Brushes With Less-Than-Greatness

Tim Cavanaugh | December 7, 2005

I may be free associating here, but for some reason I've always pictured Kilgore Trout, Kurt Vonnegut's hack-writer alter ego, being a largish, balding guy with glasses, a beard, and a hangdog, slightly scruffy look. Looking, in other words, somewhat like firebreathing scourge of the left David Horowitz. Readers may recall Trout's terse exchange with New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller when they met in a Cohoes grocery store:

"How's it going, fella?" Governor Rockefeller asked him.

"About the same," said Kilgore Trout.

So imagine my shock of recognition when Horowitz rushed into print to record his even more banal exchange with a political luminary of our own day.