Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut has died. So it goes.

I discovered his works at the age of ten or eleven in the S thru Z shelves of the fiction section of the library. There were some great authors there: Sainte-Exupery, Tolkein, Twain, Leon Uris, Vonnegut, H. G. Wells, others I can't recall, but I can see myself seated on one of those rolling library step-stools pulling down books to read.

Vonnegut first gave me the gift of dark fiction with insight, quite a change from the missionary stories I read at home. In high school, I grew to appreciate the value of subversiveness in fiction as a means to incite questions about the status quo.

• How was the threat of the world ending from "Ice-9" similar to the ever-present fear we had of a Russion nuclear attack?
• What did it mean to have a society where everyone was equal -- did we really need the services of Handicapper General Diana Moon Glampers to have equality (and what was the difference between equality of opportunity and equality of result? Read the short story here, if you haven't before.)
• I had to think seriously about the value of life after reading about the purple roofed ethical suicide parlors next to the orange-roofed Howard Johnson diners (I am often reminded of the suicide parlors when I pass the former HoJo on our side of the river.)
• I never heard about Desden in school--I saw it through Billy Pilgrim's eyes.

Vonnegut's contributions to my experiences, a few I can recall off the top of my head, as I consider his recurring characters (Kilgore Trout) and bizarre motifs (he ruined asterisks for me*), include:

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

We must do, doodily do, doodily do, doodily do,
What we must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must,
Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, muddily do,
'Til we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust.
(creed of Bokanon)

Rabo Karabekian meeting a woman whose first word to him were "Tell me how your parents died."

I appreciated the random things Vonnegut threw into stories (this collected from the Charlotte Observer obit):

In "Slaughterhouse-Five," Vonnegut introduced the recurring character of Kilgore Trout, his fictional alter ego. The novel also featured a signature Vonnegut phrase.

"Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round," Vonnegut wrote at the end of the book, "was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.

"Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes."

One of many Zen-like words and phrases that run through Vonnegut's books, "so it goes" became a catchphrase for opponents of the Vietnam war.

Expect to hear that phrase from me in the next weeks.