Goodbye to Kurt
If you live long enough, you see the problem with satire is its basic need for order, from which it derives contrast. Kurt Vonnegut is being written up as a counter-culture icon, a humanist, a gentle madman who tweaked genre fiction into political commentary while dodging and weaving through critical traffic. His absurdist constructs were funny, especially in the sum of all parts conclusion that human endeavor is choreographed to assure a stranded Trafalmadorian spacecraft that replacement parts are coming. In some ways Vonnegut failed to provoke an institutional response to his work since carrying a tattered copy of SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE was deemed less harmful than throwing animal blood around the bosses’ office or bombing them back to the Stone Age for those who thought DOCTOR STRANGELOVE was a drama, not a comedy. If humor is dangerous its absence is more so. Richard Nixon was too preoccupied in 1969 to throw Vonnegut into jail. He was redesigning the uniforms of the White House security detail to resemble the Papal Swiss Guards, an idea that I think was drop dead brilliant.
Kurt’s great failure was to be overtaken by events, by a reality as dark as any fantasy. His best work occurred in the 50s and early 60s when absurdity was a batty uncle living over the garage smoking Luckies and yelling obscenities at the mail man. My favorite, THE SIRENS OF TITAN, helped prepare me for the vicissitudes of later life. Thanks, Kurt, and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
April 13th, 2007 at 7:17 am
Vonnegut himself asserted that a book was only a book, and that assailing books or their authors was like (I quote from memory) “donning a full suit of armor and attacking a hot fudge sundae.”
I’ve never been sure if he believed that or not. It was hard to tell with that man sometimes.
April 15th, 2007 at 10:10 am
I used to pass Kurt Vonnegut on 1st Avenue in New York City. I’d always give him that kind of I-see-you-and-know-who-you-are, but-won’t-make-a big-deal-out-of-it smile.
He was a big deal to me.
A long life. A productive life.
Lynne