To whom it may concern: it is Springtime.
But it is not late afternoon. It is, appropriately enough, early, gray and damp, a little windy, if the waving trees I can see through the window are any indication.
Like all right-thinking fringe-dwellers who grew up in the ’70′s, I read and admired Kurt Vonnegut. I’m pretty sure I read all of his novels, but you know, dwelling on the fringe has its price, chief among them being many many brain cells get fire-bombed.
The news that Vonnegut passed away last night has had me limping along through the Web, following my click-happy index finger from site to site as I try to get the flow of my reaction into a single channel, where it will generate enough energy to complete my little eulogy.
And as I do this, I think, I am Billy Pilgrim. Billy without the intestinal distress, but Billy nonetheless, becoming unstuck in time, which you can do on the Web without really trying. You can jump from place to place, time to time, reading about today, tomorrow, yesterday, you can throw in some tangential strolls among the aliens, and voila, you’re back where you started, if a little more confused.
One thing I’m not confused about: Vonnegut had more influence on me and my way of thinking than I should admit. In a culture where success is mainly dependent on Being the Same, the decision to think for myself has had some hefty consequences, but it has thus far been pretty satisfactory.
“You’re democratic,” was what an English prof told me some years back, “it’s what I notice about you.” And it made me proud, in that I do try to be kind to others; it’s the only logical reaction to the workaday cruelty of our time, and can be linked straight back to my grasp of Vonnegut’s work.
While it’s tempting to simply say, “So it goes” to mark his passing, and I’m sure half the blogs in the sphere are doing just that, I think it more fitting to celebrate his life and times in this way: Be kind.
If you can do that, you, like Kurt Vonnegut, can rest in peace.
on April 13, 2007 at 8:54 am
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Got an offblog comment from Bimbo. She’s been butting heads with my comments section.
Here’s what she said:
“That “Vonnegut had more influence on me and my way of thinking than I should admit.”
and that “I think it more fitting to celebrate his life and times in this way: Be kind.”
Both summarize a tremendous amount about his impact, writing, and character. I’ve just read a comment in which the author said, “It occurs to me that of the great writers lost recently there doesn’t seems to be anyone coming up through the ranks who could even come close to filling thier shoes.” I’m going to call that Styron, Ivins, and Vonnegut, though there are probably others I’m overlooking. This comment bothered me- perhaps because I have my big girl authority pants on today. Pick up a book, lady. There are very promising and productive writers- not with their distinct voices (notice how Starry Night got painted once)- but definitely with their influence. It’s all over a couple generations and countless more ahead. They were the replacement parts for previous generations. I understand the wish that there was more from these authors- despite the abundance or maybe because of it- but somehow that struck me as ungrateful, or at least unaware. I’ll stop now, and pay attention and homage with “Be kind”.
on April 13, 2007 at 8:57 am
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So this is what I answered, with some editing to remove some of the idiocy:
“It is as it ever was, but I do sort of see her point. It’s a body of work thing, and today it’s difficult to carry the critical trust from work to work, because there are too many other distractions. Consider also that our collective Offense Threshold is now so very low that we spend way too much time being insensed over silly shit. I have this to say about that:
If everything is a crisis, then nothing is.
In one of the Doonesbury books, Bill Buckley wrote, in the foreward, that “…there is nothing so workaday as the merely remarkable.” It was about his advice to Trudeau not to end every sentence with an exclamation point, but it has larger applications, and is something to keep in mind when writing.
The authors mentioned carried with them the weight of influence and controversy. In their primary working years, it was still possible to address dense issues that were largely unexplored. Today, if you are thinking about something, chances are there a couple thousand blogs about that very thing.
On the other hand, to imply that there are no great authors today is foolish. And I’m not talking about that Harry Potter woman or Dan Brown. You just have to look at T.R. Pearson, Pat Conroy, Cormac McCarthy, and some others who are not Southern White Guys (heh). Can you tell where my reading tends to focus? When I’m not just grabbing something from the Kroger paperback section, I mean.
I am a huge John Le Carre fan, but I can’t convince anyone in my circle of his greatness.
You mentioned a few posts back that you are most proud of owning your own voice. And now, you throw away a line about authors today not having the distinct voices as those we are losing. This could be where the lady has her strongest argument. It may just be a voice thing.
Probably the best we can hope for is to find an author, or group of them, with singular voices that ring true for us.
Or we go out there and let them hear our voices.”
on June 6, 2007 at 11:49 pm
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