Kurt Vonnegut died this week, victim of the kind of tragic accident that was fodder for his writing style. Vonnegut had a biting satirical wit that he use to slice through the farcical nature of modern life. His was a no holds bars take no prisoners kind of writing that you either love or hate.
Personally, I loved his acerbic wit and insistence that life is too important to be taken all that seriously. I don't think I could actually choose a favourite novel by him but Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-5 both resonate with me more than all of the rest. Perhaps it is because they were the first two I read by him. Perhaps it is because I read them in the 1970's when I was living the counterculture lifestyle that included a commune on the west coast of Vancouver Island during the height of the antiwar movement that swept across North America. Vonnegut and Joseph Heller were the authors of the absurd that helped us deal with our frustration and anger at a society that did not reflect our values and that ignored our protests.
That he reemerged to write one last book is not surprising. I listened to an interview with him last year on Sounds Like Canada, with Shelagh Rogers. He was a true curmudgeon who spoke the truth with honesty and anger and a with that threatened to shrivel the objects of his scorn.
Vonnegut was of a generation of authors that we may never see again and that is our loss.
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