A couple of days ago, I wrote a post about books that changed your life. One such book for me was Slaughterhouse Five. In high school, I was something of a science geek, was one of the officers of the high school science fiction club, and I played Dungeons and Dragons. One day my friend Bill Schmitt (who was a math geek more than a science geek, and who did not play D&D), told me about these science fiction books I should read.

“There’s this guy named Kilgore Trout who keeps appearing in the books,” said Bill. “He’s a character, a science fiction author, in the books, but then there really is a science fiction book published by Kilgore Trout.”

Who could resist books with a recurring character, a fictional character who even (somehow) published a book in the real world? I went to the public library and took out a book by this author named Kurt Vonnegut, an author who was wild enough to create a character like Kilgore Trout. First I read was God Bless You, Mister Rosewater; and then Breakfast of Champions; and then Slaughterhouse Five.

Slaughterhouse Five was the one that changed my life, just a little. Vonnegut himself is a character in Slaughterhouse Five, along with Kilgore Trout, Billy Pilgrim who is unstuck in time, and aliens called the Trafalmadorians who look like toilet plungers. The emotional center of the book is an eyewitness account of the firebombing of Dresden by Allied forces during World War II. Vonnegut himself witnessed the firebombing of Dresden; so did Billy Pilgrim. Reading about the firebombing of Dresden, I began to realize that World War II wasn’t quite the “just war” that everyone said it was. Within two years of reading Slaughterhouse Five, I was involved in the peace movement.

So Slaughterhouse Five remains an integral part of my moral landscape. When I later learned that Vonnegut — fatalist, rationalist, bedrock humanist — belonged to a Unitarian Universalist congregation, I was not surprised. I had already known he was a kindred soul.

And now he’s dead. Or maybe he’s just unstuck in time. So it goes. Damn, I’m sad.

*****

Update: Sf author Cory Doctorow wrote the following about Vonnegut on BoingBoing:

“My first Vonnegut was Breakfast of Champions. I’d never read anything like it. It was a novel that was so easy, everything just happening, one thing after another. The book almost read itself. That was his gift, I think: to tell you things that were hard to hear, without you even noticing it. Like a nurse who can slide a needle into your vein without making you wince.” [Link]

Also via BoingBoing, a link to Vonnegut’s appearance on the Daily Show: Link.

BBC’s obit: Link. BBC’s appreciation: Link.

Vonnegut’s own Web site, with nothing there now but this one image: Link.