Four Reasons I Love Kurt Vonnegut's work

Forget Slaughterhouse Five or any of his other masterpieces...and some certainly are indeed masterpieces in the truest sense of the word. If you haven't read any of his work, you are missing something brilliant. But, my favorite Kurt Vonnegut book is Fates Worse Than Death: An autobiographical collage of the 1980s, and all four reasons I'll list today come from that book.

While his more well-known and well-revered works are indeed brilliant, I find his non-fiction observations on life to be so much more pithy. The man never flinched, never minced a word, and never waivered simply because waivering makes life so much easier. Don't you love that in a writer? I know I do.

1. The disclaimer reads: "All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental and should not be construed. No names have been changed to protect the innocent, since God Almighty protects the innocent as a matter of Heavenly routine."

2. Best quote on the 2nd Amendment ever:

"A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," sayeth Article II of the Bill of Rights, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Perfect! I wouldn't change a word of it. I only wish the NRA and its jellyfishy, well-paid supporters in legislatures both State and Federal would be careful to recite the whole of it, and then tell us how a heavily armed man, woman, or child, recruited by no official, led by no official, given no goals by any official, motivated and restrained only by his or her personality and perceptions of what is going on, can be considered a well-regulated militia.

3. This is part of a speech he gave before the American Psychiatric Association:

"I hold a master's degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago. Students of that branch of poetry are taught to seek explanations for human comfort or discomfort—wars, wounds, spectacular diseases, and natural disasters aside—in culture, society, and history. And I have just named the villains in my books, which are never individuals. The villains again: culture, society, and history—none of them strikingly housebroken by lithium, Thorazine, Prozac, or Tofranil."

4. From a graduation speech at the University of Rhode Island in 1980:

"Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, and not many people found that odd. It was as though he had an infected growth on end of his nose the size of a walnut, and everybody thought that was perfectly OK. I mentioned this one time at the University of Virginia, of which Jefferson was not only the founder but the sublime architect. A history professor explained to me afterward that Jefferson could not free his slaves until he and they were very old, because they were mortgaged and he was broke.

"Imagine that! It used to be legal in this beacon of liberty to hock human beings, maybe even a baby. What a shame that when you find yourself short of cash nowadays you can't take the cleaning lady down to the pawnshop anymore along with your saxophone."

If you've not checked out the invite to all I put up yesterday, please do. I'd love to get together folks to have some fun. I was going around the whole blogroll (a rare, rare treat for me these hectic daze) and only got through like four people willy-nilly before I was called to go help Mama Buzzardbilly get settled at home as she's been released from skilled nursing. As it's pretty freaking late and think a lot of folks would miss my comment if I put it on their yesterday blog (and I'm too pooped to pop), I'll be getting around to everyone today. Oh, I so hope I'll be able to get around to everyone today. Light a candle for catastrophe-free living for just one day, woncha?

And, so it goes.