Kurt is up in heaven now.
Kurt Vonnegut died on April 11th of complications from a fall he suffered at his home. He was 84.
I've been a fan of Vonnegut since I laid eyes on one of his books. In junior high and high school, my best friend and I would trade his books back and forth like most boys our age were trading pornography. Later we would scour the internet, looking for interviews, biographies, or anything else Vonnegut-related we could find.
Since High School I've never let one of his books slip through my grasp, although my copy of Cat's Cradle is held together only with a hair tie, the result of my foolishly loaning it to a girl I was dating at the time. I own multiple copies of many of his books, and reread them all the time. His books have a great way of cleansing my literary palette between authors. Sometimes I feel like he was with me throughout my entire adolescence.
He seemed to understand the human condition far better than any author I've ever read. And in talking to the rest of the staff here at the library, many of them feel the same. The world has lost a truly fantastic mind.
So it goes.
5 comments:
Nice eulogy, but you might wanna spell his name correctly in the headline.
He passed the day after my birthday. His personal synthesis of wit & wisdom will be sorely missed in today's world.
I am grateful for the literature he has bestowed upon us! We are all richer for his having been.
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P.S.
Kurt would likely laugh to hear you mention heaven, especially in connection with him! ;)
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He actually died on my birthday.
And he's always said that the funniest joke he could think of would be to say, "Kurt is up in heaven now" after he died. So I thought it was fitting.
Well written article.
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