Thursday, April 12, 2007, brought the news that Kurt Vonnegut had passed. His book "A Man without a Country" lies on my night stand. The titled for the book comes from a quote concerning his favorite magazine; In these Times. A magazine he was a frequent contributor to: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3124/thank_you_mr_vonnegut/
The following is part of the memorial from In these Times by it's editor, Joel Bleifus: There were two folks Kurt was wont to quote: Jesus and Eugene V. Debs.
In the May 10, 2004 issue, in an article titled “Cold Turkey”—the most popular of his essays that we published—he wrote, “For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. ‘Blessed are the merciful’ in a courtroom? ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”
In that essay he also invoked Debs, who like him was both a socialist and a Hoosier: “Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran five times as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning: ‘As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I’m of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.’ Doesn’t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools or health insurance for all?”
Skeptical of the promises of technical salvation, Kurt was a self-proclaimed Luddite. Though he used a fax machine, he heartily scorned computers: “Bill Gates says, ‘Wait till you can see what your computer can become.’ But it’s you who should be doing the becoming, not the damn fool computer. What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do.”
It was In These Times’ pleasure and privilege to publish the work of Kurt Vonnegut. We applauded his humanist ethics, his one-off sense of humor and his in-your-face contempt for Beltway venality. We felt In These Times and he were a perfect fit, and he seemed to agree. One of the nicest faxes we received from Kurt read, “If it weren’t for In These Times, I’d be a man without a country.”
We have lost a citizen who spoke for us all. So it goes.
In the May 10, 2004 issue, in an article titled “Cold Turkey”—the most popular of his essays that we published—he wrote, “For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. ‘Blessed are the merciful’ in a courtroom? ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”
In that essay he also invoked Debs, who like him was both a socialist and a Hoosier: “Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran five times as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning: ‘As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I’m of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.’ Doesn’t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools or health insurance for all?”
Skeptical of the promises of technical salvation, Kurt was a self-proclaimed Luddite. Though he used a fax machine, he heartily scorned computers: “Bill Gates says, ‘Wait till you can see what your computer can become.’ But it’s you who should be doing the becoming, not the damn fool computer. What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do.”
It was In These Times’ pleasure and privilege to publish the work of Kurt Vonnegut. We applauded his humanist ethics, his one-off sense of humor and his in-your-face contempt for Beltway venality. We felt In These Times and he were a perfect fit, and he seemed to agree. One of the nicest faxes we received from Kurt read, “If it weren’t for In These Times, I’d be a man without a country.”
We have lost a citizen who spoke for us all. So it goes.
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