Kilgore Trout's grave

Kurt Vonnegut is dead. What a goddamn loss. What many don't realize without reading Vonnegut and only hearing of his "dark humor" and "morality" is that his books aren't really mean-spirited or bitter. Like the Midwestern charm that pervades his character, Vonnegut's books are tinged by a certain geniality, even in their profound pessimism, like some sort of demented tale out of Lake Wobegon populated by aliens and mad scientists. And despite the appeal of "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt," Vonnegut's stories have an urgent message for us today. We live in darkening times, times where Vonnegut's moral directive that men must act is of paramount importance. Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians are killed. So it goes. Scores were killed in suicide bombings in Algeria. So it goes. The American cult of Apathy gazes at its TV screens with a shrug. So it goes.

Today, Kurt Vonnegut is dead. So it goes.