In seventh grade I read Cat’s Cradle, my first Vonnegut book. I remember standing in front of the class and giving a book report. I played a newsreporter delivering the play-by-play from the book’s closing scene (“a tragedy today, here in the beautiful island of San Lorenzo…”). There was an ad in the back of all those Vonnegut paperbacks that said, essentially, bet you can’t eat just one, and they were right.
No books, aside from Steve Martin’s Cruel Shoes, had a bigger impact on my brain in middle school and high school. I’d sometimes hear folks disparage Vonnegut’s novels as lightweight, comparing them unfavorably to, say, Catch-22. That always seemed off-point to me. These weren’t book you were supposed to roll around in for a month. They were a different kind of beast. Thin, portable devices that delivered high voltage electric telegrams direct to the nervous system. And if you read them in a certain frame of mind (and most especially at a certain age), they really did change the way you saw the world.
If you’re planning on reading a Vonnegut book today, may I recommend Sirens of Titan? Or perhaps God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater? Or mebbe Slapstick? Or what about Bluebeard? Oh, who are we kidding? The book to read today is Mother Night.
Mother Night, a book so gigantically good that when I finished it back in freshman year of college, I hopped up, flung it down the hallway, and scrambled out to the street to recover with some New York City air. And see, if it had been Catch-22, I might have really hurt somebody.
Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007
"…something like the supervisor of an entire team of political agents…"
After I read Slaughterhouse-Five, almost the next thing I read was Venus on the Half-Shell. At the time I believed that Vonnegut had written the latter, and I was dumbfounded at the range of talents. At that time (the mid-70s) I was steeped in the sf/f world, and following the threads of things like Vonnegut/Sturgeon/Trout/Farmer was the air I breathed. Without Venus, I might not have given Vonnegut much of another thought; but by the time I found that Farmer had written Venus, I had read enough Vonnegut to continue to be amazed.
Vonnegut had the wisdom and drama of Elie Wiesel plus the powers of observation of George Carlin. It was Vonnegut that first led me to read Wiesel, and that led me to Graham Greene. I still haven’t read A Clockwork Orange, because I don’t want Vonnegut’s style and vision to become blurred for me.
Peter Sagle of NPRs “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” talked about how he was lured into reading Sirens of Titan by the sexy gals on the cover. As a teen into SciFi I was caught up the same way, and wasn’t pleased. It was undoubtedly science fiction, but seemed like a big cheat. How dare anyone use the language of Science Fiction to say something so paltry? I saw the film of Slaughterhouse 5, and appreciated much more that Valerie Perrine had some topless scenes.
But somehow I ate Slapstick and Jailbird, and found that I could like some stuff that was more on the edges of Scifi. I grasped that he was trying to be ironic. Gradually I came to appreciate Slaughterhouse 5 for what it was outside of the fantastical elements. In college I even became a bit of an expert on KV, reading even his teleplays and other oddities.
Mother Night will be the one I remember for pulling the scales from my eyes. Unfortunately It’s also tied up with a summer job of running the ferris wheel at Children’s Fairyland.
However, It’s been many years since I picked up one of his books, Galapagos being the last one I actually remember reading. Possibly I read Hocus Pocus or Deadeye Dick, but I don’t remember any details. In the end they were irrelevant to my life, with deeper authors, such as our own T Pynchon, covering some of the same territory with more depth.
I’ll always remember him fondly, like a favorite professor in college. I wish him well in his next endevour. He didn’t write the sort of books I want to write, but I hope to have, one day, just a bit of the clarity and humor he had.
I remember reading “Breakfast of Champions” in Silent Reading in — 9th grade, was it? 10th? — and trying, unsuccessfully, not to laugh out loud.
reading is for suckers.
one of those things that just lets the air out of the world a little, big sigh, feel less safe now…like someone who was watching your back is gone…felt the same way with John Candy and Hubert Selby jr….
Lovely tribute, Cecil.
Vonnegut taught me that you could write in plain vernacular contemporary English. I can never thank him enough, dude.