I actually didn’t want to write a piece on Kurt Vonnegut, and I still don’t. I’m not certain why, except that his powers of observation and his wit leaves a warm feeling in me that I don’t want to go away. But he died on Tuesday night, and he probably knew he was going to at least a year ago - he was like that.

Yesterday I surfed through the internets and, as usual in cases like this, continually ran across the posts: Kurt Vonnegut, RIP, again and again. RIP? Why couldn’t someone who felt the need to express this sentiment write it out in its entirety - Requiescat in pace, or even just “Rest in Peace”. How nice that would have been, had they taken the time, but no. It's: Kurt Vonnegut, RIP.

Not that Vonnegut would have cared. Vonnegut wanted everyone to say “And now he’s in heaven”, so they could all get a good laugh. And with apologies to Rita Mae Brown, I imagine that Vonnegut might be saying, “Now I’ll *really* raise hell”. The ultimate curmudgeon, and I think, the ultimate American patriot.

It’s odd, but I haven’t read every book ever written by Vonnegut, not by far, but I have read some. “Sirens of Titan”, "Cat’s Cradle", Breakfast of Champions". Never read ‘em. What a treat I have in store, as though I’ve been saving it up, and now I’m fixin’ a feast.

I thumbed through what I do have, and I couldn’t find “Slaughterhouse-Five”. I know I had it at one time. I realized that it was one of the ones eaten by termites, long ago at Oconee Street, and suddenly I think that would make him laugh. So ok, I’ll write about how much I enjoyed him.

I didn’t read Vonnegut for his storylines and plots. I read him for the delight of his words. I’m not so well-read, and so it would be foolish to suggest that Vonnegut invented all his cleverness without help from giants. It’s quite possible he did - and if you *are* well-read, do tell me who those giants might have been.

Here’s something that delighted me. It’s from “Slaughterhouse-Five”, and I actually found it on the internets, since my copy was eaten by termites. It’s stuck with me for many years, somehow, as hilarious:

"Billy heard Mr. Eliot Rosewater come in and lie down. Rosewater’s bedsprings talked a lot about that."

“Slaughterhouse-Five”. Certainly as bizarre a novel as has been written, in which Vonnegut’s alter ego, Billy Pilgrim, becomes “unstuck in time” and experiences every moment of his life at the same time. He knows everything that will happen to him from his birth to his death - it’s all the same. I saw the remarkably well-done movie in the mid-70s, after reading the book, and was captivated by, of all things, the firebombing of Dresden, an event that POW Vonnegut actually survived.

I have three copies of his book of short stories, “Welcome to the Monkey House”. Now how did that happen? All those short stories are early works, but every one is precious.

It’s likely that many will know of “Harrison Bergeron”:

"The Year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Noblody was better looking than anybody else. All this equality was due to the the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General." (1961)

Who, as you may know, will be the Handicapper General Diana Moon Glampers.

And then there’s the title story, “Welcome to the Monkey House” ( 1968 ), which is so full of rich humor that I hardly know where to begin. The theme is overpopulation, and the heavy, poorly tuned hand of the State. Everyone has to take pills that make them nerveless below the waist, to prevent procreation, and which have the property of turning their urine blue. Seniors are wooed to the Howard Johnson Suicide Parlors, and there are Foxy Grandpas who only go to tease and flirt with the Virgin Hostesses, who are determined to lure them into euthanasia. How about this:

I did not sow, I did not spin,
And thanks to pills I did not sin.
I loved the crowds, the stink , the noise,
And when I peed, I peed turquoise.

I ate beneath a roof of orange;
Swung with progress like a door hinge.
'Neath purple roof I’ve come today
To piss my azure life away.

Virgin hostess, death’s recruiter,
Life is cute, but you are cuter.
Mourn my pecker, purple daughter -
All it passed was sky-blue water.

I think you can probably see that Vonnegut didn’t pull his aim, whether at the left or the right - he was an equal opportunity skewerer, and yet he did it with a gentle though dark humor.

There’s “Miss Temptation” (1956), which is an extraordinarly sweet story that will make you cry.

There’s the very clever “Next Door”, in which young Paul is left alone while his parents go to a movie. Unfortunately young Paul gets involved in a possible murder next door, possibly by some kind of a floozy, an assault that the frantic floozy has bribed Paul to forget about. Paul’s parents return home, and his mother confronts him:

She brought out the ball and held it under Paul’s nose. “Now would you mind telling Mommy what we have here?” she said gaily.

