Author and self-proclaimed humanist Kurt Vonnegut Jr. died Wednesday in Manhattan at the age of 84. So it goes. Writers all over the world are celebrating his works for their irreverent humor and scornful treatment of the absurdities of life on planet Earth.

NPR’s Peter Sagel said his teenage penchant for sci-fi first attracted him to Vonnegut’s works. As an adult, though, he learned to appreciate the central question Vonnegut address: “What in the world do you do in the face of mechanized death, governments gone mad, corruption, evil?”

Verlyn Klinkenborg says to read Vonnegut when you’re young, not that he is just for young readers.

Novelist Dave Eggers has a useful annotated bibliography of Vonnegut’s canon.

The Nation has a look at some of Vonnegut’s more memorable quips: “But like Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln, even when he's funny, he's depressed. His has always been a weird jujitsu that throws us for a brilliant loop.”

The AP (via the International Herald Tribune) churned out collage of praises and remembrances by Vonnegut’s contemporaries, noting that even though his works were picked up by Vietnam-era counter-culturals, he wasn’t one them, having come of age during World War II.