1922.11.11-2007.4.11So it goes: the Tralfamadorians' blank acknowledgment of death is going to be the phrase that accompanies innumerable reactions to Kurt Vonnegut's passing. In Slaughterhouse-Five, the novel that made his name, it could be applied either to a glass of dead water or a dead human being. Once the life had gone out of them, there was little to distinguish them.Not so in life. "We are put on earth to fart around," said Vonnegut, "don't let anyone tell you any different." Vonnegut may have spent some of his time farting around, but he still put plenty of it to good use, which is why he's being celebrated. His books fart around: he is one of the great playful writers of the 20th century (and it was a great benefit to us that his playfulness was allowed to extend into the 21st). But that playfulness was born out of great disaster. As anyone with the scantiest familiarity with Vonnegut's work knows, it was his place in the firebombing of Dresden during the second world war which was to make his name as a writer - although there is a quarter-century gap between Dresden and the novel.That gap is telling: Dresden had been swept under the historical carpet. In a 1977 interview in the Paris Review, he put it like this: "I said that only one person on the entire planet benefited from the raid, which must have cost tens of millions of dollars. The raid didn't shorten the war by half a second ... only one person benefited - not two or five or ten. Just one. ... Me.

I got three dollars for each person killed. Imagine that."

Vonnegut is often cited as a sci-fi writer, or as one who straddles the "literary" and "sci-fi" genres. This seems to indicate an almost distasteful mania for labelling. Vonnegut was sui generis - once he achieved the tone that was to suit him for the final half of his professional life, all you could say of his writing was that it was Vonnegutian: playful, conversational, apparently guileless, repetitive if necessary, rambling, discursive - but always stiffened by a strong ethical backbone.

He was one of the very few prominent Americans who was unafraid to call himself a socialist. Still railing against stupidity and injustice in 2007, he leaves us at a time when a voice like his is as necessary as it ever was. So it goes.