Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) died yesterday. So it goes. He was best known for his stellar literary career and such classics as Slaughterhouse 5, Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle. He was also the honary chairman of the American Humanist Association. He's up in Heaven now.
I'm saddened this morning to learn of the passing of one of my personal heros, the author Kurt Vonnegut. Best known for his anti-war novel Slaughterhouse 5, Vonnegut was one of the last living writers to have actually fought in World War II. I'm sure there will be thousands of blogs and articles out there over the next few days that recount everything Vonnegut wrote and everything important he ever did in his life, so I see no need to go into all that. Instead, I'd just like to spell out how he impacted my life.
I was first exposed to the works of Kurt Vonnegut when I was a sophomore in high school. My english teacher that year, Mr. Weiss, noticed that I was one of the more sarcastic and literary students in his class, so he suggested that I check out Breakfast of Champions in the school library. I read the book and fell in love with Kurt Vonnegut's style. During the rest of my high school career I continued reading through the spare collection of Vonnegut books in our school library, spending many satisfied hours hiding away in the back of the library and dreaming about the day when I could kiss Broad Run High School goodbye and set out into the real world.
After high school, my love for Vonnegut's writing turned from passion to full-blown obsession. Over the period of about a year I purchased every single volume that was still in print, along with several that were not. I can still remember the day I found a beat up copy of Happy Birthday, Wanda June in a used book store for just a few dollars. Some other oddities in my collection include some vinyl records of Vonnegut reading Slaughterhouse 5 and Cat's Cradle and a hardcover edition of Canary In The Cathouse which I actually carried on stage with me when I played Fyedka in Fiddler on the Roof.
My two personal favorites among Vonnegut's works are Hocus Pocus and Timequake. Hocus Pocus is the story of an ex-military man who becomes a teacher at a school for learning-disabled rich kids. He eventually is fired from the school for telling the students what an embarrassment it is to be an American, and he is hired by the prison across the lake. The story only gets more cynical and more sentimental from there. As each character dies, and so it goes, they are buried in the shadow of Musket Mountain when the sun goes down, a nice, poetic touch on this deeply sarcastic look at the American ruling class. I loved the alternative history lesson provided in this book, it's nice to see the positive side of American socialism and the potential it once held way back at the start of the 20th century. Hocus Pocus is one of those books I go back to ever couple of years and re-read...I like it that much.
Timequake was one of the first audiobooks I ever listened to, and the reader was awesome. The premise of the story is that a timequake (a hiccup in the space/time continuum) has caused everyone in the world to relieve the 90's. Whatever they did on the first time through, they have to do the second time around. They can't change anything, but they are plagued with a sense of déja vu. By the end of the timequake, everyone is so apathetic that when free-will kicks in again, they collapse where they're standing or let their cars careen into the sides of buildings. Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut's alter-ego in many of his books, is the only person who snaps out of this fog and starts saving people's lives. The story, typical Vonnegut, is all right, but it is intermingled with the author's reflections about writing, politics, computers, growing up, socialism, and just about anything else you can imagine. During my favorite scene in the entire book, Vonnegut's daughter plays a talking dead person in Our Town. This was actually my introduction to the play, and whenever I hear the scene in the audiobook, I'm filled with both joy and sadness.
Vonnegut also has the distinction of being the person who started my obsession with John Brown. In one of his final books, God Bless You Dr. Kevorkian, Vonnegut has a near-death experience and goes up to heaven to interview Old Brown, and Vonnegut's description of Brown (wearing a hangman's noose as a necktie and demanding from Vonnegut "Where's yours?") was interesting enough to make me start researching the man who has gone on to become one of my greatest heros.
I'm sad to say goodbye to Mr. Vonnegut, and sadder still that so much of my hero's life was spent in depression. I know he had several attempted suicides, and the sorrow in his writing is clearer to me now as I grow older. Vonnegut, a humanist, did not believe in God or Heaven but he often joked that when he died, he hoped someone would remark that he's up in Heaven now. My prayer is that somehow, someway, that can be true. Goodbye Kurt, you're going to be missed.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment