I dunno Jo, I don't think that today we need a counterpoint to those who are relentlessly cheerful. Back then..maybeso.
And maybe that is why I couldn't finish reading the books he wrote in the eighties, but moreso I think that his Art, by then, had become Craft; after all, how many times can you say the same thing, the same way, differently?
Still, his was a fresh voice that many of us heard in the sixties and seventies and reading Vonnegut was like reading no one else who wrote.
Poet? No. Writers of prose can never be poets. Artist? Yes, in as much as writers can be considered artists, maybe like John Dos Passos, or Hemingway, in that they too left the summation to the reader.
Not that I need an excuse to drink, but I will feel better tonight when I sit down an empty glass in Kurt Vonnegut's honor.
Last edited by themilum; 04/22/07 09:10 PM.
