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Rumpus Book ClubEverything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt
To this point, I have made myself sound every bit the loyal Vonnegut disciple. But by the middle of my senior year, I felt vaguely ashamed of my thesis, and specifically that it was about Vonnegut.
I had discovered Bellow by then; Henderson the Rain King had ripped my head off. In my upper level classes, we were studying The Illiad and The Inferno and Lear. My classmates were using phrases like “transcendental signifier” – and they meant it. My pal Steve Metcalf was writing his thesis about Ulysses, which struck me as perhaps the most sophisticated thing one could do on earth, aside from being James Joyce himself.
I began telling people that my thesis was about authorial presence in the modern text, that it was about John Barth and Milan Kundera, though, in the end, I devoted five pages to these authors. I renounced Vonnegut. He became another childish pleasure I would now have to hide from the world. (Others included: candy consumption, a weakness for prog rock, a tendency to conduct imaginary discussions with my twin brother.)
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The Vonnegut Apostasy.
It happens to thousands of readers every year. They reach a point in their lives where they turn away from Vonnegut, toward authors who offer a greater complexity of prose, a more nuanced version of the world, whose authorial mission entails an examination of individual consciousness, rather than collective fate. I would wager that Vonnegut is the least acknowledged influence in modern letters.
In my case, I should admit that vanity, not boredom, was the culprit. I felt that my worship of Vonnegut marked me as somehow lacking in depth, which, as an English major at an elite liberal arts college, was the one thing I wanted to project. Copping to Vonnegut made me feel like a dork.
The feeling has lasted a long time.
I am still embarrassed to admit how much Vonnegut meant to me. When I am asked to name favorite books or authors, I gravitate toward the ones that look the most respectable on paper, and leave Vonnegut off the list.
But it’s more than embarrassment, I think. It has something to do with the way artists absorb influence. They tend to focus on those figures whom they discover later in life, when they have some coherent self-concept of themselves, and the vocabulary to articulate the conscious facets of their admiration. It was easy enough for me to identify Bellow as an inspiration because I read him thinking: this man is my inspiration! Vonnegut got into the groundwater before my ambition took root.
In this sense, as I’ve suggested, he was more like a parent. And what was the reward for all his hard work? He got taken for granted.
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Vonnegut’s books remain critically underappreciated. But I don’t really give a shit about critical appreciation. As a measure of cultural influence, it turns out to matter a lot less than an expensive hairstyle. The real issue here isn’t his role as an author, but as a Prophet.
I’m in no position to lecture anyone on Biblical matters, as I find the Holy Books to be wishful poetry for the most part. But I do know the basic plot of the Prophetic books: Prophet warns the people to shape up. The people don’t listen. The Prophet winds up howling in hole. This is the plot of Vonnegut’s life.
People may regard him as a literary legend and all the rest of that glitzy stuff, but nobody with any sort of power has heeded his call.
One wonders now where our leaders got the idea that mass torture would work to our advantage in Indochina. It never worked anywhere else. They got the idea from childish fiction, I think, and from a childish awe of terror.
Vonnegut wrote this 35 years ago.
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Let me offer one more Vonnugget before I move on to the literary excavation that closes this wobbly triptych:
I now believe that the only way in which Americans can rise above their ordinariness, can mature sufficiently to rescue themselves and to help rescue their planet, is through enthusiastic intimacy with works of their own imaginations.
This is Vonnegut in a wildly optimistic mood.
In darker moments, he has expressed an equally convincing belief that our greatest works of literature will amount to nothing more than toilet paper. This has been, as far as I can tell, the central existential struggle of his life: does what I do matter?
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I can’t blame him for his doubts. Vonnegut has now been writing for nearly half a century. He has been preaching the same line as Jesus on the Mount: humility, pacifism, intolerance for all forms of human suffering.
During the late Sixties, he might even have believed that America was going to right itself. Instead, he has watched the country fall under the spell of leaders who demand nothing from us but the indulgence of our darkest impulses. He has watched his fellow citizens shrink before his eyes, become idolaters of convenience, screen addicts, brutes who cheer for death and call themselves patriots. He has watched the popular press, and the so-called opposition, cower before their moral duties.
And so we come (at last) to the point. Why, after twenty years, am I taking up with Vonnegut again? The cynical answer would be because he will soon be gone. That is getting it all exactly backwards. I am writing about Vonnegut now not because he is leaving us, but because we have left him.
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November 11th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
I spent a good part of my day at work reading this and it’s really wonderful. Thank you.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Thank you for sharing this.
