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When
I was sixteen or seventeen, I was suffering a number of very
natural afflictions. My symptoms included but were not limited
to: hair growth, attraction to the opposite sex, losing my
religion in one summer, and generic teen angst generated by
all of the above. I stopped writing hymnals in my spiral-bound
notebooks and started giving irony a try. At the time I was
reading two things that greatly appealed to recently-cynical
teenage bastards like me: Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis
and Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. Two great
tastes that taste great together!
 Kafka
was school reading and, therefore, worthless to me outside
of the novelty of an existential insect dilemma. Breakfast
of Champions, though, methodically blew my mind. I had
been aware of Vonnegut's reputation for weird, irreverent
literature, but I was amazed to find something that could
be so ridiculous and thought-provoking at the same time. Shouldn't
we have to work harder to think about serious stuff like that?
Don't tap-dancing aliens get in the way of really thinking
about important issues?
His style
seemed so effortless that I, of course, tried to emulate it.
I wrote a tribute to Vonnegut immediately, drowning it in
observational irony and painfully pithy turns of phrase.
My tribute
story was a terrible mutant—a shambling chimera of Vonnegut's
signature style and Kafka's bug problem. It was about a cockroach
family living in America. I'm pretty sure the insinuation
was that these insects lived a cleaner existence than the
humans whose houses they infested, but I didn't have time
to sculpt a compelling plot. I was trapped in the fires of
inspiration! I was like a drunk bombardier, dropping incendiary
wit anywhere I could find a target. Never had a high school
boy so captured the inequities of modern society in the written
word.
Thank
God I never finished it. Turns out I was better off just culling
his quotes for away messages than I was at recreating Vonnegut's
unique voice. So it goes.
But I
didn't stop writing. I unfortunately continued through high
school and into college, where I morphed into a bearded creative
writing major. Secure in the three or four short stories I
had written in my free time in high school, I knew I would
take the university by storm. It had never occurred to me
to be ashamed of anything I'd written. Why be ashamed? With
gutless hacks like Nicholas Sparks spewing his books all over
the landscape, how can I possibly feel bad about attempting
to express myself?
The workshop
process taught me thousands of reasons for shame: weak plots,
generic characters, tired imagery, flowery depictions of suicide,
stories about ninjas, cute twist endings, anything that didn't
seem "post-modern" enough, and on and on. Suddenly, everything
I'd written in high school and anything I would write in the
future seemed infantile and hollow. How could I ever stand
up to a wall of judgment as formidable as a state university's
creative writing program?
 Writing
sure was hard when people were telling me how much I sucked.
How did Vonnegut keep writing through what must have been
truly scathing criticism of his work? By the end of college,
I had read almost everything Vonnegut had written. I was still
amazed at his voice, his imagination, his wry observation
of the world. Yet even this fresh, brilliant writer was torn
apart by his critics. He famously remarked that critics tended
to confuse the science fiction drawer for a urinal, so I can't
imagine how he managed to keep creating through the rising
flood of piss.
But here's
the thing: He never threw a tantrum and gave up (as I might
have done). Through the urinal's ebb and flow, he kept writing.
Even when he had to write ad copy for toothpaste, he kept
writing. His body of work is a testament to belligerent genius.
It brings something new to everyone who reads it. These critics
attacked his supposed genre without bothering to peek between
the covers. Kilgore Trout was a science fiction author, not
Kurt Vonnegut. So every time one of my writing peers used
three-syllable words to call me an asshole, I took comfort
in the fact that even the greatest writers are called names
sometimes.
Would
you like to know what I initially loved the most about Breakfast
of Champions? The little drawings. They had little value
from a literary point of view, but still they added so much.
They were snide interjections, the opposite of the academic
bullshit I was forced to read in school. Nathaniel Hawthorne
never drew a vagina in the margins of The Scarlet Letter,
much to its detriment. Vonnegut wasn't afraid to show the
world how he liked to draw an asshole. I couldn't believe
such priceless irreverence. What a model of irony! What a
hero to all, great and small!
But wait.
Let's not get too caught up in all this.
I don't
want to wax too poetic about Kurt Vonnegut. He's dead—in
the dirt or wherever his family chose to dispose of his body,
but dead either way. He's not going to wake up and thank me
for joining the chorus of distraught praise at his passing.
