Kurt Vonnegut died last night. It wasn't entirely unexpected—the man was 84 years old—but it is sad nonetheless. Vonnegut's writings touched my life more than any other author's. I've read nearly all of his novels and many of his short stories, and I can't think of one that wasn't as entertaining as it was insightful.

It has been almost a year to the day since I wrote this post, questioning some comments Vonnegut made to a journalist about it being "sweet and honorable" for a terrorist to die for a cause he believes in. My post hit the main page of Fark.com, which sent over 17,000 people to this site. It was only later in a discussion with some readers that I realized Vonnegut was referring to line in a WWI-era poem, Dulce et Decorum Est:

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

The last line: "The old Lie: It is sweet and honorable to die for your country." Vonnegut was saying terrorists get caught up in the same mythical, meaningless lies that have led humans to fight and kill each other for centuries, but he said it with literary subtlety as opposed the sound bites and platitudes that we've grown accustomed to when discussing terrorism. It flew right over the reporter's head, and mine as well. Not that he would have cared, but I feel bad for having doubted Kurt and for spreading my misinterpretation to probably more than 20,000 people.

Even as an old man, Vonnegut was capable of greater insight, wisdom, and humor than most of us are in our prime. The last time I heard him speak was on The Daily Show in 2005, where he said this:

…I have wanted to give Iraq a lesson in democracy—because we’re experienced with it, you know. And, in democracy, after a hundred years, you have to let your slaves go. And, after a hundred and fifty years, you have to let your women vote. And, at the beginning of democracy, is that quite a bit of genocide and ethnic cleansing is quite okay. And that’s what’s going on now.

I've spent the morning reading a collection of Vonnegut's quotes, which will have to suffice until I have time to reread one of his novels. One of the most relevant quotes I've read is from his most recent book, A Man Without a Country:

We had a memorial service for Isaac a few years back, and I spoke and said at one point, "Isaac is up in heaven now." It was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now." That's my favorite joke.

So it goes.