Good Night, Mr. Rosewater
Kurt Vonnegut died last night.
He was the second author, after Anthony Burgess, that I took as my own when my reading turned more serious as a teenager. I've read nearly every novel excepting Slaughterhouse 5. The regular, non-advanced, dullard English classes in my high school read it, and so I read everything but. With another exception, that being the 100 pages of it that I read while shivering at a Toys for Tots table outside a grocery store in upstate NY winter, never to so much as touch a copy again.
It is a sign of my affection for him that I imagine he would be pleased with my relationship with that particular novel, and the reasons that drive it.
He had ties to my part of the country. That he spoke at my commencement is one of the few things I don't regret about attending Syracuse.
Vonnegut had a deep love of the human, which in no way contradicted his ability to see into the worst of human nature. His novels are populated by the damaged and deformed, resonate with suicide and insanity and apocalypse, but always with pathos, always with hope. His core values are such dominant themes in all of his novels that they blend into each other to become one massive tapestry of the Vonneguttian worldview, the reassurance that the individual's life is important even if the sum of all human life is, perhaps, not.
I want to thank him for the goofy magician's trick flowers that he pulled out of his robe at my commencement, right after he said "Oh, and, we love you." I want to thank him for making cragged and scraggly beautiful. I want to thank him for that story in Welcome to the Monkey House where the war veteran breaks the young actress's heart and then she redeems them both because it made me cry, for God Bless You, Mr Rosewater because it was brilliant and has instructions for the best ways to kill flies, for Sirens of Titan for the reminder just how small we are, for Galapagos and Deadeye Dick and Mother Night and Player Piano and Hocus Pocus, and for Cat's Cradle because it was my first, and boku-maru is sexy.
My copy of Cat's Cradle has this poem, my favorite of Robert Frost's, taped in the front cover, both for the obvious connection and because it seems a sentiment with which Vonnegut would agree.
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Not really the proper tribute for a writer I cared so much for, but tied to my memories of him. These words, from an AP interview with him, probably sum up his sensibilties best, at least for me.
"When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon... My father, like Hemingway, was a gun nut and was very unhappy late in life. But he was proud of not committing suicide. And I'll do the same, so as not to set a bad example for my children."
You set a great example, Mr. Vonnegut. Consider your wampeter complete. We'll beware granfalloons, and be diplomatic with our foma, and always have a cot ready for Kilgore Trout. Good night.
Oh, and, we love you.
EDIT:
Beige and The Hound pay tribute as well.
He was the second author, after Anthony Burgess, that I took as my own when my reading turned more serious as a teenager. I've read nearly every novel excepting Slaughterhouse 5. The regular, non-advanced, dullard English classes in my high school read it, and so I read everything but. With another exception, that being the 100 pages of it that I read while shivering at a Toys for Tots table outside a grocery store in upstate NY winter, never to so much as touch a copy again.
It is a sign of my affection for him that I imagine he would be pleased with my relationship with that particular novel, and the reasons that drive it.
He had ties to my part of the country. That he spoke at my commencement is one of the few things I don't regret about attending Syracuse.
Vonnegut had a deep love of the human, which in no way contradicted his ability to see into the worst of human nature. His novels are populated by the damaged and deformed, resonate with suicide and insanity and apocalypse, but always with pathos, always with hope. His core values are such dominant themes in all of his novels that they blend into each other to become one massive tapestry of the Vonneguttian worldview, the reassurance that the individual's life is important even if the sum of all human life is, perhaps, not.
I want to thank him for the goofy magician's trick flowers that he pulled out of his robe at my commencement, right after he said "Oh, and, we love you." I want to thank him for making cragged and scraggly beautiful. I want to thank him for that story in Welcome to the Monkey House where the war veteran breaks the young actress's heart and then she redeems them both because it made me cry, for God Bless You, Mr Rosewater because it was brilliant and has instructions for the best ways to kill flies, for Sirens of Titan for the reminder just how small we are, for Galapagos and Deadeye Dick and Mother Night and Player Piano and Hocus Pocus, and for Cat's Cradle because it was my first, and boku-maru is sexy.
My copy of Cat's Cradle has this poem, my favorite of Robert Frost's, taped in the front cover, both for the obvious connection and because it seems a sentiment with which Vonnegut would agree.
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Not really the proper tribute for a writer I cared so much for, but tied to my memories of him. These words, from an AP interview with him, probably sum up his sensibilties best, at least for me.
"When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon... My father, like Hemingway, was a gun nut and was very unhappy late in life. But he was proud of not committing suicide. And I'll do the same, so as not to set a bad example for my children."
You set a great example, Mr. Vonnegut. Consider your wampeter complete. We'll beware granfalloons, and be diplomatic with our foma, and always have a cot ready for Kilgore Trout. Good night.
Oh, and, we love you.
EDIT:
Beige and The Hound pay tribute as well.
posted by JJisafool at 10:10 AM
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