R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut & Kilgore Trout

My favorite novelist, the novelist that got me reading, has passed away at the age of 84. His novels always paint a humerous and realistic look at life, love, and social norms. The first Kurt Vonnegut book I read was Welcome to the Monkey House, which is a collection of his short stories. Harrison Bergeron and Welcome to the Monkey House painted such a vivid, freightening picture of the future, and I was hooked ever since. He was a writer, a thinker, and a poet. Even in the introduction of Welcome to the Monkey House he said he smokes because it is the only legal way to slowly commit suicide. I love that line.

Player Piano, God Bless You Mr. Rosewayer, Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle, Welcome to the Monkey House, Timequake and Breakfast of Champions area all great books that knocked me on my ass. Breakfast, Monkey House, and Slaughterhouse-Five in particular blew me away. His last novel, Timequake, was a great book about poor old Kilgore Trout getting sent back ten years from 2001 to 1991. He is forced to live out his life exactly as he did before, but is conscious of having traveled backwards in time. He has to deal with watching himself make all the same bad choices he made over his life, relive all the sadness, and enjoy all the good times.

"Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be."

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before."

"I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours."

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center. "

"If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy."

"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest. "

"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."

"It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead."




Kurt Vonnegut heavily impacted my life & he will be loved and missed.

~GT