Kurt Vonnegut was my favorite writer when I was a kid, and I still have a lot of affection for his classic novels. His blend of black humor, humanism, and pessimistic socialism remains one of the shaping elements of my world view, believe it or not. Vonnegut was a hero of mine for most of my teens and early twenties. Like most of the conservatives I know, I when through my "angry young man, wise beyond my years, world weary liberal" phase, and a Vonnegut paperback was usually in my back pocket back then.

The best of his work... like Slaughterhouse Five and Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions and Sirens of Titan... still holds up. I can read those books now and still enjoy them and agree with much of what I'm reading. However, I no longer buy into Vonnegut's notion that mankind's ruination simply can't be helped.

Vonnegut's latest book, A Man Without A Country is a thin memoir made up of essays he's published in magazines over the past five or eight years, and a series of new essays in which he rails against the Bush administration, America in general, and the "hydrogen bomb," which seems to be the boogie man in Vonnegut's closet. I haven't heard anyone else mention it in ages.

A couple of the old essays are actually quite good. The new material, all of it, is virtually unreadable. Cindy Sheehan is more lucid than this stuff.

Vonnegut also talks briefly about an unfinished novel he's been working on for several years now... and admits that it will probably never be finished. In A Man Without A Country, Vonnegut harvests a few of the jokes from the novel... I suppose just to get them out there while he's still drawing breath.

Vonnegut admits in the book that even he doesn't find himself funny anymore, that he's finishing his life as a bitter, angry man. That's sad. And, then, there's this:

ONE of the greatest living US writers has praised terrorists as "very brave people" and used drug culture slang to describe the "amazing high" suicide bombers must feel before blowing themselves up...

Vonnegut, 83, has been a strong opponent of Mr Bush and the US-led war in Iraq, but until now has stopped short of defending terrorism.

But in discussing his views with The Weekend Australian, Vonnegut said it was "sweet and honourable" to die for what you believe in, and rejected the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs.

"They are dying for their own self-respect," he said.

I'm not sure that liberalism actually causes senility... but, sometimes, it's hard to tell them apart.