We recently lost two great American authors, Kurt Vonnegut and David Halberstam. I liked them because they told the truth. At least their truth agreed with my truth, and it seems like the truth of a great many other people.

I first became aware of Kurt Vonnegut in my late teens, a time when I seriously began wondering what was happening to the “God is love” world I believed in during my earlier years. Vonnegut seemed to be asking the same kinds of questions I was asking, like what are we doing here, why do we treat each other so badly, and why does this God I grew up with permit so much pain and suffering? His answers frequently didn’t help much, except to know that I wasn’t the only one struggling with these issues. Maybe that’s one of the reasons his critics were frequently as loud as his admirers. It was years later that I found what I most cherish him for:

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outset, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’” That comes from his novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (Dell Publishing, 1965). I think he got it right.

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