So Long, Kilgore Trout
Kurt Vonnegut, 1923-2007. So it goes.
Lightly reported in mainstream media, but explosively announced across a reverential internet, last Wednesday Kurt Vonnegut ambled away.
This has been a tough year for heroic figures. In early 2006 libertarian writer and philosopher Harry Browne died of Lou Gehrig’s, and later that year economist Milton Friedman succumbed. Now Vonnegut has traded in his badge as the greatest living American writer to join the pantheon of departed masters.
Vonnegut had largely stopped writing, having declared, accurately, that 1997’s Timequake would be his last novel. He subsequently kept his commentary to short essays, speeches, and delicious soundbites.
If flying-saucer creatures or angels or whatever were to come here in a hundred years, say, and find us gone like the dinosaurs, what might be a good message for humanity to leave for them, maybe carved in great big letters on a Grand Canyon wall? Here is this old poop’s suggestion: WE PROBABLY COULD HAVE SAVED OURSELVES, BUT WERE TOO DAMNED LAZY TO TRY VERY HARD…
Despite his last decade of reduced volume, the world is now poorer—less conscientious, less humanist, less poignantly funny—without Vonnegut.
I chuckle at recent news reports describing his work as science fiction, as if science and fiction had anything to do with his satirical genius.
Vonnegut taught me to respect life’s randomness, making me more existential in the process.
He taught that if I couch a preachy topic in the bizarrest terms, I can get my point across without being tuned out. This is how a satirist is made.
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.”
Those of you with children who have received a card from me welcoming them directly to the planet will find these first three sentences familiar. I have happily plagarized them for years, and make no apology now. They are sound advice, from a lucky bit of mud.
God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!”
“See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.”
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.
—From the Book of Bokonon
People: Every time you see me not use a semicolon, I am paying tribute to Kurt Vonnegut.
ev · PDDCCCXII
April 17th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
I know where to start with the stack of books I recently borrowed. Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut. Thanks. Your words inspire.
April 17th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
I have fond memories of attending a lecture given by Mr. Vonnegut back in my college days. He did, as you wrote, couch “preachy topics” in humor and entertaining stories. It was from him that I first discovered the concept of Humanism. I think the next book I purchase will be “A Man Without A Country”.
May 6th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
He’ll be missed. Did you see Vonnegut* on Jon Stewart a few months back? He still had that spark.
So it goes.
May 14th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Ev, thanks again for introducing me to him all of those years ago.
I too took pause at this news.
Your tribute is worthy.