God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

Kurt Vonnegut was always thinking about the afterlife, from Slapstick's "Turkey Farm" to Slaughterhouse-Five's eternity with Montana Wildhack in a Tralfamadorean zoo cage. Vonnegut jumps back and forth between life and the Afterlife in God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, as if there were not much of a difference between the two. In thirty-odd "interviews," Vonnegut travels "the blue tunnel to the pearly gates" as a traveling reporter for public radio, conducting interviews with a variety of subjects: William Shakespeare, who irritates Vonnegut, Salvatore Biagini, a retired construction worker who passed away from a heart attack while saving his schnauzer from a pit bull, John Brown, who is still smoldering 140 years after his hanging, and Eugene Victor Debs, a socialist and labor leader and one of Vonnegut's personal heroes.

Originally conceived as a sequence of ninety-second radio segments for WNYC, the public radio station in New York City, this thought-provoking compilation of reflections on our identity, purpose, and ultimate significance of life transpired. Dr. Kevorkian continues to be a delight, from the cover photo by his buddy Jules Feiffer to Kilgore Trout's farewell message, God Bless You.