Born in Indianapolis in 1922, Kurt Vonnegut grew up during the Great Depression. On his way to serve as a POW in World War II, his mother committed suicide. But they don’t let you out of the
BIG ONE for things like ‘dead mother’ so during his POW stint he survived the firebombing of Dresden which is estimated to have killed as many as 200, 000 people. His experience with suffering spawned a simple philosophy which I occasionally, sadly choose to ignore: “Be kind to one another”.
The following is a timeline of how Kurt Vonnegut has affected my life. Some dates have been approximated for fun.
July 30, 1974 – The words “Kurt”, “Vonnegut” and “Jr.” appear nowhere in my name.
October 15, 1988 – Read ‘Harrison Bergeron’ in a short story anthology for high school English Class. Its accompanying illustration is a little too literal for my taste. Let’s leave something to the imagination, shall we, Mr. Norton?*
May 30, 1996 – After college at Emory in Atlanta, Mitch Perlman becomes my roommate bringing with him an extensive Vonnegut collection.
June 15, 1996 – One of the web designers at iXL video where I’m interning puts a trivia question on a site which probably
should have read as follows:
Question: “How many times does the phrase ‘So it goes’ appear in Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Slaughter House Five’?
Answer: You are a nerd.
September 6, 1996 – Read Mitch Pearlman’s copy of ‘Slaughter House Five’. Somewhat disappointed.
September 20, 1996 – Read Mitch Pearlman’s copy of ‘Breakfast of Champions’. The great Vonnegut Binge of '96-97 begins.
December 27, 1996 – Find copy of ‘Deadeye Dick’ at used bookstore in Miami. Feel slightly guilty that he won’t profit from the purchase.
March 1, 1997 – Bored and possibly unemployed, head to Decatur Public Library and read literary criticism of Vonnegut. I don’t remember anything, but the gist of it was they like him.
March 5, 1997 –Luke Anderson recently recounted the following anecdote which took place around or about the date posted. The following has been edited for in-jokes:
“Briefly, I really did bump into Mr. Vonnegut standing in the hallway outside of a St. Louis college or high school theater that was doing a world premiere of his play. But it was he who was coming out of the play. I was already in the hallway because I'd come late. I'm going to have to re-remember everything about it and get back to you...it might very well have been exactly 10 years prior to last month's "brain injury"...give or take a month or so. Can't rightly say.”
The Levinarian:
“But the bookstore you were working at was selling his books at the performance, and you had to leave early because you were hosting movie night.”
Luke:
“We weren't selling his books, but I was working at the bookstore, and I was hosting movie night… Anyway, I arrived late, and/or knew that it was sold out and that I couldn't stay long so it wasn't worth buying a ticket, or something, and I missed the part where he was introducing the play, or maybe I couldn't hear it b/c I was outside in the hall... The lights went down, the music/sound effects started, I watched through the little windows and noticed him in the back of the house, not far from me, and he seemed agitated and grouchy, and I stayed outside for the first few minutes of the play, going over in my head what I could possibly say if I had the chance... I looked away or something, and then suddenly the door was swinging out into my face, and maybe I put out my hand or foot or whatever and stopped it, and it hit him right in the implant-- I mean, in the forehead, or forearm, or something, and in that irreparably awkward moment of eye contact, I managed to mumble, "What do you think so far?" I thought that was pretty good, under the circumstances, considering it was the premiere for this particular music/text combination and so on, but he waved me away, grouchier than ever, and said something like, "I don't want to talk!" but I have the sense that it was shorter, like "Shh!" or "Oh, never mind!" or whatever. I saw him a few minutes later, outside having a smoke, and hung around for a while trying to think of what to say or do next. I couldn't come up with anything and left to go host movie night, but I breathed his secondhand smoke, which is something not many people can say. Well, actually, judging from the mentions of Manhattan cocktail parties in his obituaries, a lot of people can say that... “
Delighted, I go on to tell this anecdote many times at cocktail parties and car shows.
April 30, 1997 – On the way to my editing internship at ‘Whoa! Films’ I listen to panel discussion on NPR featuring Kurt Vonnegut. Upon arrival find radio inside and continue listening.
I do not become a video editor.
June 6, 1997 – Notice Kurt Vonnegut’s name in the credits of Ken Burn’s ‘The Civil War’ listed under ‘Other Voices’. Despite having seen this documentary many, many times, unable to identify which character he plays. Even today the internet offers no clue.** I guess that’s one mystery he’ll take to his grave since everyone else who worked on the film will most likely die before I get a chance to ask them.
November 5, 1997 – A film crew from New York is making a documentary in Atlanta and I as intern go to the airport to pick up the production manager.
“So you all live in New York?”
“We sure do.”
“I’d like to live there someday.”
“Why?”
“Oh, it’s stupid…”
“No, what?”
“Kurt Vonnegut said in this graduation address that everyone should live in New York for a year.”
“No, that was a hoax, he never said that. It was this writer in Chicago. See? http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/dubiousquotes/a/vonnegut.htm”
I am not invited back to the crew’s hotel room for pot smoking.
October 5, 1998 – Meet friend’s roommate Becky(?) who is reading ‘Sirens of Titan’.
Me: “Oh, you like Vonnegut?”
Becky: “Yeah, I’ve read a bunch of his stuff.”
Me: “Yeah, I went through a Vonnegut phase.”
Becky: “Yeah, I think most people go through a Vonnegut phase.”
Yeah, Becky and I do not go through a sex phase.
January 5, 1998 – Someone, somewhere, possibly on television, mentions Kurt Vonnegut’s story about a chess game that uses human pieces which are killed when ‘captured’. I think, “Hey, I’ve read that.”
December 15, 2001 – During Chess scene in ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’ I shake my head at how J.K.Rowling totally ripped off Vonnegut, and that millions of children will never know how well read I am.
September 1, 2002 – Move to New York and realize Kurt Vonnegut lives
somewhere around here….
And then he died. I didn’t know him, of course, but some authors say that all you need to know about them is in their books. I don’t know if Kurt Vonnegut ever said that so no help there.
Below are some of his lines that I committed to memory:
In this era of big brains, anything that can be done, will be done. So hunker down.
It wasn’t like he was going to write Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
A man who is tired of chicken is tired of life.
So it
*A google image search has failed to find the illustration and so the internet fails us.
** AGAIN with the internet failing...
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