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Kurt Vonnegut, novelist and humanist, has died at the age of 84.That hurts, typing that.
While I suppose the headline should not have been wholly unexpected -- he *was* 84 and he *did* smoke unfiltered cigarrettes for years and years (though those did not, int the end, kill him; apparently, he fell some weeks ago and sustained injury at that time) -- it punched me in the gut. My first reaction (after crying) was to call The Boy. But, as it was 4am, I did not think his parents would be too pleased. My next reaction was to read one of my favorite passages:
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.
There's a really spectacular Vonnegut website here. His official website is here. There are many, many obituaries on-line. Even Al Jazeera is reporting the news.
Honor him by reading his work and remembering:
God damn it. You've got to be kind.
3 comments:
Yeah, I just woke up and saw on the news, figured I'd check If you saw. You could have called at 4:00... wait, why were you up at 4:00?
Damn it, now its got me thinking about studs terkel.(pushin 95 right?)
I am always up between 4-4:30a so I can make Science Boy tea and work out before I have to get ready for work. It's why I am always exhausted!
I'm sure your parents would have been thrilled to have me call you so early!
Yeah, Studs is getting up there (95 on May 16). Bradbury, too (86 last August). And Norman Mailer (just turned 84). Ferlinghetti (88 on March 24)!
The morbid and heartbreaking thing is that, since the fire in his home a few years back, I have been afraid every day that Kurt's name would be a Yahoo headline. And now that it was, I can say it hurt my heart just as badly as I feared it would.
So it goes.
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