Kurt Vonnegut, a moralist and a literary legend, died last week at the age of 84 after producing 19 novels that jumped from one genre to another and dealt primarily with absurdity. Probably his best-known work was "Slaughterhouse 5," a novel about the frustrations and chaos of World War II.
Vonnegut was known for chain-smoking 90 cigarettes a day. He once said, "You know I had a fire several years ago, and it would have been so shapely if I'd died in the fire. But here I am, and of course I'm suing the cigarette company because on the package they promised to kill me, and here I am."
Well-known as a pessimist, he attempted suicide in 1984.
His last book, written in 2005, was "A Man Without a Country," consisting of snippets of wisdom and blasting things that irritated him, such as the Bush administration, which he claimed was filled with "psychopaths and idiots."
He advised writers strongly against using semicolons — ever. "They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."
In 1997, there was a flurry of interest in Vonnegut's alleged commencement speech at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. It was launched into cyberspace as a vast e-mail chain letter. Because friends sent it to friends, the speech traveled to Italy, France, Scotland, Israel and Brazil, among other places.
When his wife, Jill Krementz, received the speech in an e-mail, she asked Vonnegut why he had not told her he had spoken at MIT. He said, "Because I didn't."
When it was e-mailed to columnist Mary Schmich, she recognized it immediately as her own, because its first words were, "Wear sunscreen." Later the advice became more practical: "Sing. Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss. Don't waste time on jealousy."
She also said, "Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85."
Then her last zinger was, "But trust me on the sunscreen."
Naturally, Schmich was complimented that her column would be attributed to Vonnegut. She called him, and he answered his own phone and generously told her, "It was very witty, but it wasn't my wittiness."
The real MIT speech was given by Kofi Annan, then secretary general of the United Nations — and it wasn't funny.
But some of the advice Vonnegut offered in his last book is reminiscent of the speech he didn't give: "Don't go into the arts. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com