I held off opening this thread with the thought that if I didn’t open it, maybe he wouldn’t be dead. But I can’t avoid it. He is gone. But I do thank him for his wonderful books and short stories.
He so grasped the absurdity of our world. He really helped me stay sane in an insane world or possibly accept my own insanity. Whatever it was, I am glad he graced by bookshelves.
Also, he closed one segment (I think it was the Nancy Grace thing) by saying “So it goes.”
My 21 year-old son, studying in Amsterdam, is wearing a black arm band. He began reading Kurt when just 12 or so. It shaped who he is. When said son was 15, a lot of sample products, like catfood (we had no cat) began appearing at my home, addressed to Kilgore Trout. When 17 my son wore a tee shirt he’d printed with “Everyone’s a robot except you”. He tore through Vonnegut’s books one after the other - which in fact brought us closer. I was suddenly cool in his eyes, because they were my collection of Vonnegut. We related to one another on a whole new level.
and so it goes
I wonder if he’s mated with the 1920s stag actress yet?
Driving to work yesterday I heard this piece on NPR (First sound link top of the page)
The end of the piece:
*"In 1968 he wrote in his novel Slaughterhouse 5, Robert Kennedy was shot two nights ago, so it goes.
And every day my government gives me a count of corpses in Viet Nam, so it goes.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. went on to criticise the war in Iraq one of the last public acts before he died yesterday of complications from a fall.
So it goes."*