God Bless You Dr. Kevorkian - Kurt Vonnegut [0]
Foreword © 2010 by Neil Gaiman
Seven Stories Press
140 Watts Street
NewYork, NY 10013
www.sevenstories.com
Distributed in Canada by Publishers Group Canada.
Distributed in the U.K. by Turnaround, London.
All rights reserved.
Special thanks to Marty Goldensohn of WNYC, who served as city desk editor to our roving reporter on the Afterlife, encouraging him to keep digging away at the story, and getting public radio to pay him a buck a word, which isn’t bad for an out-of-the-way beat like Heaven.
Portions of the introduction to this book were adapted from a graduation address delivered by the author at Agnes Scott College, Atlanta, Georgia, on May 15, 1999.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vonnegut, Kurt.
God bless you, Dr. Kevorkian / Kurt Vonnegut ; foreword by Neil Gaiman.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-60980-209-7
1. Imaginary conversations. 2. Death–Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: God bless you, Doctor Kevorkian.
PS3572.O5G58 2010
813′.54–dc22
2010040170
v3.1
contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
FOREWORD by Neil Gaiman
INTRODUCTION
GOD BLESS YOU, DR. KEVORKIAN
About the Author
foreword
I have spoken to Kurt Vonnegut twice now. The first time he was alive. The second time, more recently, he was dead.
We met at the end of the blue tunnel that links this world with Heaven.
Dr. Jack Kevorkian is no longer permitted to counsel people on ways to end their lives, not even for temporary visits to the outskirts of Heaven, so I went and I came back in my own way. You’ll forgive me if I omit the details.
The first time I spoke to Kurt Vonnegut it was a quarter of a century ago. He was in London, and I was a young journalist working in London. I had called him in his hotel, as suggested by his publicist, and had asked him if he would be willing for me to interview him.
He told me that he was tired, and he would prefer not to be interviewed. Anything he had to say, he said, was in his book. He was pleasant. He sounded tired.
I wanted to tell him how much his books had meant to me; that The Sirens of Titan and Cat’s Cradle, and Slaughterhouse-Five were books I had read and loved as a child, and more than that, books I had learned from.
I did not tell him this while he was alive.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was mowing the perfectly kept lawns outside the golden arches of heaven.
I said, “I’m here to interview you about your book of posthumous encounters.”
“The WNYC pieces?” He nodded. “I remember those.”
“I’m writing the introduction and wanted to ask you some questions.”
“Honestly, I’d prefer not to,” he said. Then he saw the expression on my face. “Look. You can say what you like. I’m dead. I won’t mind.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Anything you have to say is in the book.”
He looked at me, then. “Have we had this conversation before?” he asked.
“Kind of.”
“Why don’t you quote something from one of the books then?” he said. He smiled. “Listen, I’d love to stop and talk, but this grass won’t mow itself.”
“Um. What about ‘A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved’?”
“Sure,” he said. “Tell them I said that.”
—Neil Gaiman
September 2010
introduction
A WORD FROM WNYC’S REPORTER ON THE AFTERLIFE
My first near-death experience was an accident, a botched anesthesia during a triple bypass. I had listened to several people on TV talk shows who had gone down the blue tunnel to the Pearly Gates, and even beyond the Pearly Gates, or so they said, and then come back to life again. But I certainly wouldn’t have set out on such a risky expedition on purpose, without first having survived one, and then planned another in cooperation with Dr. Jack Kevorkian and the staff at the state-of-the-art lethal injection execution facility at Huntsville, Texas.
The following reports were recorded for later broadcast by radio station WNYC. I hope they convey a sense of immediacy. They were taped in the tiled Huntsville death chamber only five minutes or so after I was unstrapped from the gurney. The tape recorder,