God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

July 1, 2003
As a "reporter on the afterlife," Kurt Vonnegut bravely allows himself to be strapped to a gurney by his friend Jack Kevorkian and dispatched--round-trip--to the Pearly Gates. Or at least that's what he claims in the introduction to this series of brief pieces originally read as 90-second interludes on WNYC, Manhattan's public radio station. Revised and rewritten for this slim volume, Vonnegut's "interviews" range from the gossamer-slight to the deliciously barbed. Among the dead people he is privileged to talk to are Salvatore Biagini, a retired construction worker who died of a heart attack while rescuing his schnauzer from a pit bull; John Brown, still smoldering 140 years after his death by hanging; William Shakespeare, who spouts quotations and rubs Vonnegut the wrong way; and one of Vonnegut's own personal heroes, socialist and labor leader Eugene Victor Debs. The tables are turned on Vonnegut when he runs into Sir Isaac Newton, who is lurking near the Heaven end of the "blue tunnel" of the Afterlife. Newton, tireless in his quest for knowledge, wants to find out what the tunnel is made of, and he takes over the interview, besieging Vonnegut with questions. Unfazed, the writer moves on, looking up Martin Luther King's assassin, James Earl Ray, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. It is only when Dr. Kevorkian is inconveniently convicted for murder that Vonnegut is forced to desist. This may be Vonnegut (or his publishers) scraping the bottom of the barrel, but no matter: there are few writers whose scrapings we'd rather have.

December 1, 1999
Vonnegut introduces this collection of tongue-in-cheek reports on the afterlife by explaining that his first near-death experience was brought on by a "botched anesthesia during a triple bypass." Intrigued by what he saw at the end of the blue tunnel, he worked out a deal, he claims, with Dr. Jack Kevorkian and the friendly folks at the lethal injection execution facility in Huntsville, Texas, whereby he could make round-trip journeys to Heaven and back to interview the dead. He originally recorded his heavenly interviews for WNYC, a Manhattan public radio station, and now offers the transcripts of these 90-second spots in a parable worthy of his great progenitor, Mark Twain. A self-described humanist, Vonnegut is not surprised to find that there is no Hell. Everyone ends up in Heaven, from murderers to saints, and he talks to both, risking St. Peter's irritation at his incessant coming and going. Vonnegut interviews James Earl Ray, who regrets killing Martin Luther King Jr., only because he believes that he made King a hero. Hitler also expresses remorse, but assures Vonnegut that "I paid my dues along with everybody else." These unsettling dialogues are balanced by Vonnegut's witty and nimble celebrations of such fellow humanists as Clarence Darrow and Eugene Victor Debs and such delightfully ornery persona as Shakespeare, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Isaac Asimov. Warmhearted, caustic, and wise, these comic pieces are alight with Vonnegut's unique magic. ((Reviewed December 1, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)