God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut.
By: Hank Kalet
"Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative."
Kurt Vonnegut, "Cold Turkey,"
2004 essay in the magazine In These Times
Kurt Vonnegut refused to allow himself to be boxed in by easy stereotypes.
The author, who died on April 11 at the age of 84, was a humanist and free-thinking religious skeptic who was never afraid to poke a stick at the grizzly bears that hold power in this country.
Mr. Vonnegut was a hard writer to characterize, which is how he would have wanted it, I think. He once said in "Fates Worse Than Death," his odd scattering of essays and other literary debris that "all I do is louse up paper" (in contrast to then President Ronald Reagan, who "loused up the country").
Ostensibly a science fiction writer, he was far more a caustic social critic, a religious skeptic, a humorist.
He was, as the novelist Norman Mailer said in a statement (published by The Associated Press), "a marvelous writer with a style that remained undeniably and imperturbably his own. … I would salute him our own Mark Twain."
That’s heavy praise, and perhaps a bit overblown. But Mr. Vonnegut did share a lot with Twain not the least of it being his unwillingness to be intimidated by those in power. Twain was expert in deflating the powerful and was a critic of the new, late-19th century American imperialism.
Likewise Mr. Vonnegut. In the 2004 essay quoted above, he offered this harsh critique of the American imperium in early 21st century:
"I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable," the World War II veteran wrote in In These Times. "Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas."
Conformity was a major concern of his, especially early in his career. In "Harrison Bergeron," his futuristic short story, he created a world in which sameness is imposed on all via the use of technology. In "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," he explored the thin line between nonconformity and societal definitions of madness.
And he wasn’t afraid of wading into difficult and challenging waters. "Mother Night" (my favorite of his novels) attacks our easy conceptions of the world. An alleged Nazi spy is on trial in Israel, a reprehensible man with reprehensible opinions. But we can’t dismiss him or write him off. Mr. Vonnegut forces us to consider him as more than what he is accused of being, makes us question his guilt, question what we think we know about history and humanity. It is one of those rare books that forces you to read it cover to cover in a sitting, but challenges you, drags you into questions you might not wish to ask leading to answers you might not wish you’d learned.
That’s what Mr. Vonnegut does at his best.
Matthew Rothschild, managing editor of The Progressive magazine, wrote in his blog last week that Mr. Vonnegut’s "existentialism, his quirkiness, his pessimism, and his atheism didn’t lead him to nihilism but to a democratic socialism and a profound humanism. He was an atheist who truly believed in the Sermon on the Mount."
Mr. Vonnegut, as Joel Achenbach wrote in his Achenblog on The Washington Post, "told us the truth about living in a world gone mad," somehow making "us laugh along the way."
"That’s winning the perfecta."
And so it goes.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is [email protected] and his blog, Channel Surfing, can be found at www.kaletblog.com.

