and they discover the little blue creatures. I can't begin to give it justice, but it was just so perfectly odd and poignant and sad to me. But Vonnegut was good at that, giving us the ridiculous but making it sound perfectly natural while leaving us subtly and profoundly affected.

He came to NMU about eight to ten years ago, and for some reason I didn't go. I'll always regret that.