Kurt Vonnegut, novelist, died recently after he suffered head injuries due to a fall in his New York home.
Vonnegut was a cynical writer who authored the classic title, “Slaughterhouse Five,” and toward the end of his life, grew disdainful of the current leadership in America.
According to an article published in The Free Press, in March of 2006, Vonnegut said that “the only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected.”
As a young man, Vonnegut served his country in the American infantry during World War II. During maneuvers, he and his team were taken captive by German soldiers, and he was imprisoned in Dresden during the Dec. 14, 1944 allied firebombing of the city. This event would serve as a catalyst to spur on many of his ideologies towards war, politics and religion.
As a writer, he was a genius. He used scientific invention as a plot device and would, at times, use invented alien species as a way to analyze the human condition from a different point of view. This often meant his work was labeled as “science fiction,” which is something he did not appreciate.
He had always said his religion was “humanist,” meaning he felt that there was no greater reward than life itself, and that regardless of social standing, everyone in modern society should treat each other with common decency.
Vonnegut will be missed. A recent collection of his essays, “A Man Without A Country,” made the New York Times Best Seller list. I recommend it to everyone.
I’d like to conclude this short remembrance of the writer with a phrase that, in a 2006 interview for Scottish newspaper, The Sunday Herald, he said he would like as his epitaph:
“The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.”
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