JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Kurt Vonnegut died last night in Manhattan. He was 84.

He is survived by his novels Player Piano, Cat’s Cradle, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions, Slapstick, Jailbird, Mother Night, Deadeye Dick, Galapagos, Bluebeard,  Hocus Pocus, and Timequake.

In her review of Mother Night Doris Lessing wrote: “Precisely because in all his work he has made nonsense of the little categories, the unnatural divisions into “real” literature and the rest, because he is comic and sad at once, because his painful seriousness is never solemn, Vonnegut is unique among us; and these same qualities account for the way a few academics still try to patronize him: they cling to the categories. Of course they do: they invented them. But so it has ever gone.

“Ordinary people, with whole imaginations, reading the newspapers, the comic strips and Jane Austen or watching the world reel by on television, keep an eye out for Ice-9 while hoping that we are indeed recognizing the members of our karasses when they come near, try to make sure that we don’t pay more than what is due to the false karasses, and dare to believe that while there is life, there is still life–such readers know that Vonnegut is one of the writers who map our landscapes for us, who give names to the places we know best.”