So it goes... (RIP Kurt Vonnegut)

Parent Cafe
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<p>April 12, 2007
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/books/12vonnegut.html?ei=5089&en=5f47f4f4c3376a1f&ex=1334030400&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss&pagewanted=print[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/books/12vonnegut.html?ei=5089&en=5f47f4f4c3376a1f&ex=1334030400&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss&pagewanted=print&lt;/a&gt;
Kurt Vonnegut, Novelist Who Caught the Imagination of His Age, Is Dead at 84
By DINITIA SMITH</p>

<p>Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like ?Slaughterhouse-Five,? ?Cat?s Cradle? and ?God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater? caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.</p>

<p>Mr. Vonnegut suffered irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago, according to his wife, Jill Krementz.</p>

<p>Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ?70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.</p>

<p>Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?</p>

<p>He also shared with Twain a profound pessimism. ?Mark Twain,? Mr. Vonnegut wrote in his 1991 book, ?Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage,? ?finally stopped laughing at his own agony and that of those around him. He denounced life on this planet as a crock. He died.?</p>

<p>Not all Mr. Vonnegut?s themes were metaphysical. With a blend of vernacular writing, science fiction, jokes and philosophy, he also wrote about the banalities of consumer culture, for example, or the destruction of the environment.</p>

<p>His novels ? 14 in all ? were alternate universes, filled with topsy-turvy images and populated by races of his own creation, like the Tralfamadorians and the Mercurian Harmoniums. He invented phenomena like chrono-synclastic infundibula (places in the universe where all truths fit neatly together) as well as religions, like the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent and Bokononism (based on the books of a black British Episcopalian from Tobago ?filled with bittersweet lies,? a narrator says).</p>

<p>The defining moment of Mr. Vonnegut?s life was the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by Allied forces in 1945, an event he witnessed firsthand as a young prisoner of war. Thousands of civilians were killed in the raids, many of them burned to death or asphyxiated. ?The firebombing of Dresden,? Mr. Vonnegut wrote, ?was a work of art.? It was, he added, ?a tower of smoke and flame to commemorate the rage and heartbreak of so many who had had their lives warped or ruined by the indescribable greed and vanity and cruelty of Germany.?</p>

<p>His experience in Dresden was the basis of ?Slaughterhouse-Five,? which was published in 1969 against the backdrop of war in Vietnam, racial unrest and cultural and social upheaval. The novel, wrote the critic Jerome Klinkowitz, ?so perfectly caught America?s transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling metaphors for the new age.?</p>

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<p>One of my favorite authors…may flights of angels sing him to rest.</p>

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<p>Back in the 70’s when I was an angst ridden teen I read Sirens of Titan after hearing the song of the same name by Al Stewart. It was a total revalation to me. I spent the next few months reading everything I could by him. His wisdom and humour made me realize that I was not alone in the world. He was IMO the greatest American writer of the twentieth century. A liitle piece of me died today. </p>

<p>So it goes…</p>

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<p>And so it is for me, too. During the late '60s, when I was in high school in a rock-solid Republican city, Vonnegut spoke to me in a way that has stayed with me to this day. He helped me understand the insanity of war better than anyone. In case you hadn’t read him in recent years, he was a brilliant and unrelenting critic of the Iraq War, the Bush administration, the growing gap between rich and poor and the degradation of the planet. Yes, a long list I know, but he railed eloquently against all of them until the end. I admire that he did not go gently in the night.</p>

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<p>May I add, from his “Cortez the Killer”: </p>

<p>If I should die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:</p>

<p>THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC</p>

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<p>Kurt Vonnegut was also a prolific graphic artist, using a skewed sense of visuals to get his point across, much like Picasso. I own a piece of his artwork, and was saddened this morning to hear the news.</p>

<p>RIP</p>

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<p>Words worth digesting from his “A Man Without a Country.”</p>

<pre><code>"I apologize to all of you who are the same age as my grandchildren. And many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.

Yes, this planet is in a terrible mess. But it has always been a mess. There have never been any “Good Old Days,” there have just been days. And as I say to my grandchildren, “Don’t look at me, I just got here.”

There are old poops who will say that you do not become a grown-up until you have somehow survived, as they have, some famous calamity – the Great Depression, the Second World War, Vietnam, whatever. Storytellers are responsible for this destructive, not to say suicidal, myth. Again and again in stories, after some terrible mess, the character is able to say at last, “Today I am a woman. Today I am a man. The end.”

When I got home from the Second World War, my Uncle Dan clapped me on the back, and he said, “You’re a man now.” So I killed him. Not really, but I certainly felt like doing it.

Dan, that was my bad uncle, who said a man can’t be a man unless he’d gone to war.

But I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
</code></pre>

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<p>Beautiful, Carlmom.</p>

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<p>Not only was I a big fan of Vonnegut’s books, but also his doodles. Here in the office we place a large asterisk on certain notes or documents with a little kv beside it (like the one in Breakfast of Champoins I believe), and everyone gets the inside message…rip my friend</p>

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<p>My daughters are in the process of reading his works and I found myself even more amazed at his genius this time around.</p>

<p>A friend who knew him (even was a minor character in one of his books) regaled our girls with KV stories a week ago at dinner. He was one of the great ones.</p>

<p>Somewhere in the space-time continuum, he is as he was.</p>

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<p>An original, who’s art is as relevant today as it was in the 70’s.
I’m grateful for what he’s left us. Thanks, KV, rip.</p>

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<p>I got through my science classes with his help- he was an amazing writer of science, math, religion books</p>

<p>My D is right now reading a book on facts by him, and the other is using his book on the bible for religion class</p>

<p>I think I read almost all his fiction books and many of his non-fiction</p>

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<p>When I was a kid, I hated to read and would only do so when forced. Slaughterhouse Five is the first novel I read for fun.</p>