Pig Book

When I was in high school -- ninth or tenth grade, can't remember which -- I was sitting on a couch in the library reading room making my way through Slaughterhouse Five. The principal, a buttoned-up, ex-Marine, who we called "Clicker" because of the sound his spit-shined shoes made on the hallway floors (and who must have been a Republican), saw me and said, "Why are you reading that? That's a pig book! Why don't you read T.S. Eliot?"

To this day, I have no idea what that principal was talking about.

R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut. And here's to "pig books" everywhere.