Kurt Vonnegut: Passing Into Another Time Quake

I expect Kurt Vonnegut will show up at the end of some future academic treatise on George W. Bush: Policies & Politics. Unless of course we've all been imploded into the center of the earth by the policies.

For many Kurt Vonnegut will be remembered as college reading material. Slaughter House Five, a satirical novel of his experiences as a World War 11 prisoner of war. It would be tough for any member of the current thought police to challenge the American patriotism of a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge.

He told the untold story of seemingly obscure people who were placed in extraordinary circumstances. He told entertaining stories about coming face to face with life's inconsistencies. He told very funny and satirical stories about disappointment. He told poignant and kind stories of those among us who are off-centered. His alter-ego Kilgore Trout, a science fiction writer provides a narrative of the world as it should be not as it is.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote about our times from the perspective of a guest of the universe. He wrote not as a critic, but as a kindly traveler who tried to understand what makes the earth go round and what makes people tick.

I have read every novel Kurt Vonnegut wrote because his work was entertaining and honest. Had it not been for my read of his novel Timequake in 1997 I would have been shocked by the events that have taken place over the last 10 years. He described this work as his last, although it wasn't his last work. He described it as a "stew," piecing together novels that didn't work and throwing in some color and spices not yet available at your local grocery store.

In this last, but not the last work, Timequake he reflects on his personal side. He accepts the idea of people he loves "going to heaven," when they die. The cynic and the realist gives way to easing the pain of loss and disappointment of the living.

He speaks of war buddies losing their faith in all things real and imagined due to the horrors of war. He pities his war buddy who lost his religion and was emptied of his reason being. The loss of limbs and life is superseded by a loss of faith.

His alter-ego Kilgore Trout makes an appearance in Timequake and tries to explain the phenomena of the time. Being stuck in a time warp where everyone is required to re-do the past ten years without free will. Simply going through the motions. Stuck in repetitive, unproductive actions and going through the motions.

Sharp commentary on the predicament of the times, brilliant minds arrested at the New York Public Library for vagrancy and other hysterical scenarios. Once the time arrest is ended and free will is restored, people do not know how to react. People literally forget how to make decisions or if there is a decision to make.

It is reminiscent of the comment Howard Stern once made on air in the mid 1990s when he asked the officials at National Airport,"what is the fare from National to the Fourteenth Street Bridge?" Planes collide, people and cars crash into one another and no one seems to have a clue how to stop it. This is post-Timequake. Once free will is restored it takes time to learn how to react.

Prophetically, but not really because there was no where else to go with this theme, Vonnegut predicted a cataclysmic event in February 13, 2001. He was off by a few months and the characters may have been different. but he was never into micro analysis of characters anyway.

His writing and commentary was a simple message. Give people a job with an adequate wage and do not destroy your neighbors beliefs. Judgment is predicated on the notion of free will and requires constant use or it is lost. Once lost it takes years and decades to restore.

Kurt Vonnegut the writer, World War 11 veteran and family man appears in the last chapter of Timequake to set the record straight. Just as I want to believe he will do years in the future in that final chapter on the life and times of George W. Bush.