Kurt Vonnegut Dies
Instead of posting the CNN obituary which was probably written years ago I'm sure, I'm posting this reprint of the 1969 New York Times review of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. For some asinine reason, CNN does not have the Vonnegut obituary on their front page. I had to dig around to find it. Instead, CNN chose to post on their front page something about Danny Bonaduce's wife leaving him. Let me get this straight. One of the most influential writers of the 20th century dies and CNN chooses to run with a story on a child actor train wreck. Ridiculous.
I always loved Vonnegut books, most of which I read when I worked on boats in the late 80's and early 90's. I guess it's no shock to anyone that I have a preference for the fringes of any medium and the more absurd and dark, the more I like it. Vonnegut was clearly all these things and he seemed to speak to me directly as someone who always has the idea of writing in the back of his head. Oddly enough I never read Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse Five until much later in life. I got hooked with Galapagos and drifted into Breakfast of Champions and Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons after that. I always thought that I had barely scratched the surface of Vonnegut's breadth of work, but when looking through the list of books he published I found that I had read almost all of them. Other than Thomas McGuane, he's probably the one author I've read the most and that includes several favorites like Thomas Pynchon, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, and Milan Kundera. Vonnegut deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as authors of this stature too. To me, and I know this is arguable, he is the most important writer of the 20th century. Anyone can write a story about rain and dying in childbirth. Vonnegut could do it and make you laugh about the absurdity of it. He chose to write about more important things.
Rest in peace Kurt Vonnegut and thank you for your gift.
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