The ball bloomed like a frowzy chrysanthemum, with ones, fives, tens, twenties, and lipstick-stained Kleenex for petals. And rising from it, befuddling Paul’s young mind, was the pungent musk of perfume.

Paul’s father sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?” he said.

Paul’s mother rolled her eyes. “Tabu,” she said.

“More Stately Mansions” (1951) is probably one of the saddest stories I’ve ever read, and it’s only twelve pages long. And yet, at the end, the most pathetic character, Grace, despite her delusions, is suddenly revealed as the most resilient.

There are two wonderful, funny, science fiction stories: “Report on the Barnhouse Effect” (1950), and “The Euphio Question” (1951), but I will leave you to enjoy those.

There’s the very odd, very compelling “Deer in the Works” (1955), about how an interviewee at the Ilium Works in Troy, NY, loses his opportunity for a job.

There are many stories in this book but certainly the sweetest of all is “Adam” (1954).

One of the things I like about “Welcome to the Monkey House” (and I reread it every few years, with great joy) is that I feel completely comfortable with this amazing variety of writing, though it is half a century written. I’ve read James Thurber, and Shirley Jackson, and all I could think was that everything I read was so dated that I simply could not relate to it, and it spoiled my enjoyment. Not so with Vonnegut’s early stories - he wrote about things that matter all the time, and didn’t distract with the currency of the era. Somehow he knew how to do that, and the stories play well even now.

I gather that Vonnegut’s later work got considerably panned. I can’t imagine why, except that people were looking for a good story, and let’s face it - storylines were the lesser part of what Vonnegut wrote. He had ideas that the story might be a vehicle for, but he also had words that were put together in a way that is completely entertaining. If you couldn’t see the latter, then of course you’d pan it.

I’ve read a lot of sneering about “Galapagos” (1985) which I actually very much enjoyed. It was because I savored the knockout passages and the idea of the ultimate lack of fitness of “big brains”, an evolutionary trend that leads to the narrators of the story, a million years down the line. In the present, an Ecuadoran ecotourist voyage is about to set out for the Galapagos Islands, when the apocalypse occurs, and our tourists are the last humans left on earth. One of those tourists is Mary, a high school science teacher, and we see what “big brains” can do to you:

Mary had also taught that the human brain was the most admirable survival device yet produced by evolution. But now her own big brain was urging her to take the polyethylene garment bag from around a red evening dress in her closet there in Guayaquil, and to wrap it around her head, thus depriving her cells of oxygen.

Well, now how can you not continue with something like that?

NPR All Things Considered had several tributes to Kurt Vonnegut yesterday - they’re all a little disappointing, and can be found here. Some are better than others. I found Neal Conen’s very short piece to be fairly good, and at least there was the reading by Vonnegut from “Slaughterhouse-Five” reveals his ultimately gentle voice. Morning Edition also weighed in, but overall I thought NPR’s tribute approached pablum. A shame, but at least they tried. Between Anna Nichol Smith’s daughter’s father, and Don Imus, CNN never had the first mention of Vonnegut’s death.

I can’t find it at the moment, but Wednesday morning’s NPR also brought a tribute from Gore Vidal. I had mixed reaction to this.

Now, I’ve very much enjoyed reading Gore Vidal (you go, girl) over the many many years since I was in college, but for entirely different reasons. Vidal is a modestly intellectual leftist, we can be sure, but other than his clever writing has little sense of humor, and is cold and cynical. What you *don't* want to do is to listen to him talk. You want to run away screaming - please don’t let him talk. No matter how friendly or learned the question in an interview, his words always roll trippingly, contemptuously, down his nose. He’s like the opposite end of the political spectrum from William F. Buckley, Jr., but they could be brothers. They both sound like erudite, aristocratic, jaded snobs, bitter old men who know better than anyone else. Their voices impeach them.

Not so Kurt Vonnegut. It’s very clear (see here, and therein, and here too, for more) that he was tormented and saddened by what he saw as the degradation of a fine, idealistic United States of America, into a vacuous, senseless, materialistic mess presided over by psychopathic personalities. I cannot refute him. His soft, perplexed, but mischievous voice has always sounded like that of “A Man Without a Country”.