Fates Worse than Death, subtitled An Autobiographical Collage of the 1980's, is a 1991 collection of essays, speeches, and other previously uncollected writings by author Kurt Vonnegut Jr.. In the introduction to the book, Vonnegut acknowledges that the book is similar to an earlier book, Palm Sunday. In it he discusses his attempted suicide. This book also includes a "humanist requiem" that Vonnegut wrote as a reaction to the Roman Catholic Requiem, which he had heard in Andrew Lloyd Webber's setting and whose text he found "terrible and sadistic". Vonnegut's own text was then set as a... "Cosmos Cantata" by the composer Seymour Barab, of whom Vonnegut said, "Barab's music is full of magic. He proved to an atheist that God exists. What an honor to have worked with him.
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