Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut is dead at 84.

I don’t really know what to say.  The first time I read Vonnegut was when I was fourteen.  A friend told me about Breakfast Of Champions so I went to the local library and borrowed it.

Reading that book broke my brain I think.

So much of what I was thinking, and still am thinking, Vonnegut wrote on those pages.  It is hard to put into words how great reading Vonnegut felt.  A few of my friends were also very interested in him and, despite our later differences, we could always talk about Vonnegut or reference Kilgore Trout together.

As I have said before, it is a pretty troubling thought that someone sixty years my senior is one of the people whom I relate to the most.  Into his eighties Vonnegut’s writing about contemporary issues was frighteningly right on.   When I was reading A Man Without A Country last year it was somewhat comforting, as the world spirals into the void around us, that someone else understood.

Take care, old friend.