Kurt Vonnegut died today. He wrote one of the most important books in American Literature called Slaughterhouse Five, which was a semi-autobiographical novel about his experiences as a prisoner of war and his subsequent survival of the bombing of Dresden.Over the evenings of Febuary 13th through the 15th 1945 it is estimated that between 25,000 to 100, 000 people died from several thousands of tons of bombs being dropped on them.
A little later that same month, on the other side of the world, the United States firebombed Tokyo and killed at least 70,000 people.
So it goes.
The book is also about time travel, alien abduction and sex with B-movie starlettes (so it has a little something for everyone). It is at once a elegant and horrifying book. He used a device, that I will always remember. When someone died in the novel, or when one of the aliens said something, they said-So it goes.
I have read the book about five times since I was 14 years old. What I found humorous when I was 14 I found terribly sad when I was 35. The book seemed to change as I got older. It taught me a lot about perception.
I will read it again this month in honor of Mr. Vonnegut.
He was a hero of mine. I am at once sad at his passing and at once happy that he lived during my lifetime. I hope his passing was peaceful, but I am afraid that is wasn't. He died from complications from a fall.
He was on the Daily Show a couple of months ago. He was still as sharp as a tack
So it goes, Kurt. So it goes.
3 comments:
I am in mourning and very sad over Kurt's death. He was my idol in high school. I can pinpoint the moment in time when I was reading Slaughterhouse Five, those memories come flooding back whenever I think of that book. Feh!
Just in case someone is not familiar with KV...
"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes.""
I have been trying to find my copy of S5 since last night- My wife tells me I have five copies around the house- I can't find one.
AC
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