Obituary for Kurt Vonnegut

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Remembering the great novelist.

By LJ Ulrich, West Virginia University

Kurt Vonnegut—one of the greatest writers in American history—passed away late Wednesday night.

It comes as no great surprise. The man was 84 years old, after all, and even he marveled at how long he had lived, in spite of a life-long smoking habit.

In the end, however, it was a severe brain injury, sustained during a fall in his Manhattan home, that finally robbed us of one of our greatest minds—not the Germans, who took him prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge; not the Americans, who firebombed him in Dresden; not a lifelong battle with depression; not a botched suicide attempt; not even the cancers that seem to walk hand-in-hand with the Pall Malls he smoked too often, or any of the horrors of mankind that he railed against in his writing.

Decades ago, Time once compared Vonnegut to a “zany, mad scientist,” given his appearance (droopy eyelids and disheveled hair, a worn, tired face) and the nature of stories he wrote. His work was comical and outrageous, constructed in the framework of science fiction, but never restricted to it. His novels’ heroes were inept kings, goof balls and drunkards; his villain was society.

However, it was the twisted themes and the crystal-clear messages for which Mr. Vonnegut will be forever remembered. He constantly challenged his readers, using ludicrous comedy and stinging truth to highlight the fundamental absurdity of war, to challenge poverty, question authority (“true terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country”), and rescue the environment (“we could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap”).

All 19 of Vonnegut’s novels are fun to read—but none of them are easy. When it came to word-slinging, Mr. Vonnegut was the master. He was a passive-aggressive genius, the kind who could string his readers along with indirect and muddy stories, who could pamper them with comedy and then cut them apart with searing truth. He was the kind of writer who demanded commitment from those who read his work, who forced his readers to reach beyond themselves and open their minds. Without humility, patience, and humanity, there was no surviving a Vonnegut novel.

This was a man, after all, who prefaced a novel with the warning, “Anyone who cannot understand how useful a religion based on lies can be, will not understand this book, either.”

This was a man who saw critics try to ban Slaughterhouse Five (widely considered one of the best books of the 20th century), and wrote, “Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”

This was a man who, when his beloved sister died of cancer, adopted and raised her three children alongside three of his own. He later wrote, “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

This was a man who saw authority and said, “The big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.” This was a man who titled one of his novels Thank you, Dr. Kevorkian.

This was a man—a humanist—who declared, in his final essay, “If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, ‘Kurt is up in Heaven now.’ That’s my favorite joke.” Another favorite joke of his was that his smoking habit was “a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.”

Kurt Vonnegut, with his outrageous stories and perfectly flawed characters, was a lot of things: funny, cynical and twisted, honest, sharp and brave, an American icon. Some people say he was our century’s Mark Twain; others might say that Mark Twain was the 19th century’s Kurt Vonnegut.

Vonnegut’s Progressive Vision

In Vonnegut’s last book, A Man Without a Country, he writes of his struggle to make America live up to its promise. Here are some of the most important quotes from the book, selected by Center for American Progress intern Harry Waisbren.

Vonnegut on America’s Stature in the World

“In case you haven’t noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound ‘em and kill ‘em and torture ‘em and imprison ‘em all we want.”

Vonnegut on Understanding Our Leaders

“By saying that our leaders are power drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.”

Vonnegut on U.S. Foreign Policy

“Can I tell you the truth? I mean, this isn’t the TV news is it? Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.”

Vonnegut on Human nature

“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.”

Vonnegut on War

“Killing industrial quantities of defenseless human families, whether by old-fashioned apparatus or by newfangled contraptions from universities, in the expectation of gaining military or diplomatic advantage thereby, may not be such a hot idea after all.”