This is one of those weeks. I drank my last Anchor Steam Porter yesterday and the beer store's out of stock. There's a biting frigid rain outside, the sky's been dull grey for days, the television's thicker than usual with hucksters and pimps and Kurt Vonnegut just died.
Unless you don't have a soul, at one time in your life - maybe forgotten, maybe today - Vonnegut's writing grabbed you. He laughed at the absurdity of our existences and our attempts to transcend what we are without being cynical. Vonnegut wrote simple, straight, short and direct, but was never predictable. The novel was one big sentence to him... A chapter could be ten pages or it might be two. Some were full phrases, others periods and elipses. They all turned seamlessly. Timing was a big thing.
The death of Kurt Vonnegut was eclipsed by two other stories this week. And it's hard to imagine better bookends for the obituary of someone who poked so much fun at the sort of people who flog notions like "justice" and "decency" while simultaneously showing the rot behind the vacant totems they've become...
Vonnegut left the planet a news footnote to the Duke lacrosse and Imus fiascos - two Jerry Springer versions of "Bonfire of the Vanities" played out by a locust swirl of the usual parasites and whores, all in the name of the "Handicapper General's" do-gooderism that pulled the trigger at the end of his own infamous "Harrison Bergeron."1 Kilgore Trout couldn't have dreamt up a sillier McScandal than the Imus mess.
Kurt Vonnegut was an absurdist and he died in the proper context. He was old and frail and most would say he lost his voice and prose years ago. It's nice to see he kept his timing.
----------
1 http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html
Posted by PhilaLawyer at 10:55 PM