From CNN.com:
NEW YORK (AP) -- Kurt Vonnegut, the satirical novelist who captured the absurdity of war and questioned the advances of science in darkly humorous works such as "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle," died Wednesday. He was 84.
Most of you know that when asked who my favorite author is, my answer is Vonnegut. I don't love everything he's ever written, but of the things I've read, all are at the very least entertaining, and of my top 5 all-time favorite books, two are his. I can't explain why I am such a fan, but his stuff speaks to something at the core of my personality...whenever I meet another Vonnegut fan, we always seem to get along. And whenever I find a favorite anything, I really take that to heart and feel a void when they're gone (I cried the day Jack Lemmon died - who does that???) because even though they never knew me personally, they touched me in a way that no one else has or ever will. I am just one of millions, but knowing that they will never know what they brought to my life makes me sad. I never had any delusions about one day meeting Mr. Vonnegut and becoming his new best friend, but I did harbor a little bit of hope that I might get to see one of his lectures once or have him sign one of my books...maybe tell him that Cat's Cradle was the first book I ever felt the need to stop reading, find a pen, and underline passages in.
"I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done."
"Nice going, God!"
"Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have."
"I feel very unimportant compared to You."
"The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around."
I could quote Vonnegut all day, but I'll just leave you with a couple more choice ones:
"Welcome aboard, Mr. Pilgrim," said the loudspeaker. "Any questions?"
Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: "Why me?"
"That is a very earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?"
"Yes." Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.
"Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."
...
"And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, 'Kurt is up in heaven now.' That's my favorite joke."
3 comments:
The world has lost a great writer, thinker and fighter for free speech. He was one of the originals who took the literature world and flipped them the bird, and that world is now a better place.
I saw the story on Yahoo yesterday morning and thought of you...
Thanks everyone for your condolences, be it on here or otherwise. I decided to put my current book on hold today to re-read Slaughterhouse-Five. This morning, I read this passage:
"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'So it goes.'"
Mr. Vonnegut's moments are perhaps more permanent than most of ours due to the fact that his are noteworthy enough to be published and reprinted many times over. I am just sad that he won't be making any more of them.
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