Thursday, April 12, 2007

Kurt Vonnegut: 1922 ~ 2007 – Author's dark humor captivated generations

By Dinitia Smith
New York Times News Service
Published April 12, 2007

Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died Wednesday night in New York City. He was 84.

His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.

Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and '70s.

Like Mark Twain, Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?


Read the full article here

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Kurt Vonnegut had to be one of America's treasured writers. He was staunchly anti-fascist, brilliant, and deeply humanist. One of this country's rare gems.