Diary of a Mad Editor

Archive for April 13th, 2007

Bless You Mr. Vonnegut and May You Rest in Peace

Kurt Vonnegut is dead at 84. He lived a repectably long life. He wrote his share of great books. He was also a free-thinker and a humanist of the first order. I for one will miss him. He was, along with Ray Bradbury and one or two others, a writer who made me want to be a writer.

Although I’d been dabbling at writing for a few years before first discovering a worn paperback of Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle in the mass market paperback section of the Cumberland County Library, I will say that he was the one writer who first made me realize that fiction need not only be entertaining — it could be wise and have something important to say about humanity and our cultural failings as well. Over the next several years I read everything by him I could get my hands on. Classics like Slaughterhouse Five and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Although some might disagree, I still consider Breakfast of Champions to be one of his most important books and Mothernight to be my personal favorite.

Anyone who wants to write should have this man’s books on their personal reading lists. Great writers don’t come along too often and we live in a age when even potential greatness is beaten into the pulp of mass-market mediocrity. Kurt Vonnegut was one of the great ones.