I’ve reads dozens of obits and remembrances about Kurt Vonnegut since his death on Wednesday. I spent a couple hours on Friday reading through 600-some comments about Vonnegut’s books on the New York Times’ web site. I even added one of my own, noting how his stories in "Welcome to the Monkey House" have stayed with me over the years. "Deer in the Works" was about the debilitating effects of corporate life. "Harrison Bergeron," if written today, would be viewed as a sharp send-up of political correctness, a term not in vogue when Vonnegut wrote the story. There’s also a very sweet love story based on the author’s wooing of his first wife.
Vonnegut wrote satire and humor. Not easy. A humorist gets very little leeway from his/her audience. The test is simple: does this make me laugh or at least smile? Do my readers bug their friends by reading aloud passages from the book? I remember doing that with "Breakfast of Champions." During the summer of ‘73, I lived in a little house in Holly Hill, Florida, and hitched to work at an Ormond Beach lumberyard. My roommate was Bob, a high school dropout from northern Wisconsin who was a terrific mechanic but worked as a laborer, building beachside condos. Our neighbors were my brother Dan and his friend Blake, both working construction. Dan was about to go off for Air Force basic training in Texas. Blake, a college dropout like me, planned to start his own construction company.
We took turns reading my tattered copies of Vonnegut’s novels. When I bought "Breakfast of Champions," my friends bugged me to finish quickly so they could read the passages that I kept blurting out during meals of Hamburger Helper. I’d come home from work and the book would be missing and I’d find Blake chortling over it next door. I got to the point where I took it with me instead.
But it wasn’t just the humor. Kilgore Trout was an intriguing character. Vonnegut’s writing style made the book fun and accessible. We were all smart guys who didn’t think we were very smart. We were looking for interesting distractions in the pre-PC, pre-cable TV, pre-middle-class-lifestyle days.
Another thing about Vonnegut. He was the age of our fathers but he wasn’t like our fathers. Mine lived a few miles away but was still pissed at me for getting booted out of my college ROTC scholarship and then vagabonding around the country. Dan was a long-haired hippie with no plans for the future. His girlfriend’s father would not let him in their house. His star began to rise when he joined the Air Force. Blake’s airline pilot father was royally pissed off at him. Bob never talked about his dad.
Vonnegut was a World War II veteran, as were all our fathers. He’d survived the Dresden fire-bombing, which gave him some hefty credentials. He was a family man, raising his own kids and those of his dead sister. He worked for a living, doing stuff he hated until leaving it behind for the life of a writer. At least one of his stories had appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, for Christ’s sake. He smoked like a chimney and always looked as if he’d just gotten out of bed. We could relate to that.
But his what-the-fuck attitude seemed to resemble ours. "So it goes" seemed to sum up the crazy times we lived in. He openly opposed the Vietnam War and our country’s nuclear arsenal. His hard-edged sense of irony struck a chord. We all knew that the technocrats would kill us off with nukes or ice-nine or some other fancy invention. In defense, we partied hearty and we partied often, although that’s not exactly what Vonnegut had in mind.
We all eventually moved on. After about 1980, I read no more Vonnegut books. I did listen to and enjoy "Galapagos" on audiobook during a long trip across Wyoming in 1993. I read Vonnegut’s commentary in the electronic edition of "In These Times," a radical mag I once subscribed to. The author looked worn and a bit confused when he appeared on the Jon Stewart show last year, promoting his newest book. His biting wit was intact.
I encouraged my son to read "Slaughterhouse-Five," but I don’t think he ever did. I saw it on his bookshelf during a recent visit to his apartment in Tucson. Maybe I should buy a copy for my teen daughter.
I haven’t see my former roomie Bob since the mid-1980s, when he called me out of the blue in Denver as he was traveling the country with his Orlando-based road-surfacing crew. We talked old times, and he showed me photos of his new wife and his new Harley, not necessarily in that order. Blake runs his own construction company and I’m not surprised to hear he’s the best contractor in central Florida. I see him during trips to Daytona, as he’s still good friends with my brother Dan, who’s retired from a career as an air traffic controller. Dan’s done well for himself. He married his high school sweetheart. When he came to Daytona during the 1970s on leave from the Air Force, his girlfriend’s father (and future father-in-law) opened the door for Dan, welcoming him to the family. My brother and I can’t talk politics as he’s a diehard Republican and I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum. I’ve never tried discussing Vonnegut with him. I don’t think he would approve of Kurt’s politics.
I'm older now than Kurt was when he gave himself "Breakfast of Champions" for a 50th birthday present. I'm a writer and arts administrator, a guy who likes his job. I celebrate my 25th wedding anniversary next month with my wife Chris. We have two kids, a teen girl and a 22-year-old son. They make trouble but I love them just the same.
So it goes.
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