"Bon voyage," I said. I disappeared.
And so reads the second-to-last page of my favorite Kurt Vonnegut book, Breakfast of Champions.
Slaughterhouse-Five was the only book I read from beginning to end while I was in college. I had a habit of resenting being told to read books, even if I really did want to read them. I was dying to finally get to In Cold Blood, White Noise sounded like a blast, I'd always wanted to tackle Dr. Zhivago. But all I did was skim them, bullshit my essay assignments, and shelve the books so I could read them after I graduated — on my own time, when I decided to sit down and take them in.
I was such a brat.
But I read Slaughterhouse-Five in its entirety, and then I read it again after I graduated. I almost never read books twice, because there are so many I haven't gotten to once. (I was mistaken in this post. I did read it twice, though I did it several years apart. If the kid in the post had spaced out his readings several years apart, it would have meant he read it the first time when he was a zygote.) The first time around, I tried skimming it the way I did with everything else, but Vonnegut's language was magnetic, and from the time I graduated college in May 1996 until around late 1999 when I moved to my second apartment in Brooklyn, every other book I read was a Vonnegut one.
It was completely intentional. Those three-and-a-half years were a tremendous transition time for me. I lived at home for two years after graduating, then moved to New York, where my entire life changed. I rented an apartment in Bay Ridge — a lovely neighborhood located down by the Verrazano Bridge where I knew I could afford to live alone and get my bearings. And it took a while to get my bearings: Acclimating to living anywhere new is like carrying a hippopotamus on your head, and I'd up and relocated with no job, no apartment, only a handful of friends, and a lot of fear. I don't regret a single second of what I did or how I did it, but Bay Ridge is somewhat isolated from greater New York City and I craved companionship, levity, intellectual stimulation, and a bit of wildness. Kurt Vonnegut provided all of that for me.
It was Breakfast of Champions that taught me that there is no limit to what can be put on a blank page. One look (and about eight minutes of hysterical laughing) at a sketch he drew in the middle of a page of a vagina and I saw how Vonnegut stretched the format of the novel. (He was illustrating the difference between beavers of the dam-building woodland-creature variety and, uh, other beavers.) He tested the written word, a reader's comprehension for supposed normalcy, he gave us the benefit of the doubt that we'd "get it."
Around that time, I dated This Guy. I can't say I remember that particular entaglement with any kind of fondness; it was one of those ridiculous situations where we were never officially together but we had to officially break up, so there was all of the headache and none of the benefit. But there were two things about him that I always found appealing: 1) He was a fan of Neil Finn, my fantasy husband; and 2) his favorite Vonnegut book was Breakfast of Champions. When we realized we both loved that book, we had a poseur moment of "Woooooah" that I firmly believe prodded the speedy acceleration of whatever it was we were doing together (which prodded the less speedy and, therefore, less enjoyable, deceleration of whatever it was we were doing together). At 24, being a Vonnegut fan automatically gave you coolness cred. I'd never had coolness cred before. I dug it.
Also around that time, I went to one of his readings at a Barnes & Noble. He stood up and I nearly fell out of my chair. He was so tall. So tall and lanky. I'd always gotten the impression he was a more slight man, but he was a towering force. Such a metaphor — I always thought whatever he put out felt like a surprise, even if he used the same characters.
So when I turned on the TV yesterday morning and the first thing I saw was Kurt Vonnegut's face, I burst into tears. I didn't have the volume on but I didn't have to hear the filed interview to know he was gone. Reading his books taught me that while I wasn't 100 percent sure what kind of writer I was, I could be any kind of writer I chose to be, and that I could say something strong and still make people laugh. It sounds hokey, but I think it's an important lesson for any young writer (and jeebus, was I young then). I'm grateful to have gotten that lesson from him.
Slaughterhouse-Five was the only book I read from beginning to end while I was in college. I had a habit of resenting being told to read books, even if I really did want to read them. I was dying to finally get to In Cold Blood, White Noise sounded like a blast, I'd always wanted to tackle Dr. Zhivago. But all I did was skim them, bullshit my essay assignments, and shelve the books so I could read them after I graduated — on my own time, when I decided to sit down and take them in.
I was such a brat.
But I read Slaughterhouse-Five in its entirety, and then I read it again after I graduated. I almost never read books twice, because there are so many I haven't gotten to once. (I was mistaken in this post. I did read it twice, though I did it several years apart. If the kid in the post had spaced out his readings several years apart, it would have meant he read it the first time when he was a zygote.) The first time around, I tried skimming it the way I did with everything else, but Vonnegut's language was magnetic, and from the time I graduated college in May 1996 until around late 1999 when I moved to my second apartment in Brooklyn, every other book I read was a Vonnegut one.
It was completely intentional. Those three-and-a-half years were a tremendous transition time for me. I lived at home for two years after graduating, then moved to New York, where my entire life changed. I rented an apartment in Bay Ridge — a lovely neighborhood located down by the Verrazano Bridge where I knew I could afford to live alone and get my bearings. And it took a while to get my bearings: Acclimating to living anywhere new is like carrying a hippopotamus on your head, and I'd up and relocated with no job, no apartment, only a handful of friends, and a lot of fear. I don't regret a single second of what I did or how I did it, but Bay Ridge is somewhat isolated from greater New York City and I craved companionship, levity, intellectual stimulation, and a bit of wildness. Kurt Vonnegut provided all of that for me.
It was Breakfast of Champions that taught me that there is no limit to what can be put on a blank page. One look (and about eight minutes of hysterical laughing) at a sketch he drew in the middle of a page of a vagina and I saw how Vonnegut stretched the format of the novel. (He was illustrating the difference between beavers of the dam-building woodland-creature variety and, uh, other beavers.) He tested the written word, a reader's comprehension for supposed normalcy, he gave us the benefit of the doubt that we'd "get it."
Around that time, I dated This Guy. I can't say I remember that particular entaglement with any kind of fondness; it was one of those ridiculous situations where we were never officially together but we had to officially break up, so there was all of the headache and none of the benefit. But there were two things about him that I always found appealing: 1) He was a fan of Neil Finn, my fantasy husband; and 2) his favorite Vonnegut book was Breakfast of Champions. When we realized we both loved that book, we had a poseur moment of "Woooooah" that I firmly believe prodded the speedy acceleration of whatever it was we were doing together (which prodded the less speedy and, therefore, less enjoyable, deceleration of whatever it was we were doing together). At 24, being a Vonnegut fan automatically gave you coolness cred. I'd never had coolness cred before. I dug it.
Also around that time, I went to one of his readings at a Barnes & Noble. He stood up and I nearly fell out of my chair. He was so tall. So tall and lanky. I'd always gotten the impression he was a more slight man, but he was a towering force. Such a metaphor — I always thought whatever he put out felt like a surprise, even if he used the same characters.
So when I turned on the TV yesterday morning and the first thing I saw was Kurt Vonnegut's face, I burst into tears. I didn't have the volume on but I didn't have to hear the filed interview to know he was gone. Reading his books taught me that while I wasn't 100 percent sure what kind of writer I was, I could be any kind of writer I chose to be, and that I could say something strong and still make people laugh. It sounds hokey, but I think it's an important lesson for any young writer (and jeebus, was I young then). I'm grateful to have gotten that lesson from him.
Labels: pop culture, tributes
posted by Marla at 11:22 AM
2 Comments:
Beautiful and touching!
Maria C.
You have a knack for writing. You should look into it for a career.
dad of boolise
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