The
New York Times reports that novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., has died at age 84. It's sad to lose a cultural figure of such stature, a satirist of the same caliber as Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift. I don't know who could possibly fill his shoes, but as with the others the world may have to wait another hundred years for a writer with such a combination of intelligence, humor, wit, and humanity in the face of inhumanity. From a literary perspective, perhaps some criticism is warranted, but all of us (especially our leaders) would do well to consider what is likely to be his epitaph (from
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater):
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”
P.S. To any of my writing students who may have read the article, because Vonnegut played fast and loose with punctuation doesn't mean you have permission to.
