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By willtobe1 Date: 2007 Apr 15 Comment on this Work [[2007.04.15.22.30.1064]] |
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Vonnegut, O Vonnegut! Thank you, man, for having turned me on to that stuff. A few months ago I passed "Slaughterhouse Five" on to a girl at work (she had asked me in the hall one summer's day what would be good to read, and I've been sending her assorted books these two-or-so years hence...) and she had this to say: "he HAUNTS me!" So true, so appropriate. All of his books were interesting at the time, but so many little simple things that seemed so innocuous at the time have come back to HAUNT me at odd hours, over and over: * The most powerful force in the universe is the Universal Will to Become (Sirens of Titan) * "The worst thing in life is not to have been used by anybody" (Sirens of Titan) * "If the accident will..." (Slaughterhouse Five) * "He had an absolutely enormous wang. You never know who'll get one." (Breakfast of Champions) * "Mustard gas and roses" (the smell of alcohol breath) * "I have seen the curtains part in every variation of the final act. But the only woman who ever made me groan involuntarily did no more than remove her sandals." (Cat's Cradle) * "The moving finger writes and, having writ, moves on/Nor all your piety nor wit, shall call it back to cancel half a line/Nor all your tears wash out a word of it" (from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam, as quoted in "Breakfast of Champions" -- my all-time favorite bit of poetry) * "The black people would not put up with this. They went on talking english every which way. They would ask such impudent questions, as "Whuffo I wanna read no tale of two cities? Whuffo?" (Breakfast of Champions) * "That was I, that was me, that was the author of this book" (Slaughterhouse Five) * "Those fish were all extinct. They had turned belly-up years ago, had been flushed from the cave and into the Ohio river -- to go belly up, to go bang in the noonday sun" (Breakfast of Champions. Such an oddly sonorous and poetic-sounding phrase, to have risen thus alongside the vaporous stench of rotting fish...) * "I hope, when I am dead, that somebody will take me back through my life and show me, which were the good parts. I honestly can't tell." *"...and so it goes." * "and so on..." That line about showing him the good parts was the final theme of a lecture he gave that I got to see here in Louisville. He wore a plain colored tie with a single bold red asterisk on it, exactly like the simple asshole he drew in "Breakfast of Champions." It is so good to have been there and in a manner touched one who will touch all of Time. I had a sudden urge yesterday or day before, out of nowhere, to read 'Sirens of Titan" again, his great treatise on religion and our place in the universe. I wonder if he was at that time passing, and passing that then to me? I have not thought of Sirens of Titan for these many years. 'Course, it could have been pure incident..."if the accident will." It is altogether fitting that I end this with the most Vonnegutian line of all time (a better one than "so it goes," which implies resignation, inevitability, whereas this one will say continuity, a story ongoing) -- the manner in which he ended so many thoughts and with which I'm sure he himself will turn out to have ended... "and so on..." Thanks again, man |