Long live Vonnegut.

• Position: Letter to the editor

Oh, gosh, so bittersweet the reflections on Kurt Vonnegut in the June issue ("Appreciating Vonnegut," Editor's Note, by Matthew Rothschild, and "Kurt Vonnegut Remembered," by Howard Zinn). Vonnegut has to be one of the all-time marvels ever to grace this sorry dirtball of a planet.

He had that old joke of his, "Well, Kurt's in heaven now." Not that heaven, of course. But maybe he's in the other one: Let's call it Screwball Heaven, the place where Mark Twain and Joseph Heller and Hunter S. Thompson and John Kennedy O'Toole and Walt Kelly and Molly Ivins and the like all hang out.

Obviously, getting into this heaven isn't so easy, either. It requires a lifetime of standing fast against the endless tsunamis of humankind's arrogance and stupidity and...