God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut (and Mr. Carpenter)

Another wonderful eulogy of Kurt Vonnegut, this one by Dan Carpenter, columnist in the Indianapolis Star. Worth quoting:

"Crediting the Indianapolis Public Schools for 'my crazy ideas about socialism and pacifism,' Vonnegut said in 1973 on one of his many visits here: 'The most intelligent people in the city went into teaching then . . . I was taught to be proud that the generals were not listened to in our country. I did not get my crazy ideas on the Eastern seaboard or from crazy intellectuals in the East. I just remembered what I was told in Junior Civics.'...

"Vonnegut's essential moral grief, his atheist's yearning for God and good in a species that showered him with evidence to the contrary, lies at the heart of his literary stature.

"Among the most accessible of serious novels, Vonnegut's works are characterized by capricious evil, forlorn idealism, frenetic plots, frank autobiographical elements and cartoonish concepts meant to convey obvious messages -- the birth control pill that works by taking the fun out of sex, the secret weapon that freezes all the world's waterways, the space aliens who bring Earthlings a formula for peace that goes unheeded because they can communicate only by tap-dancing and passing gas. Immortal characters, such as the saintly Mr. Rosewater and the misanthropic science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, appear and reappear from book to book.

"Leery of being lionized as a secular prophet, Vonnegut once went so far as to say 'a writer is just a person who makes his living with his mental disease.'

"He also confided late in his career that he wrote 'intuitively, reflexively, as if skiing down a mountain with no time to think.

"'And as I look back on the marks my skis have left on the slope, I see that what I wrote again and again are stories of ordinary people who tried to behave decently in an indecent society.'"

Footnote: I admire Dan Carpenter for his courage and integrity, and obvious determination. I do not envy him his calling, which is to be a "lefty" columnist in a "righty" newspaper, city, and state. The vilification he receives from his opponents is almost universal, and mean-spirited and unrelenting. I suspect Dan has even received death threats, because we are talking about the kind of people who drag people they don't like behind trucks, who unapologetically pack the guns they worship along with Jesus, who bomb abortion clinics; I suspect he doesn't become too upset when someone merely curses him, telling him he is lost and damned to hell for all eternity. (Dan, by the way, gives every indication of being a devout Roman Catholic, and he is certainly thoroughly familiar with the teachings of Jesus.)

I also am grateful that the Indianapolis Star employs him and in no way tampers with his editorial integrity. There was a time when such an arrangement would have been unlikely.