#234

“The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn't look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again:

Oh boy – they sure did picked up the wrong guy to lynch that time!

And that thought had a brother: 'There are right people to lynch.' Who? People not well connected. So it goes.

The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had, He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels

So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn't possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was

And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was a thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privilege of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections” (id, 75-76).

#233

“They were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe. Science-fiction was a big help (...) He said that everything there was to know about life was in The Brothers Karamazov, by Feodor Dostoievsky. 'But that isn't enough anymore'” (id, 70-71).

#232

“He became slightly unstuck in time, saw the alte movie backwards, then forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded American, though, and some of the bombers were still in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new” (id, 54).

#231

“GOD GRANT ME

THE SERENITY TO ACCEPT

THE THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE,

COURAGE

TO CHANGE THE THINGS I CAN,

AND WISDOM ALWAYS

TO TELL THE

DIFFERENCE”

(id, 46).

#230

“When a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly fir people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future always have existed, always will exist” (Vonnegut, 1979: 25).

VONNEGUT, Kurt (1979). Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade. A Duty-dance with Death. St. Albans: Triad/Panther Books.