American writer and humorist Kurt Vonnegut has died at age 84. In addition to the many obituaries and memorials that will soon appear, Energy Bulletin would like to highlight his caustic comments on our fossil fuel addiction (after the NY Times obituary below). -BA
Kurt Vonnegut, Novelist Who Caught the Imagination of His Age, Is Dead at 84
Dinitia Smith, NY Times
Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.
Mr. Vonnegut suffered irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago, according to his wife, Jill Krementz.
Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.
(12 April 2007)
Also at Marxmail.
Kurt Vonnegut’s Apocalypse
Douglas Brinkley, Rolling Stone
“I’m Jeremiah, and I’m not talking about God being mad at us,” novelist Kurt Vonnegut says with a straight face, gazing out the parlor windows of his Manhattan brownstone. “I’m talking about us killing the planet as a life-support system with gasoline. What’s going to happen is, very soon, we’re going to run out of petroleum, and everything depends on petroleum. And there go the school buses. There go the fire engines. The food trucks will come to a halt. This is the end of the world.
“We’ve become far too dependent on hydrocarbons, and it’s going to suddenly dry up. You talk about the gluttonous Roaring Twenties. That was nothing. We’re crazy, going crazy, about petroleum. It’s a drug like crack cocaine. Of course, the lunatic fringe of Christianity is welcoming the end of the world as the rapture. So I’m Jeremiah. It’s going to have to stop. I’m sorry.”
For the most part, this sort of apocalyptic attitude is to be expected from Vonnegut…
(9 Aug 2006)
An online excerpt from a longer piece in the recent issue of Rolling Stone.
Kurt Vonnegut interview (transcript)
NOW with David Brancaccio, PBS
KURT VONNEGUT:…I think we ought to stop reproducing. But since we’re not going to do that, I think the planet’s immune system is trying to get rid of us.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: The planet is sort of trying to shed us as if we are some sort of toxin.
KURT VONNEGUT: Look, I’ll tell you. It’s one thing that no cabinet had ever had, is a Secretary Of The Future. And there are no plans at all for my grandchildren and my great grandchildren.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: That’s a great idea. In other words a Cabinet post–
KURT VONNEGUT: Well, it’s too late! Look, the game is over! The game is over. We’ve killed the planet, the life support system. And, and it’s so damaged that there’s no recovery from that. And we’re very soon going to run out of petroleum which powered everything that’s modern razzmatazz about America. And, and it was very shallow people who imagined that we could keep this up indefinitely. But when I tell others, they say; Well, look there’s– you said hydrogen fuel. Nobody’s working on it.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: No one is working seriously on it is what you’re saying.
KURT VONNEGUT: That’s right. And, and what, our energy people, presidents of our companies, energy companies never think. All they wanna do is make a lot of money right now…
(7 October 2005)
Cold Turkey
Kurt Vonnegut, In These Times
…I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.
But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut.
And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.
When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any more of those. Cold turkey.
Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like TV news, is it?
Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.
And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.
(10 May 2004)
