Kurt Vonnegut, RIP

In Rememberance I re-read Harrison Bergeron today. It is quite good. I guess he (largly) didn't let his left wing crankery get in the way of good writing. This should be noted with approval. I've read and enjoyed a lot of what he wrote, but at least with his novels, afterword, I couldn't really tell you what they were about. In this respect they are much like dreams: They make sense while you are having them, but when you wake up the details fade and whatever parts of the plot you remember make no sense at all. One thing which I always thought he said, but it could have been someone else... Something to the effect that he continued to smoke in the hope that cigarettes would eventually kill him. This because he would never get up the nerve to just shoot himself in the head. I always took that as a fairly brilliant way to deflect the constant nagging he must have gotten to quit smoking. In fact he lived to be 84 and didn't die from a smoking-related illness. Here is Harrison Bergeron.