I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm joining the church of Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment.

KURT VONNEGUT by Verlyn Klinkenborg

If you read Kurt Vonnegut when you were young — read all there was of him, book after book as fast as you could the way so many of us did — you probably set him aside long ago. That’s the way it goes with writers we love when we’re young. It’s almost as though their books absorbed some part of our DNA while we were reading them, and rereading them means revisiting a version of ourselves we may no longer remember or trust.

Not that Vonnegut is mainly for the young. I’m sure there are plenty of people who think he is entirely unsuitable for readers under the age of disillusionment. But the time to read Vonnegut is just when you begin to suspect that the world is not what it appears to be. He is the indispensable footnote to everything everyone is trying to teach you, the footnote that pulls the rug out from under the established truths being so firmly avowed in the body of the text.

He is not only entertaining, he is electrocuting. You read him with enormous pleasure because he makes your hair stand on end. He says not only what no one is saying, but also what — as a mild young person — you know it is forbidden to say. No one nourishes the skepticism of the young like Vonnegut. In his world, decency is likelier to be rooted in skepticism than it is in the ardor of faith.

Worship

By KURT VONNEGUT Published: April 13, 2007

I don't know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves, "Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment." You may have seen us praying for love on sidewalks outside the better eating establishments in all kinds of weather. Blow us a kiss upon arriving or departing, and we will climax simultaneously. It can be quite a scene, especially if it is raining cats and dogs