Ok. So I didn't read many of the books we were assigned in high school, mostly because they were assigned and I was kind of a bad ass, but I did read Cat's Cradle and quickly became obsessed with Vonnegut enough that I photocopied a page of the book and put it on the bulletin board in my bedroom next to a stub of Celtics ticket from a 1994 game vs. Portland and a beer coaster that says 'Corona'.
Here is the quote that was on that page:

"He said science was going to discover the basic secret of life someday," the bartender put in. He scratched his head and frowned. "Didn't I read in the paper the other day where they'd finally found out what it was?"
"I missed that," I murmured.
"I saw that," said Sandra. "About two days ago."
"That's right," said the bartender.
"What is the secret of life?" I asked.
"I forget," said Sandra.
"Protein," the bartender declared. "They found out something about protein."
"Yeah," said Sandra, "that's it." -- Cat's Cradle

He will definitely be missed.

"Harrison Bergeron" changed me so much when I read it. The story inspired me, but also scared me to death. I could see so much of what he was talking about going on around me in school. The story really opened my eyes. I cannot thank Mr. Vonnegut enough.

Third time's (I hope) the charm.

I have special affection for a minor short story of Vonnegut's--"The Long Walk to Forever." I anthologized it in a short story colllection I edited for Scott, Foresman & Co. The story contrast the simple naturalness of human love and marriage with the commercialized assembly-line routine stuff that Vonnegut captures in the magazine devoted entirely to brides and newspaper betrothal announcements. The hero Newt (the one-syllable name he shares with a lowly creature in nature contrasts with that of his never-seen antagonist Henry Stuart Chasens) wins the love of Catherine, but not until he gets her away from the house--"one foot in front of the other, through leaves and trees"--and into a natural setting. The background sounds of the bell tower of the school for the blind, the chicadee, the automobile engine that nagged and failed, nagged and failed are form a symbolic underpinning for the action.

It would also be a good story to use in discussing Elmore Leonard's insistence
that no other word than "said" should be used when writing dialogue.

A year ago Kurt Vonnegut's, A Man Without A Country: A Memoir Of Life In George W Bush's America, was published.

In it he wrote:

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED

FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

WAS MUSIC