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Since he died, Kurt Vonnegut has become one of my favorite authors.

Tonight, I got home from the extra-long shift I had to work because someone else called in, and I’ve been drinking beer and reading Vonnegut.

Deadeye Dick, to be precise.

This book was written in 1982, and perhaps it was during a time when Vonnegut needed money for a new house, or something. Not his best work. Rides the coattails of Slaughterhouse Five and especially Breakfast of Champions with a little Cat’s Cradle thrown in. Its protagonist is a 50 year-old pharmacist.

I am a 40 year-old pharmacist.

There are some memorable lines. This one just caught my eye:

If a person survives an ordinary span of sixty years or more, there is every chance that his or her life as a shapely story has ended, and all that remains to be experienced is epilogue. Life is not over, but the story is.

Curiously enough, I was just explaining today to one of our newer employees, a young lady who is a twenty-something year-old pharmacist, that the song playing on the radio was by a man who was at the time known as “Johnny Cougar.”

I explained to her how the hand claps in that song were from a clap machine loaned to Johnny by some guys in the next studio who had more money and equipment than he did. Those were the Bee Gees. Barry, the musical genius of the group, thought the hand claps would sound good in Johnny’s song. And Jack and Diane as we know it was born.

Jack and Diane was a hit in 1982, the same year Vonnegut’s book was published and his pharmacist turned 50.

Its most memorable lyrics are as follows:

Oh yeah, life goes on
Long after the thrill of living is gone.
Oh yeah they say life goes on
Long after the thrill of living is gone.