You take a week off work & avoid the news as much as possible & what happens? One of your literary heroes up & dies! Kurt Vonnegut died almost a week ago & I only found out today (when I was surfing the net at work - for research purposes of course!).
I have loved Vonnegut's writing since I was a teenager. A few years ago I went to a second hand bookstore & bought about four or five of his books, including Player Piano (his first novel) and one of my all time favourites, Cat's Cradle. Years ago I even went out & read books written by his alter ego, Kilgore Trout (really bad science fiction but I read it & loved it anyway).
His writing was just crazy - he wrote about universal themes of life, death, war, religion & mixed them all up with a good dose of nonsense. He inspired me because of his love of language & the genius of his imagination.
One piece of his liteary genius that I've related to all my life, and is particularly apt as I attempt to write a master's exegesis, is his definition of the "granfalloon":
"If you wish to study a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon."
Wherever you are, Mr Vonnegut, I hope you're having fun.
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