Kurt Vonnegut
MANIFESTO
A pretty good obituary can be found here. Vonnegut became a kind of hero to a number of Baby Boomers along with his archetypal characters, Billy Pilgrim and Eliot Rosewater. Vonnegut's ability to see the ridiculousness of life was his forte. His experience in the Dresden bombing raid may have been the most important of his life and certainly appeared (at least figuratively) in a number of his works.
I taught both Cat's Cradle and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater at various times and enjoyed both of them immensely—the former for its hilarious jabs at organized religion and the latter for pointing out how willing people are to prostitute themselves. (The abbreviation "FH" still makes me laugh.)
In his later years, of course, Vonnegut became a real harpooner, going after GI George with all the strength he could muster. Even though people thought he was a bit off his rocker, Vonnegut was still a favorite of various blogs because he was just so irasciby quotable.
Needless to say, he'll be missed immensely.
Requiescat in pace.
posted by monocle at 4/12/2007 10:17:00 AM
2 Comments:
Wish I could have actually studied both the selections you taught, instead of reading them in my spare time while jockeying a register at a book store.
I still remember clearly my favorite night at that bookstore. It was a rainy Saturday night in the summer, which meant the store was open until 9 but there were and would be no customers. I was sitting at a register around 7 o'clock, reading, when I got a call from another clerk at the store. He said that his buddy, who worked at the movie theater across the street, just sold a ticket to Kurt Vonnegut. We did everything we could to try to convince the manager to keep the store open late in the hope that Vonnegut would wander in. She didn't and Vonnegut didn't come by. But for two hours, the anticipation of what a 19 year old would say to Kurt Vonnegut was excitement enough. I had a hundred conversations with him, he just wasn't there.
(On a side note, I did get the chance to meet Don Imus as the same bookstore. He was a miserable, self-important prick. Makes me feel less guilty for accidentally giving his driver the wrong directions to the store and making him 10 minutes late.)
Memorable to me for two reasons: the first is because of who introduced me to his books; the second is that Kurt Vonnegut’s novels were the first literary works I ever discussed with anyone where I felt compelled to really argue my points or interpretations when we disagreed. They changed the way I read books. “If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.” is a quote to live by.
“So it goes”
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