Feature Articles

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007)
by Brian Kennedy, Customer Service Bibliographer

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., the noted American novelist, is dead. He was 84 years old.

When a writer of Vonnegut’s stature dies, the superlatives reach a fever pitch, each obituary hoping to surpass its competitors in gifts of praise. Vonnegut’s passing was no less lauded - he was called "a keen observer of humankind", and declared the "novelist who caught the imagination of his age". Phrases like "dark humor", "urgent moral vision", and "a whimsical sense of the absurd" abound, and most memorial pieces end with the phrase made famous in his novels:

So it goes.

I’ve always liked the sound of that. There’s something final about it – a declaration of cosmic law, a truth – but also something gentle, something kind.

I approach Vonnegut’s work from a distance, for it’s been over ten years since I’ve read his books. I still have them, though, packed away in the storage space above my apartment. I thought about digging them out and re-reading them, sort of a literary memorial service, but then decided against it – my tastes are different now, and I’ve moved on to other writers, and other works.

Which is not to support the view, advanced by a handful of cynics, that interest in Vonnegut is only a phase, an adolescent rite of passage akin to acne or melancholy. It’s just that there are a lot of books to read in the world, and very little time. I don’t think he’d mind.

But how can I detail the career of a man who, nearly forty years ago, the New York Times was already calling "an indescribable writer" whose "books are like nothing else on earth"? I can mention Dresden, inhumanity, and the war. I can talk about the relationship between science fiction and human fact, and a writer able to blend the two so skillfully he transcended all genre. I can say: he seemed like a man who enjoyed writing, and I, in turn, enjoyed what he wrote – not only the novels, but the short stories, plays, essays, and poems.

Or I can take the humbler, easier way out, and let him speak for himself, in his own voice, from Slaughterhouse – Five, the 1969 novel generally considered his best:

Vonnegut once sat down next to the father of a friend of mine on a train leaving New York City. After several minutes of tense silence, my friend’s father finally worked up the courage to turn and ask, "Excuse me, aren’t you Kurt Vonnegut? The writer?" And Vonnegut turned to him and said, very gravely, "Yes. I am." And then Vonnegut drew a picture of himself as a memento – a scribble of hair, goggle-eyes, a sharp, pointed nose, and a bushy moustache – and signed it "Kurt Vonnegut, Jr."

What a nice thing to do.

So it goes.

Below is a list of titles by Kurt Vonnegut. For your convenience, this list is also available in a MS Excel spreadsheet. click here.

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