I find it doubly troubling that I had forsaken the work of the genius. I have idolized him in my adolescence but had to abandon him as I pursued the common struggle of providing for the family at the exclusion of everything else. Now, after more than thirty years of serving false gods and getting just rewards for it I now have the luxury of revisiting the object of my neglected affection, the written word, a terrain in which , to my mind, Vonnegut dominated.
I am not even halfway going through a dozen of his books in my library when he all of a sudden just banged and quit with a damaged brain. I was taking my time reading and enjoying his Breakfast of Champions, Slaughter House Five, Cat’s Cradle, Mother Night…safe in the thought despite his age he was very much with us not giving thought that this promethean figure was mortal. I should take solace with one of my favorite Vonnegutian lines…”and so it goes”, a few words which captures his view of people, the human condition and of life generally. It so eloquently expresses his vigorous contempt and disdainful apathy towards the events prevalent during his prolific writing years. “and so it goes” an emphatic but subtle expression of indifference. Post Vietnam writers would find themselves preempted by the sentiments expressed by this insightful writer of Slaughter House Five which sprung from the deep impressions that the fire bombing of Dresden had etched in him.
I do not know if he is now happy having arrived at his invented place of “chronosyncratic infandibulum” where all truths fit nicely together and/or to be with Hemingway’s misplaced dessicated leopard in the slopes of Kilimanjaro or would he have preferred to keep slaying gorgons that continue to persist in our midst.
Well, Kurt, you will be missed finally.
A sadist, huh? Heh!
Thanks! This is helpful.