“Have you ever read any Vonnegut?” The question was posed to me about three years ago while I was at a friend’s house. We were chatting in his living room when his father, who was flipping through a book, just asked me the question. I said no and he handed the book to me. It was an old paperback copy of Slaughterhouse-Five with a worn spine and a cover that was ready to fall off.
At first I was a bit hesitant. At that point, I hadn’t been an avid reader-maybe a book or two every other month would catch my eye, but I never found an author who I could point to and call my favorite. Another reason I wasn’t so sure was that Slaughterhouse-Five, according to the description, was about World War II and I am not a fan of historical fiction. But I decided to give it a chance.
After page one, I was hooked. And since then, I have read several of Vonnegut’s books, each time finding myself amazed at how he could make readers laugh hysterically at his writing while still making us think about the human condition, and how he could take outrageous pulp concepts like Tralfamadore and make them interesting.
The rest of the literary community would look down their nose at him-this writer of science fiction who uses quirkiness and humor instead of writing about how depressing it is to be a human being-how dare he! Vonnegut lived like the characters he wrote-an unappreciated artist like Kilgore Trout and a great humanitarian like Eliot Rosewater.
Kurt Vonnegut spoke to me in a way no writer ever had. His books, although outrageous and hysterical were very real to me, and each time I read a novel of his, I find myself amazed again and again. So on the morning of April 12, I found out that he had died the previous day. And immediately, I felt depressed and saddened. Not only because Vonnegut was my favorite writer, not only because my dream of eventually sitting down and having a chat with him would now never materialize, but because the world had lost one of the greatest literary voices it had ever heard. And what is worse? No one else seemed to care. A former centerfold dies, and we hear about it for months. One of the greatest literary voices history has ever known is silenced, and no one says a word. That is a tragedy.
In Vonnegut’s final book, A Man Without A Country, he talks about how he spoke at a funeral service for Isaac Asimov and in his speech, he said “Isaac is up in Heaven now,” which had the crowd of humanists rolling in laughter. Of this, Vonnegut said, “If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say ‘Kurt is up in Heaven now.’ That’s my favorite joke.” Kurt is up in Heaven now. And the world has lost his satirical voice just when we need it the most.
“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies-‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.'”
-God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater