Author and satirist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. died last night from head injuries sustained in a recent fall at his Manhattan home.   He was 84 years old.  He is probably best known for Slaughterhouse Five (1969), a strange tale of science fiction in which the main character, American soldier Billy Pilgrim, is transported through time by aliens, and is “time-trapped” in Dresden during the allied firebombing of the city.

Over 100 times in the novel, Vonnegut uses the phrase “So it goes” as a transitional device, to explain the unexplanable, but mainly when dealing with death, dying and mortality.

Slaughterhouse Five, like much of Vonnegut’s work, was thinly veiled autobiography.  Vonnegut fought in World War II but was captured not long after arriving in Germany during the Battle of the Bulge.  He was held prisoner in Dresden when the Allies firebombed the city.

Vonnegut considered himself a humanist, but his writing never failed to be thought-provoking. He was fond of saying there must be a God guiding the evolutionary process; how else could you explain “giraffes and hippopotomi”?

My favorite Kurt Vonnegut works were short-stories, most notably one called “Who Am I This Time?” from Welcome to the Monkey House, a 1968 collection.  “Who Am I” tells the story of a small town man who works at a hardware store and shines as an actor in local community theatre productions.  In real life he has no personality, but on stage he becomes the characters he portrays.  The clear implication is many of us have no personality of our own apart from playing a character.

Vonnegut’s passing certainly is the end of an era and marks one more of the old-school 20th century literary giants who are no longer with us. 

Vonnegut battled depression most of his life and tried to commit suicide in 1984, later joking that his botched the job.  In later years, the author refected on his famous peers who took their own lives (as Vonnegut’s own mother did shortly before he left for Germany in WWII).  He once said Hemingway’s suicide put a period on his life; Vonnegut decided his longevity put a semicolon on his.

Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84 as a result of a fall.

So it goes…