A 600-character column on Kurt Vonnegut

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

Laughter and tears are both expressions of feeling frustrated or exhausted. For me, I prefer laughter, as it requires less cleaning up afterward.
Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, an American author who is likely nostalgic for the baby boomer generation, has passed away. The portrait photo accompanying the obituary looked unexpectedly haggard, so I opened his homepage with a somewhat gloomy feeling, only to have an empty birdcage appear on the screen as the door opened.
Vonnegut once compared artists to the birds that miners would take into the mines. The canary, which had been chirping for a long time that the air in the world was only getting dirtier and that things would become dire if left unchecked, has finally flown away to a distant place. Although the empty birdcage should have looked lonely, my heart suddenly felt lighter, and I found myself smiling.
Vonnegut, who became a prisoner of the Nazis and encountered the massive bombing of Dresden while in a camp, made a name for himself with "Slaughterhouse-Five" (published in 1969), which depicted that experience. The story, which unfolded with a mix of fact and fiction and plenty of humor, skillfully utilized the rhythm and intonation of American English to make the reader's heart dance.
Knowing Vonnegut, who must have thought that being overly serious was unrefined, there are likely more fun quotes, but this one is also hard to pass up. "I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did'." ("Timequake", 1997). You are one of them too, Mr. Vonnegut.
(June 3, 2007)