NY Times article - Kurt Vonnegut dead at age 84
I remember the first words of the first Vonnegut novel I ever read.
"Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time."
I was sixteen at the time, and those were the most amazing words I had ever read. How did one become 'unstuck in time'? I knew what a Pilgrim was, and I got the symbolism of that imediately.. and through each of his novels I read, I expanded my mind.
I'm not ashamed to say I stole them from my high school library. The nuns would have flipped out anyhow if they found out that Breakfast of the Champions contained a cartoon drawing of an asshole. They wouldn't have understood. And no one ever checked them out but me, which made me believe that they were lonely.
And oh, those subtitles.. they were always so intriguing. "Goodbye, Blue Monday" , "A Duty-Dance with Death"... I fell in love with the art of subtitling, and for years, each one of my writings had a sub-descriptive.
I performed Who Am I This Time as a short skit during my brief foray in college, and for a long time, I identified with that work far more than I would have admited. Mr. Rosewater, Mr. Kilgore Trout, Billy Pilgrim... all the characters that were part of my formative years helped me when formulating my own characters. I wanted them to be as vibrant, as engaging, as able to comment socially and relevantly in a manner that didn't alienate the reader.
I always thought that someday I'd meet Kurt Vonnegut, and thank him for the world he opened up for me. That won't happen now. But I'm sure he heard it from thousands of other voices, in a career that spanned more lifetimes than I can imagine I'll ever live.
God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater.
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Comments: 29
The fact that I can recall that speaks loads to the impact he had on me.
How can it be anything but a dark day when we lose one that shone so brilliantly?
I just woke up (on the left coast, but still), and I found out from your article that one of my favorite writers had died.
I think Timequake is the only one of his novels that I haven't read. I'll have to rectify this soon.
Kurt Vonnegut on The Daily Show 9/13/05
I do remember reading somewhere that Vonnegut was a paid "hack" writer who needed to support his family and wrote various things at a furious pace before he became famous.
I am somehow thinking that a great quirky piece I read long ago in the Scholastic Reader about the computer who falls in love with a girl was one such piece. I should Google that sometime.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976958278
Anyone can say that Slaughterhouse is his best book, but I still stand behind the idea that Sirens of Titan is.... But all of his works are just stunning.