So It Goes, K.V.

I posted a link to Kurt Vonnegut's obituary--Fox News style. If Vonnegut had been alive to see it he'd have cracked a smile, yelled "Hi ho!" and put a whoopie cushion under the Fox producer's chair. Since Fox News has chosen to slant the story to liable a great man, I'm gonna give you one paragraph's worth of reorientation back toward a perspective a little less spiteful. Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis into a middle class family in 1922. He was a brave young man who loved America, joined the infantry when she was attacked, was taken prisoner by the Nazis during the Battle of the Bulge, won a purple heart and, while a POW, was forced to dig mass graves for some of the 100,000 charred bodies of German civilians who were deliberately massacred in the allied firebombing of Dresden. On Mother's Day of 1944, while he was overseas, his mother Edith Lieber Vonnegut, committed suicide. What Vonnegut experienced during World War II made him hate war and the cruel indifference that can take over the souls of warmakers. For feeling this way the apologists for war, authoritarianism and state power have always detested him, as the Fox News obit makes plain. His hatred for war and inability to believe in a loving God also made him drink--his breath would reek of mustard gas and roses--and take refuge in the kind of black humor that always had God's cosmic indifference as an unspoken punchline. He was a man of deep pain and regret who nonetheless spent his entire career spreading warmth and laughter while at the same time teaching some of the greatest philosophical lessons ever put on paper. His writings are like situation comedies--only written by Socrates. In one calender year, when I was 21 years old, I read nearly everything he'd ever written, some 15-20 books. Like a million others, the brilliance, patriotism, humor, love of humanity and simple decency of Kurt Vonnegut has made me a better person. Find someone who loves Kurt Vonnegut and you'll find someone you'll want to have coffee with. He was the greatest American author of the second half of the 20th century. I hope he is in heaven.