KURT VONNEGUT, JR. (1922-2007). If you knew me when I was a teen, you'll probably remember my enthusiasm for the writings of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. I made my way through his books (extreme rarities excepted) and recommended them to just about everyone who meant anything to me. When I took my first fiction writing course in college and the teacher asked the students to identify their favorite short story writers, Vonnegut was one of the two authors I mentioned.

Yes, I was like that young man in the key party scene of The Ice Storm. (I hope I got that reference right.) It was "Vonnegut this, Vonnegut that" for much of the time with me. And I was not alone. By the time I'd become part of the cult of Vonnegut, he had already written about how young admirers had flocked to be in his presence. And, as I recall, he was not very happy about that form of hero worship.

My feeling about Vonnegut not being thrilled about hearing from fans was a major roadblock that kept me from acting on my strong desire to let him know how much his writing meant to me. I figured I'd be just one among thousands and thousands who had already given him that message. I'd only be a redundancy.

My conflict between wanting to thank Vonnegut and not wanting to bother him was never stronger than at a millennial function for Forbes that Vonnegut attended with his wife, the photographer Jill Krementz. Angling for shots, she kept on bumping into me, but I just couldn't bring myself to bump into her husband and become yet another in the long line of people who had told him how much Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) had meant to them.

Over the years, I also--somehow--got it in my head that he would really enjoy getting a CD of The Boswell Sisters, a close harmony vocal group popular when he was a kid. I wanted to send him one as a "thank you" but I never got around to confirming his address. Just days ago I was thinking about going ahead with that plan. At the time, he must have been fading away. So it goes, as he would put it.


My first exposure to Vonnegut was seeing the edited-for-TV movie version of Slaughterhouse-Five when it was broadcast on network TV against Helter Skelter. I was immensely attracted to the movie's blend of sardonic humor and immense sympathy for its characters. Vonnegut didn't feel he had the best of luck with movies--and he didn't always admire his own books--but, I learned, he was pleased with the film version of Slaughterhouse-Five, which was largely in tune with his literary style and point of view.

In essay after essay and story after intertwined story, politically engaged and expressing himself in clear and simple prose that could be readily understood by a wide readership, Vonnegut portrayed humanity as frail and vulnerable and pathetic yet capable of beauty--and perenially at the mercy not only of nature but of policies and technologies of its own making. It staggers and still baffles me that a writer with such a message could also be one of the most censored in American history--I can't think of any vision that could be more relevant in this era. In the words of his great character, science fiction writer Kilgore Trout: "We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane."

(That was actually my high school yearbook quote, but only now--and I mean right now, as I write this--am I beginning to appreciate its wisdom.)

So much has been written and will be written about Vonnegut and his work that I'll simply limit the rest of this post to what might be some relatively obscure observations.

Two of Vonnegut's rules of writing (gleaned, I recall, from IBM ads!): Include a villain in your stories* and use periods instead of semicolons.

The musical version of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater deserves more exposure--it's by the same team who musicalized Little Shop of Horrors and wrote the songs for The Little Mermaid.

I think I've read that Vonnegut didn't like the film version of his play Happy Birthday, Wanda June, but I was very pleasantly surprised by the gorgeous print briefly screened at the Film Forum.

The Vonnegut-inspired television drama Between Time and Timbuktu can be seen at the Museum of Television and Radio (MTR) in midtown Manhattan.

In his May 10, 2004 essay "Cold Turkey," Vonnegut likened the United States, in its panicky dependence on diminishing oil reserves, to an addict lashing out in fear of not getting another fix. Nearly three years later, his message remains as clear and urgent and unheeded as ever.

So it goes.



Source (1:37)


* I heard that Vonnegut scholar Jerome Klinkowitz said that there were no villains in Vonnegut novels, so maybe I got that wrong. Perhaps it was something about making sure that bad things would happen to your characters.