God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

Kurt Vonnegut died on Wednesday leaving behind him a loving family, a prolific corpus of writing both fiction and non-fiction, legions of adoring fans and Chuck Palahniuk. With him the final link to the counterculture of the 1960s is effectively severed. While Vonnegut was not a participant in counterculture per se, he informed and shaped the movement with books like Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five being required reading for hippies of both the left and right.

I recall the time that I journeyed to Smith College to see Mr. Vonnegut speak during my first stint at Umass. We stuck out like sore thumbs, what with us being men at an all women’s college. When we walked in the room Kurt immediately turned his attention to us informing us (much to the chagrin of the “womyn” legitimately there for class) that we were welcome to stay so long as we didn’t occupy a seat and kept our mouths shut.

Vonnegut taught us to laugh at the world even when things seemed darkest. He reminded us to remain skeptical of even our most dearly held assumptions. He cut through the bullshit of the postmodern era like a laser-honed scalpel, even though I’m sure that all he wanted to do was write stories with compelling characters.

If there’s any justice in this world, Vonnegut will be held up as the archetypical Word War II veteran, a man who saw a real apocalypse far more terrifying than anything cooked up in a book of desert myths, an apocalypse wholly created by man and his undying ability to dehumanize other men. He was a madly cynical Ezra Pound giggling in the face of danger, repression and death. Much like the dearly departed RAW, we could learn a lot not only from the man’s work, but also the man’s way of life.

See you in the Western Lands…

~ by newsvirus on April 13, 2007.