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Archived Post

This post is archived from my Posterous blog, which shut down in 2012. Some posts have been edited slightly to fix typographical errors, correctly represent the gender of some individuals, and remove unnecessarily-gendered language. You can view the full archive here.

I’ve been a Vonnegut fan since I was in high school. Of course there’s a lot to like about his work. But one thing I’ll mention here is his dry humor. This, for example, is one of the greatest things ever written:

Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the prayer on Billy’s wall told him that it helped them to keep going, too. It went like this: GOD GRANT ME THE SERENITY TO ACCEPT THE THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE, COURAGE TO CHANGE THE THINGS I CAN, AND WISDOM ALWAYS TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE.

Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.

Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, pub. 1969 (emphasis mine)