Farewell to a Favorite Hoosier

I dedicate this post to Kurt Vonnegut, who, in my teens, inspired me to be as nutty and authentic as I could muster. Like my father, he was an Indiana Hoosier, with the gift of plain speech slurried with a heavy portion of irony and tongue in cheek. I shall not blather at length in a syrupy, cloying fashion about how sad it is his passing. For him, as with most of us, passing is a happy thing. Don't ask me how I am sure of this unless you are prepared for the woo-woo story. Let me just leave you with some KV quotes which pretty much sum up his unique essence of spirit.

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

Human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

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

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

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

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

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything

The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.

We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

–––Thanks for sharing your wacky self with the rest of us, Mr. V. And thanks for absolving my guilt about my personal anathema for semicolons. Dashes do a far better job, with more panache.

Comments

[jeff]

Wow. I didn't know Kurt passed on. I saw him on the Daily Show last year. He was vitriolic and paleo-patriotic at the same time. Said shit that John wouldn't even say (like calling bush a bastard on tv or some such.) it was great.

Look forward to reading guerilla girls