God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

[roflcopter_down]

There are only two books that I've read that I can say have changed me in some way. The first and most important of them was Slaughterhouse Five. I was fifteen when my 10th grade English teacher suggested I read Slaughterhouse Five for a school project. When the project was done, I was not the same person. The book spoke to me. It was weird, probably the weirdest thing I've read even to this day, and yet it all made perfect sense to me. When I was done, I had a new favorite writer. Kurt Vonnegut was a hero to me.

Heroes have always been few and far between for me. I was blessed with a cynicism beyond my years that prevented me from having them for too long. All the people I've admired have shown their flaws in spite of all their claims of greatness. Kurt Vonnegut never claimed he was great, and was open with his flaws. His writing spoke for itself. Every praise he ever received was given to him by others. Whenever I read his work, I felt reassured that there were more people like me in the world. As an awkward teenage boy, that was a good feeling.

Today, my first real hero has been swept up in the purple buzz of death and lives only in time. To me, he will always be a hero for the anti-heroes, a patron saint to curmudgeons who don't need patron saints. When things like this happen, I often ask why the good are always taken from us. To quote the man himself, "Here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of another moment. There is no why."

He died at 84. It was a good run.

God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut.

Comments

[biissedandgone.livejournal.com]

I couldn't think of what to say in my mournful LJ post. I'm not nearly as eloquent as he was in life. I'm glad someone could say it.

I kinda feel like my Captain has died, and all hope is lost. That's the only way to describe it. He did hang in there. But people like him don't die. He's just become unstuck in time, living it up with Montana for the rest of eternity.

[zombiesmut.livejournal.com]

I think the most appropriate thing to say about all this is: so it goes.

But this is mostly because you said a lot of what I felt. I didn't discover Vonnegut until I was out of highschool, when one of my friends pushed me to read Slaughterhouse Five, but wow. The man was everything I wanted to be as a writer, and in a lot of ways as a person.

And we will always, always have his books.