good night, mr. vonnegut

we read slaughterhouse five in my sophomore english class in highschool, and the day i sat down on the couch to start the book i found myself so transfixed that i read the whole thing then and there. i didn’t know what to do in class the next day when we were only talking about the first chapter or whatever because i couldn’t remember what hadn’t happened yet, so i probably balanced coke cans on the windowsill or something. i was into that for a while in that class.

anyway after that i was hooked, and over the course of the rest of highschool and the beginning of college, when i lived in new york city and used paperbacks were for sale for a dollar or two from random street vendors scattered every few blocks throughout the streets around NYU, i worked my way through every vonnegut book i could get my hands on, which is a tribute i have paid to very few authors. i think i got a kick out of digging up the more obscure titles because, after a point, every kurt vonnegut book is really the same story, and there’s a bit of a geekout factor in recognizing all the recurring themes and characters. it’s also kind of like you get a chance to read the same great book over and over again from a multitude of slightly different angles, and you get to see the ideas evolve over time, like the favorite conversation topics of a close friend.

vonnegut’s wit and cynicism was the perfect fuel for the mindset of my late teens. mortified by the horrors in the world,

so it goes was a rather frequent phrase in my emails of the period.

as he aged, mr. vonnegut became more and more cynical while i became less and less so, and over time we grew apart. i still displayed every title on my bookshelf, recommended them to friends when they came up, and my connection to indiana was surely different than it would have been had i not known it to be the state that he was happy to no longer call home. but i still haven’t read his most recent collection of essays, and i only skimmed some of the speeches and short stories i have encountered over the past few years.

i felt like his trademark points boiled themselves down over the years to a few tired diatribes, and i admit that i grew tired of his crankiness.
i felt bad about this, and i haven’t let myself really think about it because i think i was afraid i would respect him less, and i didn’t want that to happen to someone who played such a role in my ideological development. but when i think about that even just a tiny bit, i know it is silly. i know that i’m at a point in life when things still feel somehow hopeful and idealistic, and far be it from me to begrudge a brilliant and socially conscious man like kurt vonnegut the cynical retreat of his old age. the truth really is that i’m probably afraid that the same will happen to me, but if that’s the case i should continue to embrace the wisdom that maturity brings to those i admire. in the name of not diverting eyes from lessons most needed and all.

this became a bit rambly, so perhaps i should finish my tribute in another fashion. a story, perhaps. a napkin drawing. a bokonon foot orgy. a quote from the headstone in breakfast of champions, which is an unoriginal tribute i am sure – “Not even the Creator of the universe knew what the man was going to say next-perhaps the man was a better universe in its infancy.”

i can think of no better tribute, actually, than just continuing to live and write, knowing that onward life shall go.

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