Passing of an icon

Maybe I've been living in a bubble the last few days, but I just discovered Kurt Vonnegut passed away on April 11.

This shook me up a little. I'm not a huge Vonnegut fan, having only read a couple of his books, though I did see him speak once years ago when I was in college.

I feel like the last of the "real" writers has been lost to the world. Not that there aren't plenty of writers and novelists out there churning out books today, but the day of the novelist as god are over. Capote is gone. Hemingway is long gone. Salinger has had his head in the sand so long he might as well be gone.

I mean no insult to modern novelists. Heck, I'm trying to be one. But novelists, or at least the way Hollywood often portrays novelists in movies, used to be respected, unique. They used to be word smiths. Now we're often asked to just be page smiths.

I'm not a great writer. I don't pretend that I will ever be a great writer. I can write decently enough, as well as many novels I see on today's bookstore shelves. But ... but ...

I don't know. The publishing industry has lost something. We, as writers, have lost something. America has lost something. The world has lost something.

We've lost Kurt Vonnegut.

Damn it.