1922-2007
The New York Times once called him "the laughing prophet of doom." Kurt Vonnegut died today.
From his 1965 novel, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater:
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. 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.’”From Rolling Stone magazine last year:
He has stalled finishing his highly anticipated novel If God Were Alive Today - or so he claims. "I've given up on it ... It won't happen. ... The Army kept me on because I could type, so I was typing other people's discharges and stuff. And my feeling was, 'Please, I've done everything I was supposed to do. Can I go home now?' That's what I feel right now. I've written books. Lots of them. Please, I've done everything I'm supposed to do. Can I go home now?"So it goes.
More Vonnegut:
- The Aesthetics of Accessibility [PDF] - in this 1979 essay, John Irving defends Vonnegut against critics who complained his writing was simplistic
- "Custodians of Chaos" - a chapter from Vonnegut's most recent collection of essays, A Man Without a Country
- PBS Now interview with Vonnegut
