skippy the bush kangaroo

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

rip kurt vonnegut

via pygalgia, we hear this sad news; the creator of billie pilgrim, dead-eye dick and everyone's favorite science ficiton writer, kilgore trout, is dead at 84:

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 wednesday night in manhattan. he was 84 and had homes in manhattan and in sagaponack on long island.

his death was reported by morgan entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago...

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 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," 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 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."'
we ourselves have always believed the basic premise of bokononism, the island religion vonnegut detailed in "cat's cradle," which dealt with the existence of the human race in a hostile universe.

i was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.

lucky me, lucky mud


god rest you, mr. vonnegut.

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posted by skippy at 9:28 PM |

7 Comments:

I am sorry to see him go. I got to meet him once at a book signing.
commented by Anonymous george, 9:50 PM PDT  
Have I ever mentioned that I've loved Vonnegut's work? I don't believe I have.

I've read "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Deadeye Dick," "Welcome to the Monkey House," "Slapstick," "Breakfast of Champions," "Player Piano"... and those are just the ones I can think of. I saw the movie version of "Mother Night" with Nick Nolte years ago, but never read that book.

Overall, even though I haven't read much of it in recent years, I'm more of a science fiction fan than regular fiction, and some fantasy. Not to say that sci-fi is brimming with masterpieces -- Theodore Sturgeon once quipped that 90 percent of science fiction is crap, and I believe him. It's just that sci-fi and fantasy have always, to me, been more creative and inspiring than regular fiction. Writers like Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Roger Zelazny, Ursula K. LeGuin, Dennis Schmidt, Greg Bear, Anne McCaffrey, Barry Malzberg, James Morrow, Philip K. Dick -- I can't name that many 20th century regular fiction writers whose work I admire as much. I can think of four: Thomas Pynchon, James Cabell, Aldous Huxley, and Kurt Vonnegut. That's it.

And I don't think there's going to be another Vonnegut...
commented by Blogger Mimus Pauly, 10:40 PM PDT  
oh the asshole picture...one of my all time favorite illustrations.
commented by Blogger Working Girl, 12:24 AM PDT  
*
commented by Blogger Working Girl, 12:28 AM PDT  
Vonnegut, an atheist, would probably be amused by your "God rest you, Mr. Vonnegut", even while recognizing the reference to "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater".

I went to an exhibition of his ink drawings in New York City around 1982-ish. It was in a small gallery and the girl friend of the moment and I were the only two people who were there. I kind of liked his style. Sort of Ralph Steadman with a marginally steadier hand.
commented by Blogger DBK, 11:05 AM PDT  
I found a commencement speech he gave which is stunning in its clarity and humour.

No. Seriously. This one is real. he even jokes about the hoax!
commented by Blogger Carl, 1:27 PM PDT  
DBK,

Vonnegut was an humanist and he would have appreciated Skippy's sentiment.

"Some of you may know that I am a Humanist, not a Christian. But I say of Jesus, as all Humanists do, ''If what he said was good and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what can it matter if he was God or not?''

If Christ hadn't delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn't want to be a human being.

I would just as soon be a rattlesnake."
commented by Blogger Carl, 1:29 PM PDT  

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