Kurt Vonnegut, Dead at 84
Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday at the age of 84. He had apparently sustained a brain injury during a recent fall and that makes me sad.
And so it goes.
My homey Alex introduced me to Vonnegut via Cat’s Cradle and he’s been an influence on me since then. I’m particularly a fan of his short stories and keep a copy of Welcome To The Monkeyhouse in my glovebox in case I need it (and I usually do at least once a week). He’s made me laugh and made me think pretty critically about myself, my chunk of the world, and the world at large.
We had the pleasure of hearing him speak in April 1998 at Wash U’s Field House. I remember enjoying the gig even though I can’t recall what he talked about. He ended the engagement in the most clever way I’ve seen.
His talk led up to a point where he asked everyone to shake hands and introduce themselves to everyone around them. Not just next to you, but the folks in front of and behind. Everyone enthusiastically started making new friends.
Vonnegut used this activity to quietly walk off stage. In spite of Zeusian levels of applause, he apparently kept right on walking.
Brilliant.
A few things for your brain:
- Listen to him reading this clip from Breakfast Of Champions
- Refer to this older post of mine with a segment of Slaughterhouse 5.
- Read this fantastic essay called Cold Turkey
And so it goes.
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I’d forgotten the end bit but you reminded me. He didn’t just ask people to introduce themselves – he asked everyone to turn to a neighbor and tell them about their favorite teacher, which everyone enthusiastically did, so much that they didn’t notice he had walked off stage. I think perhaps the last bit of the talk had been about a childhood teacher of his which was the lead-in, but I really can’t remember much.
I think that was you, me, and Kyle at the talk?
Comment by Alex — April 12, 2007 @ 10:53 amWow, I did forget about that didn’t I. That’s even better.
It was us 3 and I seem to remember Scott being there too. We saw Sarah Mac at the Fox that night too.
I’ve got a clip of Vonnegut reading the Final Sentence Of Bokonon that I’ll append to this post when I get home tonight.
Comment by Nick — April 12, 2007 @ 12:26 pmYep I was there, too. I clearly remember the ending also, just as Alex described it. I remember a couple other things from that talk. He talked a little about the craft of writing a story. At one point, using a marker and marker board, he drew a graph supposed to represent the emotional highs and lows of the story (or main character?) – he started out drawing a line that was slowly rising, explaining that everything was going well at this point, and then – and then he made the line sharply plummet, and said “s**t!”, resulting in much laughter from the crowd. Also, related to this, he said that he tells his students that most stories or novels are lacking something at first: “el diablo”, or an adversary.
Comment by Shag — April 12, 2007 @ 1:42 pmJust wanted to drop a note to say thanks for the posting today. Vonnegut is my favorite writer far and above anyone else I have read. I have never been as much of an avid reader as Ali or you (Nick) but everything I ever picked up by him I read cover to cover within a day or days. I almost completely stopped reading for pleasure during college and grad school, and after that period it was reading/re-reading Vonnegut books that reminded me that how fun it is to read for pleasure.
Comment by Jake — April 12, 2007 @ 6:29 pmThanks Jake.
I just posted a short bit from a cd called Ice 9 Ballads by a guy called Dave Soldier. It’s the best 42 seconds of the whole cd.
Comment by Nick — April 15, 2007 @ 7:18 am