The reading list of my Literature class including several books I had never read before. I usually look forward to learning what I would read each term and while a few of the students groan at the choices, I get excited at the idea of reading a book I may not have considered before.
Slaughterhouse Five, one of my favorite books which I had read years before was included, which I found strange. As seniors in college, shouldn't this book have been studied years ago?
I can't recall exactly when I first read the book though I'm sure it was sometime in high school. In the following years I picked up each book by Kurt Vonnegut, one after the other. I was drawn to his cynical, dark, unique view of the world. His view went beyond characters or the setting. He detailed dimensions, the universe and the vague line between characters and reality. Readers questions if his creations were patterned after real people or his view of people. Perhaps they were once real, people the author was immortalizing or immolating for all time.
I try to grasp the intent and mindset of each author when I read their books. Vonnegut seemed to be working on another wavelength. At times he was a down home humorist like Twain then he would become a brilliant social satirist then he'd resemble Ray Bradbury. Sirens of Titan was the book that cinched it for me. It was the one that made me realize his genius and I discovered how complex writing a book is. As I finished it I learned that anyone that makes a living as a successful novelist is more intelligent than almost any scientist, researcher or scholar. It takes the most forethought to write such a book the genuinely surprises and pleases the author than any task I can think of.



Then there is the author, a man of modest background who often found it questionable that a former wage slave with a brutally cynical edge and an eye for hypocrisy was lumped in with literature's greats. Writing was a way to let others see his view of the world. Disturbed by the ironies and hypocrises inherent in politics his works attacked them with the wit of one that can ridicule what most fear and turn it into literature.

He died yesterday and I can't help but think he would have found it funny that his death was overshadowed by the media circus of Imus/Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson/Racial Politics but then again, most people thought he was already dead, that is, if they knew who he was in the first place.

He was the last of the classic American authors. No one writing today could wear that title honestly. In light of the sensationalism of the media, I'm surprised he got any attention.