Listen….

Kurt Vonnegut died today, he was 84.   I just found out.

So it goes.

The only book of his I thought to pack when I was coming to China was Timequake, not one of his best by a long shot.  I guess between which sweaters to bring and how much underwear to pack for a year I had my mind on other stuff.  When I saw the bullitin somebody posted on myspace about his passing I dug out timequake and started thumbing through.  Get this.  In the preface of timequake, right there on page xvi, Vonnegut builds in his own final absurd irony.  He explains that his alter ego, Kilgore Trout had died in 2001, he further explained that Mr Trout like Mr Vonnegut had lived to the ripe old age of 84! 

And so it goes.

This is a bit I copied and pasted from the net which comes from his book man without a country.  He is telling the story of speaking at the memorial for Isaac Asimov.

“Being a humanist means that you try to behave as decently, as honourably, as you can without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. When we had a memorial service for Isaac a few years back, I spoke at it and said at one point, ‘Isaac is up in heaven now’. It was the funniest thing I could think of to say to an audience of humanists. Believe me, it worked - I rolled them in the aisles. If I should ever die, god forbid, I hope people will say, ‘Kurt is up in heaven now’. That’s my favourite joke.”

Kurt is up in heaven now.

And so it goes.

He was my favorite writter and he was a hero of mine and I understand he was fabulously well to do.  I used to have a daydream where I met Kurt Vonnegut and got to tell him that my Grandfather helped strip down and rebuild the enola gay for its big trip across the pacific, although he didn’t understand what it was for at the time.  I would like to ask Vonnegut what he thought of my being the grandson of someone that close to such a horrible bombing, just like the children of blue ice nine. 

And so it goes.

When I was in my early teens, one endlessly boring day in the summer I turned off the TV (which years later as a Bokonist I would recognize as a granfaloon) in exhaustion and picked up a dusty old copy of Breakfast of Champions and finished it that very day.  I thought if this isn’t nice I don’t know what is.  Here is something from breakfast of champions that grabbed my attention on a gut level of fancy maturity as an early teen that still sticks in my memory.

This is what an asshole looks like,

*

  That was the day it finally once and for all officially occured to me that I love the act of reading.  I think my whole world veiw as an adult has been warped due to his sad crazy books.  So goodbye to Mr. Vonnegut, Kilgore Trout, Duwayne Hubbler, Elliot Rosewater and the Rosewater foundation, Billy Pilgram, Bokonan and the others.  And goodbye blue monday. 

Anyway, I am a big big Vonnegut fan and I am bummed.  To learn more about Kurt Vonnegut just pay a visit to your local library.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 2:08 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.