So it goes: a tribute to Kurt Vonnegut

By Jen Kessler, Entertainment Staff Writer

April 27, 2007 | 6:52 a.m.

“The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral.”

These compelling words, penned by Kurt Vonnegut in his acclaimed 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five, recently garnered a new sense of irony. April 11, 2007 marked the death of Vonnegut, one of America’s most eccentric and celebrated novelists.

Born on Nov. 11, 1922 in Indianapolis, In., Kurt Vonnegut led a life speckled with tragedy and pockmarked with intermittent scenes of devastation. The most noted of these instances was his witnessing the bombing of Dresden during World War II as an American prisoner of war. Vonnegut was one of seven American prisoners to survive the bombing, having been thrown in a cell in the underground meat locker of a plant known as Slaughterhouse Five. The bombing decimated the majority of the city, and Vonnegut recalled the destruction as “carnage unfathomable." This exhibition of annihilation became the central theme in Slaughterhouse-Five, as well as the underlying influence in a few of his additional novels.

Vonnegut’s words, whether in a novel or otherwise, are constantly dripping with an oddly refreshing cynicism. Though he was a self-proclaimed pessimist and often displayed an obvious lack of faith in humanity as a whole, he seemed to possess an innate understanding of the difficulties of life and an immense sympathy for the struggles of the individual. Vonnegut’s general philosophy can perhaps best be summated in the following quote from his 1965 novel, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies -- 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.'”

A selection of Vonnegut’s more well known novels, in progressive order by date, includes Player Piano (1952), Cat’s Cradle (1963), and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).

Player Piano is a novel focused on the role of machinery and technology in society. The story takes place in a dystopian society where machines perform every labor and humans are rendered nearly useless. In an interview with Playboy in 1973, Vonnegut said of his first novel:

“I was working for General Electric at the time, right after World War Two, and I saw a milling machine for cutting the rotors on jet engines…Player Piano was my response to the implications of having everything run by little boxes. The idea of doing that, you know, made sense, perfect sense. To have a little clicking box make all the decisions wasn't a vicious thing to do. But it was too bad for the human beings who got their dignity from their jobs.”

Cat’s Cradle is a science fiction satire of science and organized religion, featuring an imaginary apocalyptic advancement of science as well as an invented religion from the wellspring of Vonnegut’s creativity. The novel focuses on the struggle between truth and lies and, ultimately, between despair and happiness. Science is equated with truth, and religion with lies in Cat’s Cradle, and much of the plot revolves around the idea that with truth comes destruction, and with lies come blissful ignorance. Vonnegut uses simplicity, irony and profound symbolism to masterfully address such complex ideas.

In Slaughterhouse-Five, his most widely recognized work, Vonnegut toys with the ideas of fate, death and free will. Slaughterhouse-Five is a war novel with scientific elements that centers on Billy Pilgrim, a prisoner of war who has become “unstuck in time." This means that instead of leading a normal sequential life, Billy randomly and repeatedly visits different segments of his existence, including his death. At one point he comes into contact with an alien race called Tralfamadorians, and he learns that they have seen every moment of their lives already, as he does. The Tralfamadorians cannot change anything about their fate, but they can choose to focus on whichever moments in their lives they prefer. The Tralfamadorians therefore have a relative insensitivity to death, showcased by their reactions to it: a simple shrug and a simple statement, “so it goes." It is through the philosophies of this race that Vonnegut has Billy explore the themes of the novel -- fate and free will.

Other well-known novels by Vonnegut include The Sirens of Titan (1959), Mother Night (1961), God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) and Breakfast of Champions (1973). For a complete list of Vonnegut’s works, go here.

Despite the fact that brain injury claimed the life of Kurt Vonnegut on April 11, his legacy will live on in his brilliant philosophies, his pessimistic sympathy and his constantly relevant works. The world should not be crying for him, but rather taking heart in the fact that Vonnegut shall always exist.