This highlight from JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye I made on my Kindle popped up in Readwise today:
It immediately recalled Kurt Vonnegut’s “ting-a-ling!” from his alter ego, failed science fiction writer Kilgore Trout. Trout would respond “ting a ling!” to people who asked things like “how are you?” when they don’t really care what the answer is.
JH Writer, writing (ahem) about Kurt Vonnegut’s “Ting a ling!” from Timequake:
Vonnegut discusses the various meanings that various contexts produce in a phrase frequently used by one of his characters, Kilgore Trout, an out-of-print science fiction writer and Vonnegut’s admitted alter ego. The phrase is one Trout “would have said … to anyone who offered him an empty greeting, such as ‘How’s it goin’?’ or ‘Nice day’….” That phrase is: “Ting-a-ling!”
I always think of this part of Timequake when I see someone in the hall and we exchange a “howyadoin.” So pretty much every day.