One of my favorite authors died tonight. Kurt Vonnegut was 84.
Loving his goofy, bleakly humored novels seems like some guilty pleasure to me. I remember once when I went back to visit my favorite English professor at the University of Iowa years after graduation, he asked me what I was reading. Already embarrassed that I hadn't been reading much at all, I told him the only thing that was true. "Some Vonnegut. Breakfast of Champions."
I get the feeling he bit his tongue to keep from revealing some displeasure. "Oh that," I could almost hear him say, like I was reading stuff that's too damn easy! Maybe I was wrong. Hell, at least he got me to read some Jonathan Lethem. Good ol' Brooks.
It's just whenever someone asks me my favorite authors, I keep thinking saying Vonnegut is like saying "Well, I read this book in high school and it was funny and good the end." I'm supposed to say clever bullshit like "So-and-so has such incredible structure!"
Breakfast of Champions is probably my favorite novel. I mean, the guy draws a picture of his asshole for crissakes, which makes me laugh. Yet, every time I read it -- it's among the very few books I'll read over and over again -- I just about die inside for ol' Kilgore Trout. Poor bastard. Today, I think I know how he feels.
Make me young. Make me young. Make me young.
Nothing?
So it goes.
Cat's Cradle remains one of the freakiest novels I have ever read.
ReplyDeleteWe will honor Kurt next weekend, every time our characters shoot someone in the face in the name of love.
From http://www.slate.com/id/2164174/
ReplyDeleteIn New York, many years later, I came to understand that a number of intellectuals thought Vonnegut was for students—for the kind of immature, emotional readers who get caught up in Dune or The Fountainhead: a "phase" author. But it's never struck me that there is a mature, dispassionate stance on death, greed, cruelty, and human weakness that sober-minded adults ought to graduate to, after reaching some arbitrary educational high-water mark, that would elevate them beyond Vonnegut's whimsically bleak philosophy.
Breakfast of Champions never struck me, but Harrison Bergeron did. I still remember my outrage at the tale's end.