R.I.P.

These days it seems I am rarely in touch with what's going on in the "outside world". Yet this morning I stumbled onto a web obituary and learned that Kurt Vonnegut has just died.

Next to J.D. Salinger, Vonnegut was most responsible for shaping my reading preferences when I was an impressionable college student. His work was often equated with science fiction, but it was more than that. He was vulgar in a hilarious way, and over the years I read everything I could get my hands on, (even all the works published under other names.) He was 84. Rest in peace, Kurt.