I had not planned a comment on the passing of the great, legendary Kurt Vonnegut. (Picture from Jesus General.)
He was the Mark Twain of his century, perhaps Twain’s reincarnation. (Read The Mysterious Stranger if you don’t believe me.)
Vonnegut used science fiction, autobiography, and beautiful descriptions to tell cautionary tales, although his own ambition was always just to be funny.
His last major work was an essay called Cold Turkey. This is what he said:
Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like TV news, is it?
Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.
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.
As with so much of what he said, this was absolutely spot-on, wise, brilliant, entirely American and a bit paranoid.
I personally insist on being an optimist. I believe that, if we take
this struggle seriously enough, we can beat our addiction to oil, and
build a new energy economy based on hydrogen and renewable energy
supplies. But without the absolute consensus and urgency that the true
use of a word like War entails, we will fail. Vonnegut’s last words will be the obituary of our race.
Our children will die horrible deaths. And Kurt Vonnegut, up in heaven, will
feel very lucky he didn’t see the day, when the generation of his
children and grandchildren ushered in the end of the world.
Sorry, no punchline. But I’m no Vonnegut.
An interesting thing about Vonnegut’s novels are that uniformly they feature a protagonist who has lost control of his personal situation, but at the same time there is a very strong sense that man can be master on his own destiny if only he can overcome the darker side of his nature. Another interesting thing is that when Rodney Dangerfield gets Vonnegut to write a paper on Vonnegut for him he gets a bad grade.
An interesting thing about Vonnegut’s novels are that uniformly they feature a protagonist who has lost control of his personal situation, but at the same time there is a very strong sense that man can be master on his own destiny if only he can overcome the darker side of his nature. Another interesting thing is that when Rodney Dangerfield gets Vonnegut to write a paper on Vonnegut for him he gets a bad grade.