Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut has died at age 84.

In my youth I loved reading Vonnegut. I think Breakfast of Champions was my first book of his that I read. That was soon followed by Cat's Cradle, Player Piano, Slaughterhouse 5, The Siren's of Titan, Mother Night and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Some of the books were read more than once and some more than twice. I found his writing often made me laugh but always made me think.

But I got older and I haven't picked up one of his books in years. When I'd see or hear Vonnegut on radio or TV - he always made me think of Grandpa Simpson. You know - the guy who would be scolding the kids today about how things were better when they were kids when not rambling into a discussion that may or may not only make sense to them.

I was wrong to think that way. At their heart - the message to Vonnegut's books is simply that life is unfair and often plain weird but there is no reason not to be nice to each other. It was me who had become more insular and jaded - not Vonnegut. I need to go back and re-read some of his books to reconnect with that message that I understood early in life but later lost the meaning of.

It also seems strange to me that some people used to categorize Vonnegut as a Science Fiction writer. I never thought of him as anything but a writer and I think most people of my age or younger thought the same. Sure Cat's Cradle, Player Piano and the time travel and aliens of Slaughterhouse 5 could be science fiction on their own but it just never occurred to me to think of Vonnegut as a sci-fi writer.

Last year we lost Hunter S Thompson - who was a contemporary of Vonnegut's. With the loss of Vonnegut - many are bringing up HST but that's not fair to Vonnegut because he was such a better writer and talent than Hunter S ever was. When Hunter S Thompson died - I said that in 20-years he'd be mostly forgotten and that nobody would be still reading his stuff. Not true of Vonnegut. His novels will stand the test of time and will be read long after I'm dead.

I must also say that the recent Anna Nicole saga seems like something that Vonnegut could have penned as a plot to one of his novels (in fact God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater seems to come awfully close). I think Kurt Vonnegut would have gotten a bit of chuckle that the news of his death would be overshadowed by a paternity DNA test to see who is the father of a C-List millionaire actress who first came to prominence via her wide open beaver.

Kurt Vonnegut is dead.

And so it goes.