Goodbye Kilgore

"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different." - Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - 2007)

I got the news from misis last Friday. Kurt Vonnegut is dead. She knows how time stops for me every time a writer passes. Time last Friday was longer than usual. Normally it would take a couple of minutes of silence to contemplate how this world will no longer get to read new texts from a particular author. Vonnegut's passing affected me the whole morning. My first taste of his talent started with Breakfast of Champions which became a constant companion back in the 90s. I brought it with me everywhere as a sort of badge (to show others I can read) and first-aid reading (for those uncomfortable silences). Slaughterhouse-Five was with me in one visit to Baguio.

His fiction/nonfiction sparked my personal interest in Postmodernism since his writing crosses autobiography and fantasy that reaches a point when it doesn't matter anymore whether something really took place or was just conjured. Besides, it was Vonnegut's way of telling his millions of readers that checking for the veracity of what he writes is a waste of time. Reading his texts makes you hungry to realize so many things mostly about our own roles in this world. I for one stopped in the course of reading Breakfast to ask myself why I was reading the absurdity and pessimism distinct in most of his works; I never got the answer but raising the question just blew me - what profound absence.

So goodbye Mr. Vonnegut, see you around. I'll try Pall Malls before my turn comes to leave and with it reread Timequake, Breakfast of Champions, among others.

Who knows maybe this time the answers might come before the questions.