En Whatever

Kurt Vonnegut Has Died

Kurt Vonnegut, author of such novels as Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, Ice Nine, and Breakfast of Champions, has died at age 84 from complications of a fall he had taken in his home. He also wrote short stories, plays, and essays. Describing his own voice as a Midwestern buzz-saw, he brought a deceptive simplicity that could mask the complex workings of his mind, tangling equally with questions of reality, time, morality, and the human condition. For all the writing, however, I think his art work was an even clearer distillation of what he did. Scrawling, spare lines would map out elegant visual commentaries on the world. Vonnegut's own web site, which displayed the art, now has a single image: an open bird cage surrounded by a black border.

posted by Erik Sherman @ 7:04 AM