I also was one of those irrevocably changed by reading all Vonnegut’s books before the age of 18. His work provided the mentorship I sorely needed.
The day he died I woke at 6 a.m. to a text message from an estranged friend who broke the news. I went to work in a daze. I was more stunned (I know it’s sad to say) than I had been by the news of my grandparents deaths. Somehow Kurt Vonnegut had for me a more certain familial bond.
It’s difficult to distill the impact Vonnegut has on his readers, but you’ve done a splendid job here, Steve Almond. It is an emotional effect, to be sure. Somewhere along the line I, too, stopped listing Vonnegut among my favorite authors. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:06 am
Great piece Mr. Almond. I was working at chain bookstore when Vonnegut died and had several weeks earlier convinced the merchandising manager to let me replace her Ayn Rand display with Vonnegut. The top row was all Breakfast of Champions, still my favorite Vonnegut, and the book I most often suggested to people when they asked me what I liked to read.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:43 am
This is one of the finest essays about the formation of a writer (or, in this case, two writers) that I’ve ever read.
November 12th, 2009 at 6:11 am
i think it’s important to think about what vonnegut would want us to do in the face of our current moral challenges. he made things quite simple, as did Jesus in the beatitudes. he implored for our decency. when i think about what he faced, and how he coped, i’m both grateful and heartbroken. we’re wasting so much love on this earth.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Don’t mean to be a dick, but it’s Delano. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Sorry, I get douchey about spelling.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Thanks for pointing that out Jono. It’s been corrected.
November 13th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
I have never read Vonnegut but was captivated nonetheless by your thoughtful essay. I also went to a college that basks in the unmistakable glow of prosperity, in my case Bard, so I can relate to that part of the piece, although I never read Vonnegut while I was there. No one I knew was reading him. We were too busy trying to decode Derrida and Lacan, I suppose. After college, I lived with an English professor, a literary critic who would periodically make pronouncements like “there’s really no point in reading modern fiction,” or “modern poetry is dead.” It’s amazing sometimes how easily the things people say to you can shape what you read. What an idiot I was to listen. So thank you so much for introducing me to this wonderful author (I adore the quote you found in a letter to him: “I’m afraid I have an almond macaroon for a heart when it comes to your writing.” That is now tattooed on my brain).
It is very timely, I think, to reconsider Vonnegut, now more than ever in this politically challenging and environmentally vexing historical moment. As you rightly point out, there is a real lack of love in this country as far as what we choose to do, what we choose to ignore and way too much self-aggrandizement. Hello, facebook, anyone? How is it that we are so thoughtless and unkind? I am left with the image of Vonnegut himself, old and wizened, facing an audience of many, carefully crossing the stage alone so as not to trip over the microphone cord…and no one there to help him across.
Thanks again for this riveting essay.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Very happy I took the time. Thank you.
November 20th, 2009 at 2:38 am
I wasn’t sure if I’d get through the 60 pages, but I couldn’t put it down (in a matter of speaking)…thankyou!
November 25th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I mean, in a manner of speaking.. not matter of speaking.
September 29th, 2010 at 11:27 pm
This may be the best thing I’ve read this year.
November 11th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
It’s late and much later than when I started, but worth the lateness. Thanks.
November 11th, 2010 at 10:03 pm
I just enjoyed that in one gulp! Smashing read. Yours too, Stephen. Thanks for sharing.
November 11th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
and now it’s going to haunt me in bed.
November 22nd, 2010 at 8:14 pm
so wonderful to see this again.
January 27th, 2011 at 10:25 pm
Steve,
I met Mr. Vonnegut very briefly after a commencement address he gave at a college in Atlanta about ten tears ago. My son’s girlfriend was in the graduating class. My only acquaintance with Mr. Vonnegut’s work was via a small movie called “Who am I this time?” which was probably based on one of his short stories.
I liked his speech, and really love the movie – so I wanted to get his autograph. He was standing on the landing of a campus building, with a single police bodyguard. It seemed to me that he had just gotten away from the milling crowd, maybe to have a smoke, though I don’t remember if he was smoking. The bodyguard tensed a bit as I approached, but relaxed as he saw I was friendly.
As to the autograph, Mr. Vonnegut said something like ” I don’t do those. Once you start there is no end to it.” I was disappointed, but, reflexively held out my hand, saying “well, thanks anyway”. He shook hands with me. He seemed very kind and not the least bit ‘affected’ in any way.
Steve, I really enjoyed this article. The part about many, many failures finally teaching you how to succeed rings true. Your humor is wonderful.
I will now go about reading some Vonnegut, and some more of your work.
Thank you.