NEW YORK — [1] In books such as “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle,” and “Hocus Pocus,” Kurt Vonnegut mixed the bitter and funny with a touch of the profound.
Vonnegut, regarded by many critics as a key influence in shaping 20th-century American literature, died Wednesday at 84. He had suffered brain injuries after a recent fall at his Manhattan home, said his wife, photographer Jill Krementz.
I never really got into reading him. From a distance, a talented writer he may have been, and by that I mean talented at writing what he was envisioning.. but what he envisioned was at the high end of the weird scale, certainly.
The man was a prisoner in WWII, and as a result was in Dresden when they firebombed the place. He always claimed that that incident didn’t have anything to do with the weirdness factor that always followed him around. If that’s true, then the event causing the behavior …if there was one…I would think, would have to be cataclysmic. Else, it took nothing at all to get him where he ended up, having STARTED at weird.
(Shake of the head.)
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