Apr 122007
 

The Internets are full of acknowledgments of the death of Kurt Vonnegut who died last night from complications of a fall he recently took. He did seem a bit frail and out of it the last time he was on The Daily Show to promote his last publication, a collection of essays called A Man Without A Country. I first read Vonnegut in either 1992 or 1993. Breakfast of Champions, Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five and Welcome to the Monkey House were among my favorites. His writing is amazing. I never did get to hear him speak in person. It sounds like I should check out God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Anybody have any other recommendations besides the ones that I’ve mentioned?

I have one interesting story related to Vonnegut. When I was living in Manhattan, there was a bookstore at the corner of Stuyvesant and Third Avenue, if I remember correctly. I can’t recall the name. Anyway, I was in there one afternoon buying something and I heard the clerk talking to a guy at the front of the checkout line about Vonnegut. I looked up and there was Woody Harrelson with a handful of Vonnegut books. It was clear he had decided to check out Vonnegut for the first time and was grabbing several of his books to read. I recommended Breakfast of Champions. I think Harrelson was in town to film Money Train at the time.

Not to imply that Rollins is on Vonnegut’s level, but tomorrow night is the beginning of the second season of The Henry Rollins Show on IFC at 10pm CDT. I really enjoyed the first season. He gets a good mix of guests for the interview portion and the musical performance. He kicks off with Marilyn Manson as his interview guest and Peaches, who interviewed last season, as his musical guest.

[tags]kurtvonnegut, death, woodyharrelson, henryrollins, ifc[/tags]

 Posted by on April 12, 2007 at 9:55 am

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