The Frinklin and Fred Show

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

I've been in a thick blue funk ever since I found out about this. I can't think of anything meaningful to write, except this: It would have been appropriate if the world had blown up yesterday, as a tribute to Vonnegut's memory. Dark humor, sure, but I think Kurt would have appreciated it.

This broke my heart, though it didn't really surprise me:

It can also be a sad thing, when you meet that writer late in his life, to see that his literary antidepressant isn't working anymore -- if it ever really did -- and that there's no way to cheer him up...

When the war was over, Vonnegut had trouble getting out of the army. "They found out I could type and they sent me out to Fort Riley and I was typing other people's discharges," he said, laughing at the memory. "And my feeling was then: Please, can't I go home? I've done everything I was supposed to do."

He stopped laughing.

"So that's how I feel now," he said. "Please, I've done everything, you know? Raised kids and all that, worked, tried to do good work -- can't I go home now? And I think about where home is. It's Indianapolis when I was 9 years old, and you can't go back there. But I had a mother and a father, a big sister, a big brother, a dog, a cat -- and yeah, that's where I'd like to go."

If there is a God and if He or She is kind -- which, it must be said, the author of "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" would have been the first to doubt -- that is exactly where Kurt Vonnegut is right now.

I hope you were wrong about God, Kurt, and that you've found a home, finally, up there.