April 12, 2007
View Comments | Post Comment"Poo-tee-weet?"
I'm pretty sure every single blog post and half the articles written about Kurt Vonnegut's death will be titled with some variation of "Kurt Vonnegut is dead. So it goes." But that's okay. Vonnegut constantly reused characters and themes, so why can't his obits? But that New York Times obituary quotes a poem he wrote at the end of a short story in his final book:
When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.
-Kurt Vonnegut, Requiem
It's typical Vonnegut; both funny and fed up. And I love what I've read of Vonnegut's work, most notably Slaughterhouse-Five, but I just don't agree with him there. Not everyone hates their time on this Earth. Kurt Vonnegut was one of those people (usually writers, philosophers, other intellectuals, and hobos) who see adulthood as the cost of childhood; that we live out our lives before age twelve and then pay for that freedom until we die.
I share their reverence for childhood, but I don't share their distaste for the rest of life. The trick is to take the freedom, the impulsiveness, and the innocence of childhood, and use it with the greater self-determination and resources that come with adulthood. Children are not considered innocent because they haven't sinned, they are considered innocent because they sin with reckless abandon. They sin without even stopping to become aware of it. Adults have internalized guilt; when children are guilty, the guilt always comes from outside. And no one is a greater pleasure-seeker than a three year old.
Vonnegut expressed the guilt of our whole country, and did it in the only form people could stand to hear about it: jokes. And now as the blue and ivory pages of his life fade into history, he takes his place among the other great humans. He's dead, but in the ultimate validation of Tralfamadorian philosophy, his work will still be around forever. So it goes?
Posted at April 12, 2007 1:48 PM | Comments (1)
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I was very sad to find out Vonnegut had died. I was sitting in the lobby of a Doubletree hotel, waiting for some junkie chick I was mentoring to go apply for a job, and I picked up a newspaper. There he was.
I was happy to find out that he had not been, as I'd thought, a hermit like Salinger. He had lived out his later life with a loving family. That made me feel a lot better, knowing he wasn't sad and lonely. I don't really know what else to say...at least he didn't die of a drug overdose or a long, painful lingering disease. I am grateful for his life and his writing. I liked what you wrote about him.
And junkie girl said "who?"
Posted by: Lizzie at April 18, 2007 10:51 AM
