Too Smart For His Own Good

William Deresiewicz reviews the first two volumes of the Library of America's anthology of Vonnegut's work.  At the end of the essay, he sums up the life of the man:

Slaughterhouse-Five had made him not only a celebrity, but a spokesman. He was an idol of the young, a voice of the counterculture, a man whose views would henceforth be solicited for a never-ending stream of interviews, articles, profiles, addresses. He stood for peace, love, decency, humanity—became the Kurt Vonnegut we knew for the final four decades of his life, a figure about whom it was possible to say, in the words of a recent book, that “precious few authors have ever loved mankind so completely.” He became, in other words, exactly what he had always warned against, a prophet of gimcrack religions: in this case, a facile faith of niceness that neatly concealed his bottomless darkness.
And he did it with his eyes wide open. Billy Pilgrim, in the VA hospital, meets Eliot Rosewater, who turns him on to Kilgore Trout. Neither man likes life, or people, very much. Both use Trout’s work “to re-invent themselves and their universe”—in other words, for purposes of self-delusion. Rosewater goes a step further: “He was experimenting with being ardently sympathetic with everybody he met. He thought that might make the world a slightly more pleasant place to live in.” This describes precisely Vonnegut’s public persona. As for his fate, over the last many years of his life, that, too, he had described: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

 Vonnegut is the prophet of secular humanism.  He sees a life of apparent meaninglessness, and takes away from it that we ought to be nice to one another.  As Deresiewicz discusses The Sirens of Titan,

Salo and Constant are alone together on Titan, two souls at the end of the universe, clinging to what is nearest. A simple, creaturely humanity suffuses the scene. “My mate died today,” Constant tells his friend. Before she went, he adds, they had finally figured out that “a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” Later, Vonnegut would justly be accused of sentimentality. Here the emotion is earned.

There are ways to confront an often cruel and confusing world that often doesn't seem to have a point.  One way is faith that there is a purpose, and no matter what the world throws at you, you know things will work out for the best eventually.  This can take a number of forms, including in religion.  Another way is to try to go about the world making it as good as you can manage, while trying to block out the darkness you know is around you, and which will consume you.  That was Vonnegut's way.  Sometimes the darkness got to him, sometimes he made it as good as he could manage. He realized that life is, and requires, self-delusion.  As Deresiewicz titles the essay, when it comes to life, and his place in it, Vonnegut said, "I was there."

That is the strange thing about the secular humanist (faith? religion?) outlook that Christians (and probably other faiths) can't grasp ahold of.  Why be nice to people without the belief in a greater reward in Heaven?  It seems that the lack of a future motivates some faithless people to do right as much as eternal life motivates the Christian to do so.  I can't comment on what comes after death, but I agree with each of these strains of thought that we should do right by others.  If we are what we pretend to be, let's pretend to be decent people.  Like true Christians.  Like Vonnegut.