No matter how loudly I bemoan his passing, no matter how many
times I tear off my shirt and run screaming into the night,
it won't change anything. The sound of so much loud nostalgia
has probably convinced him to stay in the ground. If anything,
it's our fault he's not coming back.
There's
been lots of talk about Vonnegut's humanist side. He certainly
wouldn't think much of everyone lamenting his passing. He
would probably have little to say about the tributes popping
up everywhere from distraught fans. Maybe he would have been
amused to know that places like CNN probably had pre-written
obituaries ready to use in the event of his kicking the bucket.
Black comedy, indeed!
All this
hero worship is completely superfluous. Vonnegut doesn't need
or want us to care. Fortunately for us, he's gone now, so
we can say whatever we want on the subject of life, death,
and the afterlife as it pertains to him. Let's start with
something that I've been wondering.
I want
to know if anyone cut open his head to take a look at his
brain. Didn't they do that with Einstein? I would have wanted
to take a look. Maybe I'd find a tiny universe inside his
skull, possibly populated by aliens on roller skates. Disco
balls. The works. Maybe he had two brains, and Kilgore Trout
was a real man who shared Vonnegut's skull. Or maybe, as he
might have insisted, he had a brain much like everyone else's:
a wrinkled mass of protein inadequately protected by bone
and fluid. But I still wonder if anyone looked. I would like
to see Vonnegut proven wrong.
He lived
a long, sometimes tragic, often brilliant life. Maybe he thought
his cigarette habit would have caught him in the end. As he
got older, heart attacks or strokes probably became a concern.
Maybe he was hoping for a massive explosion to finish him
off. Or a meteorite. But a slip and fall?
Maybe
not.
Did he
wonder what would happen to him after he passed? He probably
dismissed the idea. I, however, am a fallible and superstitious
man who can't help but wonder. There's this well-worn idea
that great authors or thinkers live on in the work that they
left behind, but I don't trust it. I doubt he would have wanted
to live forever. Maybe he's in space now, or maybe he's been
reborn somewhere in Papua New Guinea.
Since
he probably wouldn't care much either way, I thought I'd ask
some friends of the HBC where they think science fiction writers
go when they die:
- Here's
my bet on where Vonnegut is: Tralfamadore, with Montana
Wildhack. Or perhaps he's just biding his time, playing
chess with Asimov, waiting until he can kick the crap out
of Philip Jose Farmer. (from Marie Mundaca)
- I
reckon Kurt Vonnegut has gone straight to the dirt, or to
a can of ashes, whichever he and his family preferred. Maybe
that's a bit too cheeky, but that's all I think, anyway.
(from Jennifer Hadlock)
- Some
end up in harlequin advances. Some go to free love colonies
on the moon. (from bootsinrain)
- I
imagine that when a sci-fi author dies, it's a bit like
the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Except, instead
of one Star Child, there's a whole pack of Star Fetuses
and they sit around all day—smoking cigars and drinking
cognac—occasionally congratulating themselves on each
other's work. For example, Fetus Jules Verne will say to
Fetus Carl Sagan: "That was quitewell done, that Contact
thing." And Fetus Carl Sagan will reply: "Yeah, but the
movie was shit." And all the Star Fetuses will say: "Indeed."
Only when I imagine Kurt in this scenario, I can't help
but imagine him as a Star Fetus with a bushy mustache.
(from Bri Lafond)
- In
the ground with the rest of us. (from Evan Rossi)
- Much
to the chagrin of the recently deceased, the realm of the
next life is a lot like our current world. Already rather
bored with it all, Kurt Vonnegut is currently sleeping through
the orientation film, "How to Succeed in the Afterlife,"
a small puddle of drool collecting on his pearly white desk.
(from Yennie Cheung)
- I
like to imagine that Kurt is circling the universe in a
rocket ship/convertible with red leather interior. Naked.
(from spence137)
- That
depends, I think. A lot of them will go to a planet they've
created, which can be horrible for them if it's a bad one.
If you're asking about Kurt Vonnegut, the simple answer
is Hell. (from Hearty White)
So where
do I think Kurt has gone? I've put a lot of thought into it,
trying to come up with something pithy or irreverent enough.
Maybe I could even pull out that old joke about Kurt being
up in Heaven now. But after writing this whole essay I'm pretty
sick of talking about him. In fact, I never liked the guy
much anyway. Ting-a-ling, you dead son of a bitch! Thanks
for nothing.
(May,
2007)
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