Lileks on Vonnegut

I went through a phase of reading Vonnegut when I was a teenager. I think I read all his novels through Breakfast of Champions, and also his book of essays. I found them very entertaining at the time and I remember they all read very fast--you could polish a Vonnegut book off in 90 minutes or something like that. Later, when I got into reading a lot of serious literature, I never looked back on Vonnegut as anybody who was that profound. Here Lileks presents a cogent reaction to Vonnegut's recent praise for suicide bombers.

Vonnegut:

"They are dying for their own self-respect," he said. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."

Lileks:

Personally, I think it’s a worse thing to deprive someone of their own self-life. While I grant that people who go to a wedding party in a Jordon hotel are just asking for it (Insert obligatory come-back about the US mistakenly bombing a northern Iraqi wedding party here) you have to admit that it’s better to be alive, even if you have to deal with VOA satellite transmissions telling you your race is nothing – so worthless, in fact, that it deserves a democracy like Iowans and Britons and Japanese. Oh, we could just nuke your cities and take your oil, but we hate you so much we’re going to stay here and bleed and force your warring factions to hold subcommittee meetings on the constitutional process. It's bored our people to tears; now it's your turn.