Kurt Vonnegut Dies at 84
April 12th, 2007Via: Seattle Post:
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.
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Yep – he was one-of-a-kind and help to open many of our minds. May we be blessed with more like him. R.I.P.
Reading this article made me truly sad for several reasons.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/print/i_love_you_madame_librarian/
“What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without a sense of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations and made it all their own?”
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/print/i_love_you_madame_librarian/
What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without a sense of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations and made it all their own?
Vonnegut’s brilliance was that he saw the deep corruption of America back in the “Happy Days”, when most people though everything was ok.
Player Piano, his first novel, published in 1952 dealt with the US class warfare that would erupt as the working class and much of the middle classes became obselete. It even featured a corporate men’s party at a Bohemian Grove type venue.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, published 1965, is one of the best stories ever about the culture of the old American branch of the global ruling class.
Kurt is up in heaven now!
I am, incidentally, Honorary President of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that totally functionless capacity. We had a memorial service for Isaac a few years back, and I spoke and said at one point, “Isaac is up in heaven now.†It was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience 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. A Man Without a Country (2005)
We lost an important American.
The wife and I are booked into a group outing a few clicks east of our digs in the Eifel come July. To the rebuilt version of the fire-bombed city so understandably prominent in Vonnegut’s pantheon. Dresden on the Elbe.
The real ass-kicker is that he was captured right here in our local area, as a soldier in the 106th Infantry Division (The Golden Lion), which took the brunt of the first German wave at the outset of the Battle of the Bulge. Our house took direct hits from the German 88’s firing into American positions in our village on that cold December morning (16th), a short distance from the Belgian border.
Today, we count a number of the surviving 106th vets as friends. We’ve fed and housed them and their families when they’ve returned, showing them around the area and locating battle sites. I’ve seen an 80-something fellow dive into a ditch as he excitedly recalled the moments just before his capture. I’ve even written a recap of the 60th anniversary events of the Battle (2004) for the 106th veterans journal (The Cub), as a personal favor to the editor (also a POW).
Coincidentally, Hemingway was also stationed locally for a time, in the nearby village of Buchet.
Come July, I do believe I’ll be laying a symbolic flower at the doors of Slaughterhouse Five, in honor of the passing of one of America’s greatest (and more importantly) most vocal iconoclasts.
His brutally honest contemporary assessments and unmatched truth-to-power ratio — liberally spiced with dark humor — will truly be missed by this particular iconoclast.