A
bizarre,
lunatic genius with a
unique voice. One of my favourite
authors. If I ever get to meet him, I'd like to ask him "
Why?" so that he can tell me "
Why not?" For some reason, this will be immensely
satisfying to me. Of course, the real question is "
How the hell does he do that?"
Listen:
His books are hearbreakingly sad, and hilariously uplifting - sometimes in the same breath.
They pull off the neat trick of being highly important works of literature, while remaining simply the deranged ramblings of a crazy person.
When reading one of his books once, someone asked me "Hey, what's it about?" I was stumped. What I couldn't explain was how they manage to be about everything - the human condition, life, existence - but at the same time about absolutely nothing at all.
Vonnegut has a cameo in the Rodney Dangerfield film "Back to School". The story is: this kid's rich father (Dangerfield) is trying to make life easy for his kid at college. He pays NASA to do his astronomy homework, and has 10 tiny student rooms converted into one giant luxury apartment. When the kid has to do a book report on a Kurt Vonnegut book, the dad pays Kurt Vonnegut himself to write it - which he does, and turns up personally to deliver it. The punchline of the cameo comes later in the movie, when everyone finds out that the kid isn't doing his own work: a teacher is berating the kid for lying. Brandishing the Vonnegut book report, to which he has given an 'F', he delivers the kicker: "And whoever wrote this obviously knows nothing about Vonnegut!" Vonnegut, self-deprecating to the end, probably thought that was just perfect. I can hear him watching the movie, shouting "Well, I don't!", and roaring with laughter. Later, when Dangerfield hears about the report, he calls up Vonnegut to complain. We come in at the end of the phonecall, to hear Dangerfield saying "Fuck me? Hey Vonnegut, fuck you!"
People who think this sort of thing is beneath Vonnegut clearly don't know him that well. He is very anti-elitist, and deliberately writes his books simply and plainly, so as not to exclude anyone from reading them. He is not a fan of literary critics, who have given him a hard time over the years. Just because his books are simple doesn't mean they are stupid - "Spot the Dog" books are also simple and concise, but they're not generally regarded as important works of art.
When I was 12, I discovered two of his books in the otherwise desolate school library. I then became the only student who had ever quoted Vonnegut in an essay. It wasn't very clever - I just peppered a story with "So it goes" a few times. Later I made my own version up. It was "That's how life goes". Let it never be said that I lack imagination.
Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut's alter ego, and a writer of some repute, often makes appearances in his books. Once said that "being alive is a crock of shit". He writes stories that usually appear in magazines with photographs of "wide open beavers". For a while now, these stories have only appeared in Vonnegut's books, in rough form. They are still better than my stories, though. It saddens me that a non-existent person is a better writer than I am. Still, that's the way life is. See what I mean?
It is very important that you read all of Vonnegut's books as soon as possible. I cannot tell you why, only that you must. You'll thank me for it one day.
This writeup is lovingly written in Vonnegut's style. I felt it needed to be, to enable me to talk about him properly. Whether I am successful or not isn't important - I liked it. Vonnegut once said "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." If I pretend to be someone who writes like Vonnegut, maybe one day I will be that person.