From the NYTimes:
Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island. "
Besides Stephen King, no other writer, and for that matter, man, has had such a greater impact in my life as Kurt Vonnegut. I leaned in college that the novel, as a form of writing, came into creation as a way of emulating reality. In that case no one was as great a novelist as Kurt. That may sound ridiculous if you've read his novels and figure him to be a science-fiction or fantasy writer, and yes his writing certainly shared those attributes. But Vonnegut understood that life and the human condition was so complex, so weird, and so absurd that they can only be expressed through those themes. How else can we understand Hitler, or Pol Pot, or Saddam Hussein, or Henry Kissinger, or George W. Bush? How else can we comprehend the endless, bitter vicissitudes in life? Many people looked to the Bible for answers to these questions but I happened to read Breakfast of Champions and the latter provided a more rational and satisfactory conclusion. This world will be a much more desolate place without him, but fortunately his works, his genius will live on.
And he was in Back To School playing himself. How cool is that?
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