Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007)

Editorial Observer

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

Published: April 13, 2007

If you read Kurt Vonnegut when you were young — read all there was of him, book after book as fast as you could the way so many of us did — you probably set him aside long ago. That’s the way it goes with writers we love when we’re young. It’s almost as though their books absorbed some part of our DNA while we were reading them, and rereading them means revisiting a version of ourselves we may no longer remember or trust.

Not that Vonnegut is mainly for the young. I’m sure there are plenty of people who think he is entirely unsuitable for readers under the age of disillusionment. But the time to read Vonnegut is just when you begin to suspect that the world is not what it appears to be. Read More

Reflections on Kurt Vonnegut, a Man of Funny Fearlessness

By Reverend Billy, AlterNet. Posted April 13, 2007.

In memory of Kurt Vonnegut, the novelist, socialist and humanist whose friendship and late-in-life peace activism should inspire us all.

My friendship with Kurt Vonnegut blossomed in the last years and months of Kurt's life, after 9/11. He was a dedicated friend, all his friends knew it, and he taught me about the creativity of friendship, with his careful postcards and his rhythm of gifts. His first gift was always the funny fearlessness.

He encouraged us to sing and preach in Union Square in the week after 9/11. "Go! Just go!" Or he would tell us to "Go down to Ground Zero and preach the First Amendment!" And we'd say, "You come with, Kurt -- we'll send a car!" And he'd say, "I'll be with you in spirit. I'm tired." But he never seemed that tired to me. He had powerfully mixed feelings about ending life. As a child of a mother who took her life, he always talked about death as a choice.

But then, as he grew older and older, he was busily creative all the time. When he came to our shows, he would make up names for gods and saints with us. He thought hard about what post-religious worship was and would surprise us with disconcertingly basic questions. I see they unearthed his prayer to "Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment" -- reprinted in the New York Times yesterday. Read More

From Thinking in Pictures

An Open Apology to the Late Kurt Vonnegut

Listen: You died yesterday after falling weeks ago. You were one of the most important writers of the 20th century. I miss you already. And I'm sorry.

I interviewed you almost 12 years ago, when I was in college, and got to follow you around for a day while you met with people on campus. You were 73 then. I was 19. The university's student activities committee paid you $10,000 to come speak; it was practically their whole budget for the year. I wrote a long profile to advance the event, assuming as so many college journalists do that whatever they have just discovered is news and that they have to bring everyone else up to speed on it. I don't recommend rereading the whole thing, but here's a good excerpt:

What he learned, of course, is that public support doesn't have much to do with American foreign policy. It's a nice thing to have, but our leaders can get along without it. And it really would be ridiculous for any writer to expect that a well-crafted novel could actually change their priorities.

So Vonnegut has a different goal: to catch young people before they become corporate leaders and politicians and, as he puts it, to "poison their minds with humanity."

Take this opportunity to be poisoned. There are few authors, dead or alive, whose work so skillfully marries criticism and compassion, who have so comfortably combined intelligent ideas and a lucid style, and even fewer who have written as seriously and as humorously at the same time.

I meant it then, and still do. You are still one of my favorite writers. More importantly, you influenced which writers would become my other favorites - Thomas Hardy, Donald Barthelme, Laurence Sterne, Saul Bellow. I can trace my appreciation for many of them back to my reading and re-reading of your books. Read More