I know I've posted in this thread already, and I can't say I'm really shocked about his sudden death. He was - after all - an octogenarian and octogenarians can theoretically drop dead just like that, but I'm genuinely saddened because he was my favourite author and one of the few people I looked up to. One of my heroes. I'm not kidding.
Most of my heroes are dead now. Charles M. Schulz. Charlie Chaplin. Kurt Cobain. James Thurber. Henry David Thoreau. Graham Laidler. And now Kurt Vonnegut.
Only three of my heroes are still roaming this earth: Woody Allen, Jules Feiffer and Thom Yorke. Thank Gawd they're still creative and blowing my mind. Thank Gawd Jules Feiffer was one of Vonnegut's best friends and will keep him alive for me a little longer.
I've been re-reading excerpts of most of Vonnegut's books the last two days. Laughing my arse off when he's at his wittiest, trying to cough up that nasty lightbulb feeling in my throat when he is successfully moving his readers to tears. He was so talented, it made me jealous. But it was a healthy kind of jealousy. The kind of jealousy you can't do without. The kind of jealousy that makes you grow and try harder.
I discovered his works when I was still a teenager. Pick's, a second-hand bookstore in Ostend, had some of his evergreens (Slaughterhouse 5, Slapstick or Lonesome No More!, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, ...) and it was love at first sight. Here was someone who dared to speak up, raise his voice in a pleasurable way with irresistable humor and a breathtaking imagination. I thank him for that. I remember reading Breakfast Of Champions with a torchlight in bed when I was 15 or 16. I remember quoting excerpts from Timequake and Hocus Pocus to my stoner buddies when I was still a university student. I remember looking for comfort in Cat's Cradle and finding it in stupid Bokonian poems like
I wanted all things
To seem to make sense,
So we all could be happy, yes,
Instead of tense.
And I made up lies
So that they all fit nice,
And made this sad world
A par-a-dise.
I will miss this old geezer more than I miss my parents, and you can quote me on that. I will treat the 18 masterpieces in my bookcase (I miss only one, the pretty hard to find 'Jailbird') like relics from a better time and a better world. Vonnegut tried to open our eyes for coming disasters at a time when Al Gore was still a nobody and criminals like Bush, Dick and Colon were still sniffing coke and sipping Single Malt behind the wheels of their cars. We still had time to change back then. We still had time to choose a different course, but those days have gone. Soon it'll be game over. Vonnegut knew that and everyone who has some common sense left, knows that as well. One can only imagine the sad grin on his face when he sees how we fuck up. For good.
Call me emo, call me sentimental, but Vonnegut's death has hit me hard. Just like Schulz's death hit me hard back in the last days of the 20th century. It made me re-read 'Peanuts' for several weeks, and I have no doubt in my mind that I will be re-reading Vonnegut until Summer. Until I accept the loss of one of the greatest humans that ever walked this sad, lonesome planet.
Vonnegut smoked Pall Malls until he died (he started smoking them when he was 12, 13). He mockingly said he would sue that firm for not doing what it promised to do: kill him. He survived one of the ugliest and meanest battles in the history of mankind (the bombing of Dresden) and returned to America to document the scandal by writing his masterpiece 'Slaughterhouse 5'. He loved dogs and loved playing with them for hours, until the dog looked at him, asking itself: "What the fuck are you doing?" He adopted the kids of his sister when she died, and when his mother died, he tried to kill himself, but failed miserably. I guess he still had some stuff to do before he could go. Write the best books you'll find in any library, for instance. He died at the age of 84, which is the exact same age Kilgore Trout, his fictional alter-ego, dies at. He was prepared. He had witnessed and lived through enough of the stupidities of mankind, to take peace with the final adventure we all have to embark on sooner or later.
[From 'Slaughterhouse 5']
[From ' A Man Without A Country', his last book]
Last night, while I was thumbing through his oeuvre, my eyes became unpleasantly moist when I read the last page of 'Breakfast Of Champions'.
'Make me young, make me young, make me young!'
He will always be gorgeously young, alive and kicking when we care to read and re-read his books and his words of wisdom.
Please do so. I beg you.
-- alec, seriously grieving
