Books: God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by Kurt Vonnegut

Upfront, you should know that I’m a huge fan of Kurt Vonnegut.  Hocus Pocus could be my favorite book of all time (excepting I Just Forgot by Mercer Mayer).

I picked up God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian because for some reason the Columbus Public Library has a fairly limited selection of books of this nature.  Vonnegut, Orwell, Steinbeck—either it’s summertime and they’re all checked out for summer reading projects, or the library believes that books ought to be less than 10 or more than 100 years old, either one but nothing in between.

So I needed my Vonnegut fix, and this was what they had.

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian is a collection of two page radio broadcast transcripts in which the character of Kurt Vonnegut, with the help of Dr. Kevorkian, intentionally half-kills himself so that he can have near death experiences and chat with deceased people outside of the pearly gates.  He does this a couple of dozen times, each time chronicling his conversation with someone on the other side before being revived.

It’s not his best work, but it’s worth a read.  The short niblets vary from his regular style significantly, but the humor is still there.

Have I mentioned that I like short books?

Not only is this book 100 pages long, but the chapters are only two or three pages.  So it’s easy to pay attention and keep up with the story.  It won’t sit on a night side stand for three weeks.

It’s worth checking out of the library or buying on Amazon for less than $3, but if it’s your first taste of Vonnegut realize that you’re not getting his best.

If you’ve read it, or have comments on other books, please leave them below.

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