here & now

Kurt Vonnegut, that titan of American literature, would have turned 90 last Sunday, had he not died of head trauma after falling down a flight of stairs five years ago, which seems like peculiarly appropriate death for someone who has dedicated his life to the blackest of satire. So it goes. He left behind not only a slate of novels that I am diving into one by one these days, but also a lot of beautiful truisms – how about, ‘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,’ for tasters – the best of which are collected over at Flavorwire.