"The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody. Thank you for using me, even though I didn't want to be used by anybody." - The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut
Some news you never want to hear. Kurt Vonnegut was one of the finest writers of the past century, one of my 10 favorite authors, easily, and his passing on Wednesday hurts.
He lived to be 84. We shared the same birthday — November 11 — so in my silly little way, I felt that gave us a secret kinship, like we were members of the same club or something. The first book of his I read was 1990's Hocus Pocus, which had the effect that discovering a truly great author can have on you – it kind of blew my mind. Even though I don't think it's considered one of Vonnegut's top books, the tale of a veteran who becomes a teacher at a prison opened my eyes. It was like watching a really great stand-up comedian riff. Vonnegut launched off onto tangents, spat out one-liners, and made you stop in shock at what he was saying, but he tied it all together in the end. It was virtuoso to read, and a style unlike any I'd ever seen.
I've consumed pretty much every other book and essay Vonnegut's written in the years since, and enjoyed most of them. He was a man who was constantly amazed by how awful life could be but yet never quite gave up on the possibility of hope. He battled depression, suicide (his mother) and war (the firebombing of Dresden). He was endlessly imaginative — the concepts that appear in some of his novels make most science fiction seem mundane and bland — and endlessly quotable. He was the iconoclast made humorous, the pundit with real wit, the depressed man who never stopped dreaming.
Article comments
1 - El Bicho
Vonnegut's Blues For America 07 January, 2006 Sunday Herald
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC
2 - Enlightened Planet
A few years back I wrote down a few quotes from Mr. Vonnegut's "Timequake". Here are a couple which seem appropriate at this time:
“This very summer, I asked the novelist William Styron in a Chinese restaurant how many people on the whole planet had what we had, which was lives worth living. Between the two of us, we came up with seventeen percent.”
“I have had one heck of a good time. Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different!”
3 - scissorcircus
Kurt's words lead me in the direction of happiness...
"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center."
4 - troll
actually I'm relieved somewhat by the great one's passing as I have harbored a suspicion that he really had some ice-9 saved for his final moment
I guess not
5 - David
A site called Uclue has an interesting research article on Kurt Vonnegut's days as a cub reporter in Chicago, and his morally dubious techniques for covering a story of an especially grisly death: Kurt Vonnegut
Uclue.com was founded by resarchers from Google Answers and they do wonderful work on some amazingly obscure questions.
I thought folks here would like to know about it.
6 - Roger Browne
Thanks for the mention, David. I'm one of the Uclue researchers.
Literary types may also be interested in a question we tackled last year - the translation of a previously unseen handwritten note by Victor Hugo, author of Hunchback of Notre Dame.