and nothing hurt
Posted November 12, 2007
While preparing for this post, I googled the Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. quote from the poster above: “Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt”. I wanted to find out where it came from… one of his books, his lectures, an essay…?
I thought back to attending one of his lectures in Kansas City when I was just out of High School… I hadn’t had many opportunities to see and/or hear many of the writers whose words I was then reading. I remember a penetrating glance burning brightly behind a Sam Clemens mustache and head of hair that looked like he was tapped directly into a power grid. He had the look of wisdom in his eye. And for those wh0′ve never heard him speak, he spoke well. Very well.
I recalled listening to an interview on BBC radio last year where he stated he was brought out of retirement at 82 by his contempt of George W. Bush and the need to add his voice to the world’s growing resistance. He described being “so dead I stunk”.
“I’m suing a cigarette company because on the package they promised to kill me, and yet here I am”, he commented during the interview. He described how two young friends, the same age as his own kids, coaxed him back into the world of the living, the result being the book “A Man Without a Country”, and a number of university lectures.
But the search, returning most recent references first, wasn’t giving up the source of the quote. Mixed in with some Vonnegut-inspired references in music, films and other arts, I found quite a lot of references that seemed to come from blog postings. Lots of blog postings - nearly all titles of posts. This phrase seemed to be amazingly popular as a post title.
I clicked through to a couple and saw that they were from April of this year. About when he died, I realized…
I kept clicking through windows looking for something that would answer my original question, but the quotes’ origin had been buried in the more recent heartfelt farewells - I kept finding the phrase as the title for Vonnegut obits on blog after blog… and news items as well, all commenting on Vonnegut’s passing.
“Everything was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt”
… by this point, I was smiling. Fantastic that so many different sources had been unanimous in their choice of farewell for a wise man and a fine writer.
The quote? It’s from Slaughterhouse Five.
