Kurt Vonnegut, Giggle in Peace

Kurt Vonnegut picked a good week to say good-bye. The novelist died at the age of 84. He was best known for work that captured--with a simple elegance--the absurdities, cruelties and imponderables of human existence. But he voiced his dark view----one borne of painful experiences, such as when he witnessed as a POW the firebombing of Dresden during World War II--in a cheerful and playful manner. Life, he suggested, was a joke--a bad joke. But in his novels, which were often warped morality tales, he offered a smidgen of hope. There's an appropriate response, he noted, to this existential horror: Be kind. Yep, there's a moral imperative to be nice. Dime-store philosophy? Perhaps. But can you come up with a better ethical framework?

When the national debate of the moment is focused on three words said by radio host Don Imus, Vonnegut's plea stands as a counterpoint to the coarse culture that too often celebrates and rewards hatefulness. In his heyday, Vonnegut was a pop culture hero. His words and ideas shaped a generation. No writer today has such a hold on the culture. In fact, the way the culture works these days, no writer could have that sort of hold. Instead, many of today's influentials are loudmouths who win attention via excess not intelligence. They exploit rather than explain. They shout rather than observe. And it's rather doubtful that the Imus episode will lead to much change. There's still plenty of profit--individual and corporate--to be made. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, "So it goes."

Posted by David Corn at April 12, 2007 11:44 AM