Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

Indianapolis-born Kurt Vonnegut died on April 11th as a result of head injuries sustained in a fall. Vonnegut was the acclaimed author of unique speculative novels such as Slaughterhouse-Five and Timequake, and more recently a scathing essayist and commentator. He was a consistently vehement and outspoken humanist and pacifist.

I include below his rules for writing a short story as presented in Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction.

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

The last, at least seems to be advice he followed in life as well as writing. No one was ever left wondering what Kurt Vonnegut felt or thought about where this country was going. It is still a great loss to discover there are no more pages left to him.