RIP Kurt Vonnegut

One of the great writers of our time died today, a guy who was one of my first clues that great art could also be completely accessible. And a guy who very nearly converted me to Bokononism. I tell ya, he was dead-on about boko-maru.

Do you know what a Humanist is? I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that functionless capacity. We Humanists try to behave well without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. We serve as best we can the only abstraction with which we have any real familiarity, which is our community.

We had a memorial services for Isaac a few years back, and at one point I said, "Isaac is up in Heaven now." It was the funniest thing I could have said to a group of Humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in Heaven now." That's my favorite joke.

—Kurt Vonnegut

Bad news, homeslice, at least, sorta. I suspect that, much to your surprise, you’ve now found out there is a God. And that you’re one of Her all-time favorite writers. And, I could be wrong, but I think you’re now probably finding that hysterically funny.

Comments

[Tom E.]

I felt as if I had lost a friend when I read the obit this morning. Reading Slaughter-house Five is one of my clearest high school memories. I may go around calling everyone "dear" just like Elliot Rosewater. I'll probably lose my job and be escorted off the premises here by the police. So it goes.

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

After all those Pall Malls? You have to believe that he'd have appreciated the irony.

[DT]

So it goes.

Don't really know where I would have been had I not found "Deadeye Dick," "The Sirens of Titan," "Breakfast of Champions," and of course "Slaughterhouse Five" in my late high school and college years. And so many other of his brilliant and seminal books. And I'd rather not think about it.

Not many could make minimalist style sing the way Kurt Vonnegut could. Raymond Carver was one, surely Papa Hemingway before him, and not many others. And no one could do it with Vonnegut's crazy, razor-sharp humor and eye for detail. An American original.

"Don't ask me why, old sport, but somebody up there likes you." I have the feeling he is learning today that those words were, indeed, 100 percent true.

Goodbye, Kilgore.