Kurt Vonnegut is dead
Thursday, April 12, 2007
I didn't discover Vonnegut's books until 1985. I don't remember which once I read first but I guess it would probably have been 'Slaughterhouse Five'. Whatever it was, I then bought all the Panther paperback books of his that I could find. Gollancz did 'The Sirens of Titan' and Penguin did 'Cat's Cradle' but the rest were published by Panther.
He wrote in a way that made reading his books easy. The humour was sometimes wonderfully childish, the plots could be weak, and his politics bordering on the simplistic. None of this really mattered because, somehow, you knew you were getting it straight. He had 'no side', as my mother would say. And he was a master of cutting through the crap. He had a scalpel for shit penetration. He was like a favourite uncle who treats you like a grown-up, who tells you the things your parents find hard to share with you, who knows you're able to accept the truth about anything. In 'Breakfast of Champions' he describes the U.S. national anthem as "gibberish sprinkled with question marks." He could mock the pomposity and hypocrisy of accepted standards of behaviour because he did so, not from a position of superiority, but because he recognised his own human frailities. No wonder he loathed Dubbya and his cabinet of shrubs - a president well worthy of the gibberish of the national anthem.
In 1985 I was working at Waterstone's on the Charing Cross Road. There was a mystery and science fiction bookshop across the way in Denmark Street and Vonnegut was scheduled to appear at a book signing there on the UK publication of 'Galapagos'. I went, eager to get my copy signed. Vonnegut was unwell and had to call off. So it goes.
He wrote in a way that made reading his books easy. The humour was sometimes wonderfully childish, the plots could be weak, and his politics bordering on the simplistic. None of this really mattered because, somehow, you knew you were getting it straight. He had 'no side', as my mother would say. And he was a master of cutting through the crap. He had a scalpel for shit penetration. He was like a favourite uncle who treats you like a grown-up, who tells you the things your parents find hard to share with you, who knows you're able to accept the truth about anything. In 'Breakfast of Champions' he describes the U.S. national anthem as "gibberish sprinkled with question marks." He could mock the pomposity and hypocrisy of accepted standards of behaviour because he did so, not from a position of superiority, but because he recognised his own human frailities. No wonder he loathed Dubbya and his cabinet of shrubs - a president well worthy of the gibberish of the national anthem.
In 1985 I was working at Waterstone's on the Charing Cross Road. There was a mystery and science fiction bookshop across the way in Denmark Street and Vonnegut was scheduled to appear at a book signing there on the UK publication of 'Galapagos'. I went, eager to get my copy signed. Vonnegut was unwell and had to call off. So it goes.
Labels: 1985, Kurt Vonnegut, Waterstone's
