![]() ![]() and we choose to be quite a lot of the time. ![]() Vonnegut is all-too-familiar with the fact that we can be a fairly nasty species when we choose to be. He witnessed the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians during the firebombing of Dresden and spent the aftermath as a captive of the Germans, dredging corpses out of charred basements. He watched his father waste away and his mother commit suicide. ![]() In the words of Vonnegut's Theodore Sturgeon-esque pulp science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, "being alive is a crock of shit." Vonnegut comes from a background uniquely suited to appreciating this Great Cosmic Punchline: he grew up during the Depression. The flip side of that, and the bit that Vonnegut is so skilled at pointing out, is that the universe is a Big Damn Mess, and that's pretty funny when you stop to think about it. If there is one unifying thread that runs throughout all of his works, it is the knowledge that the universe is a Big Damn Mess, and that's a terrible thing. Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma, and Granfaloons If you want to become a friend of civilization, then become an enemy of the truth and a fanatic for harmless balderdash. ![]()
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