Kurt Vonnegut died on Wednesday. When I was a teen he was one of my favourite writers, and I’ve read many of his books, a number of them several times. Been a long while since I read one, but I read parts of Breakfast of Champions in 2002, when politics had changed so drastically in the USA, and it was hard to imagine anyone publishing such a revolutionary book.
Other great novels that I loved include Slaughterhouse 5, and Galapagos, though there were many more on my bookshelves at one time; and his collection of non-fiction writing, Palm Sunday has some wonderful essays, including one of my favourite articles on good writing.
I’ll have to look through my bookshelves again, and see if there’s an old gem I should read again to remember the virulent, pall mall smoking humanist, who once wrote about anti-war books that you might as well write anti-iceberg books (tho that didn’t stop him).
With all the icebergs melting, maybe that means we might be turning the corner.