Kilgore Was Here

So long, Kurt. There are a lot of dismal jokes which Vonegut set up for this occasion, leaving us to fill in the punchlines, and I am tempted to do so if I were not so sad. Vonnegut's books leave us a path of finding humor in crushing reality of politics, impending apocalypse and strife. Maud Newton has some nice links, including a poker game she played with Vonnegut...in her mind. Amardeep Singh posted an exerpt from Cat's Cradle which addresses the awful glamor or war. I'll have a drink tonite and try to remember some of things he wrote, some of which have become small maxims which I long ago began to fail to attribute to him. But there is a telltale "composed discontentment," as Flannery O'Connor wrote, to the world-wizened phrases that poured from him:

"All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true."

Pretty much. And today the Green Zone was bombed, prompting the President to say this was a good thing, because "it reminds us we have enemies." The Colorado GOP is using the phrase "homosexual agenda" to defend a new bill, and there are still federal prosecutors (employed) who want to prosecute book stores and libraries for peddling pornography, such as novels by Vonnegut and Toni Morrison.

Kurt...