Cat's Cradle

I will miss this old man, this venerable and ever-kind paragon of modern literature. For Kurt Vonnegut is dead, is dead, and all the trees are barren now. He wrote fourteen novels, each a crystal of painful satire, each a gem of distilled Zeitgeist. He witnessed the firebombing of Dresden at first hand. And yet, he was a free man in his mind, never overcome by the weight of life.

I will miss him because, with his friend Joseph Heller, through the mediating influence of my maternal grandfather, I learnt about life. Not the platitudinous or the scurrilous, not the acrimonious or the cynical, but life as a raw deal which just might turn a profit for you. And all about taking flying leaps at a doughnut, or the moon, or a B-52 bomber.

And although I could include many links at this point, I will not. He made the reader think independently; in his memory, go and find your own links.