So It Goes

Seventeen years ago today, beloved American author Kurt Vonnegut died at 84. Much of his work is characterized by a fatalistic world view and irony suffused most everything he wrote - as did humor. Vonnegut named his son after the iconic American writer Mark Twain and he suffered from depression as did Twain. In 1984, Vonnegut tried to take his own life with drugs and alcohol after the publication of Slaughterhouse-Five, a fictional account of the Allied firebombing of Dresden during WW II when he was a prisoner of war in the city. Of the experience, he wrote, "There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre”. Kurt and I have a very peculiar thing in common, a shared experience that changed our lives.