This news saddens me deeply this morning. Kurt Vonnegut, one of my very favorite authors, has passed.
From the New York Times:
Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.
Mr. Vonnegut suffered irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago, according to his wife, Jill Krementz.
His novels — 14 in all — were alternate universes, filled with topsy-turvy images and populated by races of his own creation, like the Tralfamadorians and the Mercurian Harmoniums. He invented phenomena like chrono-synclastic infundibula (places in the universe where all truths fit neatly together) as well as religions, like the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent and Bokononism (based on the books of a black British Episcopalian from Tobago “filled with bittersweet lies,” a narrator says).
The defining moment of Mr. Vonnegut’s life was the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by Allied forces in 1945, an event he witnessed firsthand as a young prisoner of war. Thousands of civilians were killed in the raids, many of them burned to death or asphyxiated. “The firebombing of Dresden,” Mr. Vonnegut wrote, “was a work of art.” It was, he added, “a tower of smoke and flame to commemorate the rage and heartbreak of so many who had had their lives warped or ruined by the indescribable greed and vanity and cruelty of Germany.”
His experience in Dresden was the basis of “Slaughterhouse-Five,” which was published in 1969 against the backdrop of war in Vietnam, racial unrest and cultural and social upheaval. The novel, wrote the critic Jerome Klinkowitz, “so perfectly caught America’s transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling metaphors for the new age.”
To Mr. Vonnegut, the only possible redemption for the madness and apparent meaninglessness of existence was human kindness. The title character in his 1965 novel, “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater,” summed up his philosophy:
“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.’ ”
I was 17 years old and about to graduate from high school when "Slaughterhouse Five" was published. I remember that year being terrified that I would be drafted and sent to Vietnam. I was fortunate enough to pull a high draft lottery number, "lucky" Kurt might say, and I was never called up. But I had many friends who were called and they really went though hell during that time. A couple of them never came home.
I didn't read "Slaughterhouse Five" until a few years later when I was married with a baby daughter and I had one of my first jobs in the fim industry making sound effects for the movie version of "Slaughterhouse Five", which I consider to be one of George Roy Hill's best works. When I knew I would be working on "Slaughterhouse Five" I picked up the book and read it. It was my introduction to Vonnegut and he soon became a favorite.
As I reflect this morning on the 35 years since my expericence working on "Slaughterhouse Five" I am struck by how timeless (no pun intended) Vonnegut's body of work is. He was an amazing writer and I will miss him, but I consider myself privileged to have shared some of my time on earth with him and his work will live on. I pray that future generations can learn something from what he had to say.
The New York Times obit ends with a quote from a poem contained in his last book, "A Man Without A Country". The poem is called "REQUIEM--Earth's last lament on how we've treated her" and ends this way:
When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
“It is done.”
People did not like it here.
Rest in peace, Kurt Vonnegut, and so it goes...
(originally posted at amahchewahwah)