The northlondonhippy

Lis­ten: Kurt Von­negut is my favourite author.

Per­haps “was” would be more appro­pri­ate as one of the best writ­ers of the 20th cen­tury passed away in New York overnight and I feel like I’m mourn­ing a close relative.

If I’m hon­est, and I always am, I’d say I feel like I’m mourn­ing my spir­i­tual father.

I know that sounds silly, but Kurt Von­negut has been a major influ­ence on the way I think, the way I write and just over­all the per­son that I am today.

Kurt Von­negut was the first author who chal­lenged me and my ideas about what mod­ern writ­ing could aspire to be. He was a lit­er­ary genius of the high­est order and his depar­ture from the planet is a loss for us all.

If you haven’t read any Von­negut, then I implore you to seek out his work imme­di­ately. If I could, I would buy you all his com­plete col­lec­tion and then come to your house per­son­ally and read all of it out loud to you!

Yes, his writ­ing is that fuck­ing good!

The first Von­negut book I read was “Slaugh­ter­house Five” which is the story of Billy Pil­grim, a man unstuck in time. This is how it starts:

“Lis­ten: Billy Pil­grim has come unstuck in time.”

And he was.

The story flits around like a hum­ming­bird on acid, bounc­ing between the var­i­ous parts of Billy’s life, from his youth to his old age with ran­dom stops in between. OK, maybe not that ran­dom; as the book does con­cen­trate upon two key events in Billy’s life.

Billy’s expe­ri­ences as a POW in Dres­den dur­ing World War II mir­ror the author’s; both of them spent the fire­bomb­ing of Dres­den hun­kered down in the base­ment of slaugh­ter­house num­ber five, hence the title. Von­negut was deeply affected by his time as a pris­oner and as you read his semi-fictional account, you will see what I mean.

The book was pub­lished in 1969 at the height of the Viet­nam War. Here in 2007, at the height of the Iraq war, his words res­onate even more and take on a deeper significance.

Billy also spends time as a dif­fer­ent type of pris­oner; he is the star attrac­tion at a zoo on the planet Tralfamadore. He’s not alone as if mem­ory serves, he is meant to mate with a female human porn star. I can’t say for sure if this also mirror’s Mr. Vonnegut’s real life, but if there was one human wor­thy of cap­ture and dis­play by an alien race, it is cer­tainly Kurt.

I was 12 years old when I first read “Slaugh­ter­house Five” and it’s impact on me, even at that age, was immense. This wasn’t the sort of lit­er­a­ture I was given to read at school, though it cer­tainly should have been!

Actu­ally, I did do a school report on the book, but not before my par­ents had to pro­vide signed con­sent for me to do so. His books were con­sid­ered quite con­tro­ver­sial at the time. And I’m sad to say, that is even truer today. Vonnegut’s books are banned in many school libraries for their sec­u­lar human­ist overtones.

Fuck you, cen­sors! You all suck!

Von­negut always told the truth and he always ques­tioned author­ity. He mar­velled at the utter point­less­ness of exis­tence, the lim­it­less expanse of human greed and stu­pid­ity and the bleak end that awaits us all. His writ­ing puts all of this far more elo­quently than I ever could, but I’ve felt a deep affin­ity for his work. I don’t think you could mea­sure the influ­ence he has had on me if you tried.

I was at work last night, when I heard the news. I gen­uinely had trou­ble hold­ing back the tears. I feel like I’ve lost a mem­ber of my fam­ily, even though I’d never met the man.

That’s what good writ­ing is like; I felt like I knew him. More than that, I’ve often felt he was my spir­i­tual father, which I know is dumb thing to say, as well as an insult to my own (dearly departed) real father and Mr. Vonnegut’s real chil­dren. Actu­ally, I hope his chil­dren are not offended and they wel­come their spir­i­tual step­brother with open metaphor­i­cal arms.

I wouldn’t (pre­tend to) be a writer today if it weren’t for the impact Kurt Von­negut has had on me. I hope that when you read this very blog, you can sense his pres­ence guid­ing my words.

I’ll say it again, because it mer­its repeat­ing: If you have not ever read any­thing by Kurt Von­negut then please, I am urg­ing you to do so as soon as you can. The man under­stood the human con­di­tion bet­ter than most and read­ing his work will make you a bet­ter per­son. It will free your mind; at least I think it will, because it freed mine.

I’m sorry I can’t do more jus­tice to the man, his writ­ing and his life, but I’m just a lowly blog­ger, toil­ing in rel­a­tive obscu­rity. As much as I know I should leave it to his con­tem­po­raries, such as Nor­man Mailer and Gore Vidal, who will eulo­gise him in a man­ner more deserv­ing, I felt I had to add my voice to the many who are mourn­ing this true Amer­i­can original.

I’ll miss you, Kurt. Thank you. Thank you very much.

And so it goes. And so did he.

Comments are closed.