Murió Kurt Vonnegut... a leerlo

Ayer a la noche murió Kurt Vonnegut. Leí Matadero Cinco en la escuela secundaria y, desde ahí, no paré.

Como todo ser humano que pasó por la experiencia, KV quedó marcado por la guerra. Fue prisionero de los alemanes en Dresden, la ciudad que los aliados (decisión de Churchill) bombardeó sin ninguna razón militar matando cientos de miles de personas. Dijo KV:

"You guys burnt the place down, turned it into a single column of flame. More people died there in the firestorm, in that one big flame, than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined."

Hasta hace un año y algo, KV escribía regularmente en el mensuario progresista In These Times. Poco antes de la re-elección de George Bush, advirtió pesimista:

"I am writing this before the election, so I cannot know whether George W. Bush or John F. Kerry will be our President, God willing, for the next four years. These two Nordic, aristocratic multi-millionaires are virtually twins, and as unlike most of the rest of us as a couple of cross-eyed albinos. But this much I find timely: Both candidates were and still are members of the exclusive secret society at Yale, called “Skull and Bones.” That means that, no matter which one wins, we will have a Skull and Bones President at a time when entire vertebrate species, because of how we have poisoned the topsoil, the waters and the atmosphere, are becoming, hey presto, nothing but skulls and bones."

Your Guess Is as Good as Mine es el último e imperdible artículo de la colección... pesimista pero, a la vez, vital.

En 2004, los editores de In These Times le pidieron una "Tarjeta de Navidad" y KV escribió:

I met a man in Nigeria years ago,
an Ibo,
who said he had three hundred relatives
he knew by name.
His wife had just had a baby.
They were going to take it
on foot
to be welcomed and marveled at
by as many of those relatives
as they could find,
even though
there was a war going on.
Wouldn’t you love to have been
such a famous baby?
I wish I could wave a magic want
this Christmas,
and give every desperately lonesome
and hungry and lost American
man, woman, or child
the love and comfort and support
of an extended family.
Just two people and a babe in the manger,
given a heartless Government,
is no survival scheme.

Hay que leerlo. Todo lo que se pueda.

Nota al pie 1: Mi primer grupo musical, en la escuela secundaria, se llamó Kilgore Trout en homenaje al escritor inventado por KV inspirado en Theodore Sturgeon. A uno de mis amigos de entonces lo dejé de ver, para encontrarlo hace poco en una batea de ofertas. Al otro, no me lo saco de encima desde entonces.

Nota al pie 2: Tan famoso fue Kilgore Trout (el inventado por KV, no la banda) que otro gran escritor, Philip Farmer, escribió un libro de ciencia ficción bajo ese seudónimo. A Vonnegut no le gustó nada y, además de hacerlo público, se lo comunicó a Farmer telefónicamente. Farmer hizo su descargo concluyendo que: "If I could go back to 1974 knowing what I know now, I wouldn't write it. It left too bad a taste in my mouth. But, what the hell! You can't get through life, if you live very long, without biting down on bad fruit or rotten meat now and then." Que así sea.