Kurt Vonnegut is Still Alive

Still alive and still unhappy. WaPo Link.

He's seen Slaughterhouse-Five get the Hollywood treatment. He's seen it selected No. 18 on the Modern Library's list of the hundred best English-language novels of the 20th century and Cat's Cradle anointed by Yale critic Harold Bloom as part of the "Western canon." And he's written more than a dozen additional books, among them Breakfast of Champions, Slapstick, Galapagos, Hocus Pocus and Timequake, which have been published -- this is putting it gently -- to diminishing critical acclaim.

Yet, despite such success, the unhappy snarl is still there:

"I think human beings are awful animals," he says. "Let's pack it in. Let's stop reproducing. We're wrecking the place."

[H]e asserts that the subject of all great books is "what a bummer it is to be a human being."

Thankfulness is a terrible thing to waste.