So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut is dead.

We all need to sit and think about this for a moment. I'll write it again.


Kurt Vonnegut is dead.

It's funny. My first thought after reading the CNN article? His book sales are going to go through the roof. So I guess the answer is no - it still hasn't really sunk in yet.

In today's world, what passes for real is becoming increasingly less like the the dictionary definition of the word. I like Vonnegut because I feel like his work shows me something more real than real. It's unfiltered and it's honest. Vonnegut does not bullshit. He works through a lens that catches the real things we ought to be angry about in the world, and he presents his anger in the most human way possible.

Like many people, my first experience with Vonnegut was Slaughterhouse Five. My high school English teachers made us read it and I'm really glad they did. From that point on I was one of the maybe four or five people who regularly took books out of the library. They had most of his novels in paperback so each week I'd borrow a new one. Vonnegut became one of the great educators of my life in that with each turn of his pages, he trained the critical eye that most of my school teachers were failing to show me how to use. The characters and the feelings felt so real (even when they were absurd, or fantastical) that it all felt personal. I never met the man, but if I had I'd have told him that I would not have the brain I have got without him.

I don't know what else to write. This is just awful. But when authors die, their book sales skyrocket. I'm pretty sure this is a fact written down somewhere in something like "The Book of Things That Happen and Will Always Happen." So if his passing means that more people are going to be affected by his work, then I guess there is no better gift he could have given the world.

Rest in peace, Mr. Vonnegut. And if they happen to have blogs wherever you are, and you happen to read this, then just know that I would not have the brain that I have got if not for you.