Kurt Vonnegut is Dead; Long Live the Handicapper General - April 12, 2007

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.

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¹ http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html

Posted by PhilaLawyer at 10:55 PM

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Amen.

Posted by: Anaximander at April 12, 2007 11:50 PM

Kurt Vonnegut, eh? I'll have to pick up one of his books.

Posted by: Ploin at April 13, 2007 12:27 AM

So it goes.

Posted by: Gideon at April 13, 2007 01:13 AM

Well said.

Posted by: -Testify! at April 13, 2007 08:41 AM

Bravo.

Posted by: Chris at April 13, 2007 10:23 AM

An excellent Elegy.

..and so it goes.

Posted by: Tone at April 13, 2007 02:26 PM

A great post to end the week. Your writing is on fire. Reading your stories is a nice break in the day from filing informations at the State Attorney's Office. Maybe you posted it somewhere else, but when is your coming out? Can we order it directly from here so you get a larger cut of the sale price?

PL: I think so.

Posted by: Marc at April 14, 2007 04:25 AM

Posted by: brookgo at April 20, 2007 01:50 PM

KURT VONNEGUT(in reference to his wife telling him to buy envelopes online): Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know...

And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

Posted by: Afghan at May 5, 2007 05:53 PM

Kurt Vonnegut...a hell of a writer.

Posted by: doctornine at June 4, 2007 02:33 AM