I downloaded a half dozen books of his from Wowio, thinking that I had gotten his complete corpus since those were the only 6 available.  It was only after checking Amazon that I see he wrote several dozen books.  I think it'd cost me over $500 to own them all in paperback, since they're $10 or more each.

I've got to have all of this guy's books.  He was a frigging genius.

So it is true... If you're really great, you only ever gain mass appreciation after you're dead.

I'd heard of him well before now but I probably wasn't old enough or sophisticated enough to really appreciate the writing.  I think I would have sort of gotten it and found it clever at 14 or so, but I wouldn't have REALLY gotten it.

I mostly used "discovered" because I like how Vonnegut uses it to describe the manner in which white men "discovered" land, which involved taking it away from people who found it long before they did, by means of murder and violence.

I think you'd probably like Harlan Ellison too, then.  He's also in that "funny curmudgeon" role.

I read bits and pieces, but never one of his books. I'm curious. What do you particularly like?

His tone, and his clever way of phrasing things.  He's scathingly critical of some things while sounding very convincingly like he's heaping praise on them, instead.  It's sarcasm more subtle than I'll ever manage.

what books though?

his ideas on storytelling and writing were pretty interesting.

Ellison is funny?

He's an angry little sociopath lashing out at everything and demanding credit for things he didn't do.

I'm reading Breakfast of Champions right now and enjoying it quite a bit.  I liked Cat's Cradle, which I read first.  But Breakfast (so far) and Cat's I enjoy for the style more than the story.

Slaughterhouse Five is so far my favorite.  His exploration of time as a dimension is really interesting.  A neat take on the idea.

and so it goes.

Have they released "Welcome to the Monkey House"?

"and when I pee
I pee turquoise!"  -- good line.

Yeah, in his later years, Harlan has gotten more bitter, and less funny.  Odd how that happens.

Though early on he wrote "The Man Who Was Heavily Into Revenge" -- about mailing bricks to a publisher who INSISTED on putting cigarette adds in the middle of one of Harlan's paperback book publishing runs.

Spooky.  Funny, but spooky.

This is my picture of an asshole: *

lol

reddit addict.

" I think I would have sort of gotten it and found it clever at 14 or so, but I wouldn't have REALLY gotten it."

That's about how I experienced them.  I didn't get Slaughterhouse 5 at all.  I thought the 'disappearing' paintingings in Bluebeard were clever.