Kurt Vonnegut's Armageddon in Retrospect: A Review

April 11, 2007 was a difficult day for me. I had just spent the entire day at Hospice, with the family of my 90 year-old great-uncle. It had been a particularly emotional day for us and I went to my parents' house in tears. Then my father says to me, "Well, this isn't going to help your mood much," and hands me a piece of paper. The headline read "Kurt Vonnegut Dead at 84". I fell apart.

I was first introduced to Kurt Vonnegut in a philosophy class during my senior year of high school. Our teacher had us read Cat's Cradle. I read it and reread it and I was hooked for life. Kurt became a lifelong addiction.

The night of April 11th, I went straight to my father's bookshelf and found my copy of Mother Night, which he had borrowed several months before. I spent the rest of the night reading, in tribute to one of the greatest writers of our time. Over the past year I have been interspersing his works between all of the other literary treats I have tasted.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008 made me supremely happy. I logged on to my e-mail as part of my nightly ritual. The list for the week from Barnes and Noble held a stunning announcement for me. A new collection of previously unreleased Kurt Vonnegut had been released that day, and there was a 40% off coupon. I printed it off, and took an extra-long lunch break on Wednesday to trek over to Barnes to purchase this unexpected treasure.

Holding the book in your hands, you know you are about to indulge in greatness. It's hard to want to dive into it, because you know that this is it. There will be no more. But then you open the book. You can smell its newness. The pages are some of the smoothest I have ever felt in a new book, almost as if the publishers themselves knew that this was a once-in-a-lifetime event and took extra care in its preparation.