Vonnegut's voice will be missed
"You know, the truth can be really powerful stuff. You're not expecting it."
This observation by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who died yesterday, sums up exactly why his voice will be sorely missed.
Vonnegut, an icon of the 1960s and '70s, has become once again a spokesman for those of us who are disillusioned with the direction in which our country is going. He has done so through his ability to capture powerful truths in ways that often catch us by surprise.
A lifelong civil libertarian, Vonnegut wrote in his 2005 book, "A Man Without a Country: The America I loved still exists in the front desks of public libraries."
His passion for the underdog and for the common anti-hero made each of us feel like we might be the subject of his writings. He loved ''people who behave decently. Librarians too - not famous for their physical strength - who resist having books removed from shelves and refuse to give names to people who have checked out certain books in the era of the Patriot Act,'' according to a 2005 interview with the author.
Vonnegut was a soldier who wrote of the horrors of war and a secular humanist who defended religious freedom. He upheld civil liberties by exercising them, and he used insights and his irreverent wit to ridicule the humorless bureaucrats who would take them away.
On religion he wrote:
"How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.
And so on.
Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly George W.
Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld stuff."
(from ''A Man Without a Country'')
And always, Vonnegut was ahead of his time, which made his writings timeless. Consider his 1961 short story, ''Harrison Bergeron,'' which points out how government-enforced equality leads to coercive mediocrity -a theme picked up half a century later in the popular cartoon movie ''The Incredibles.'' Vonnegut's story opens: ''The Year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal.''
Vonnegut also managed to capture our common humanity in the small details, such as when he wrote in ''Harrison Bergeron'': ''Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime.''
Here we are again in April, it’s not yet springtime, and a world without Kurt Vonnegut feels not quite right. And so it goes.
Carol Rose is the executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts. 