kurt vonnegut, 1922-2007

"i'm jeremiah, and i'm not talking about god being mad at us. i'm talking about us killing the planet as a life-support system with gasoline. what's going to happen is, very soon, we're going to run out of petroleum, and everything depends on petroleum. and there go the school buses. there go the fire engines. the food trucks will come to a halt. this is the end of the world. we've become far too dependent on hydrocarbons, and it's going to suddenly dry up. you talk about the gluttonous roaring twenties. that was nothing. we're crazy, going crazy, about petroleum. it's a drug like crack cocaine. of course, the lunatic fringe of christianity is welcoming the end of the world as the rapture. so i'm jeremiah. it's going to have to stop. i'm sorry."

c'est le constat de fin du monde que présentait l’écrivain américain kurt vonnegut, décédé hier à l’âge de 84 ans, dans une entrevue accordée au magazine rolling stone en août 2006. au journaliste qui lui demandait ce que les plus jeunes pouvaient faire pour contribuer à inverser cette tendance, il a répondu: "there is nothing they can do. it's over, my friend. the game is lost." ce mélange troublant de désespoir sobre et d’humour, c’est le calypso de bokonon que nous lègue cet écrivain atypique, auteur certes du bien connu slaughterhouse-five (1969), mais aussi de deux des plus belles oeuvres de science-fiction humaniste: the sirens of titan (1959) et cat's cradle (1963).

la notice nécrologique du new york times souligne que "like mark twain, mr. vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: why are we in this world? is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well? he also shared with twain a profound pessimism. "mark twain, " mr. vonnegut wrote [...] "finally stopped laughing at his own agony and that of those around him. he denounced life on this planet as a crock. he died."

espérons que maintenant, vonnegut traverse l’espace, prisonnier d’un infundibulum chrono-synclastique, et profite de bons moments en compagnie des trafalmadoriens.