Ting-a-ling, Mr. Vonnegut.

With the death of writing genius and cultural icon, Kurt Vonnegut, we lose not one, but two treasured authors: Kurt Vonnegut, and Kilgore Trout. Fans of Vonnegut’s work will no doubt be familiar with Trout, whose writing voice-steeped in science fiction tradition-is eerily similar to Vonnegut’s. But while Vonnegut’s work has become classic literature, and part of the secondary-school mandatory reading canon, Trout’s work is fodder for publishers’ rejection piles. In contrasting author and alter-ego, we catch a glimpse of KV’s chronic self-deprecation. (After all, he did rate Breakfast of Champions with a grade of “C”). His writing had many other idiosyncrasies which are now instantly recognizable to Kurt’s rabid fans (and I include myself in this group), which are being emulated-poorly and with less panache-by modern writers.


You could almost smell the Pall Malls in his books, as if he poured every bit of himself into each page. He was a true writing maven: genius that bordered on insanity. And I loved every minute of it. There’s nothing to say about Kurt Vonnegut’s life or his views on the world which can’t be expressed more succinctly, and with greater flair and acumen, than in his brilliant, and now finite catalogue of work. So it goes.