The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library will open this fall, in Indianapolis, in celebration of the author’s life and work.

A first grader should understand that her or his culture isn’t a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society… Cultural relativity is defensible, attractive. It’s a source of hope. It means we don’t have to continue this way if we don’t like it.
-Kurt Vonnegut

“Goodbye Blue Monday,” or should we say hello library card.

Kurt Vonnegut—author, chain-smoker, revolutionary, absolute badass—will join the ranks of presidents and cultural luminaries with the establishment of a memorial library in his name. You heard that right, the author of such works as “Slaughterhouse Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “Breakfast of Champions” will have a library named after him and dedicated to his work in his hometown of Indianapolis.

Scheduled to open this fall at the Emelie Building in downtown Indianapolis, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library will be used to impart Vonnegutisms like the one above. The library’s web site states:

“The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library will serve as a memorial to the author’s literary greatness, his humanistic vision, and his adherence to quintessential American values. The library will exhibit literature, art, and personal items of Kurt Vonnegut. The library will serve both ardent Vonnegutians and newcomers to his unique wit and literary legacy. The library staff will act as docents at the library and coordinators for outreach activities. The library’s website will attract visitors to library events and assets.”

In addition to celebrating Vonnegut’s life, the library plans on helping the high-school newspaper of Shortridge High School, the school Vonnegut attended as a child. The library will give presentations on the author’s life and assist in the direction of the newspaper. To hell with the curmudgeons out there who say journalism is dead.

Let’s just hope they don’t memorialize him in the way Fox News did the day he died in 2007.

For those of you who can’t make it to Indianapolis anytime soon, soak up some great Vonnegut wisdom from his 2002 commencement speech at Albion College, “How To Get a Job Like Mine.”

[Via the Associated Press]