Listen.

I've learned a lot from Kurt Vonnegut and Kilgore Trout. One of them was a real earthling man who wrote make-believe stories and the other was a make-believe, futuristic man who wrote make-believe stories within the real earthling man's make-believe stories.

Hooray for make-believe stories!

Hooray for creative earthling minds!

The earthling man, Kurt Vonnegut, died just one earthling day ago, which - come to think of it - means the make-believe man died yesterday too. Somehow through their books, they both taught me the kinds of things you can't learn by reading books.

Hooray for books!

Hooray for learning!

I laughed my way through my first Vonnegut book when I was eighteen years old. I read it in 1991 in a square room on the fourth floor of an all-female dormitory in Athens, Ohio. I am speaking of my alma-mater, Ohio University, where WWII POW and survivor (along with Vonnegut) of the Slaughter-House Compound Gifford Doxsee now teaches history. I don't know Doxsee but I want to mention him here because he was, at least at one point in time, a member of Vonnegut's karass. And maybe by mentioning him I become, by extension, part of that same karass. Actually, I'm fooling myself. And you too. As Vonnegut's own Hoosiers example illustrates, my relationship here is something more of a granfaloon.

(Look. Right now I'm wondering why granfaloon has a full, referenced entry at wikipedia and karass does not. Clearly, the concept of karass - a collective group of individuals working together and moving time forward together to meet God's will - is more important than the false conditions of the same word, a granfaloon. But I've learned there, at the wikipedia site, which anyone can edit as everyone knows, that granfaloon as a psychological technique existed before Vonegut's use of the word. And yet. And yet hierarchically, Vonnegut's definition of the word comes before the definition of the psychological technique in the wikipedia listing. That's interesting.

(Hey. You can't believe everything you read online. You know that, right? My doctor told me that. Vonnegut, by the way, didn't read things online. Beau says he loathed computers, which is too bad. He would have written a compelling blog.)

I can't remember which of his books I read after Deadeye Dick. But I've read them all. I've read them and read them and read them until the scenes and characters and themes from each began to swim and somersault and twist together in my mind.

Since that day my mind has been systematically processing every Kurt Vonegut-related reference into a single book. I don't know its title. What should we call it? I need a title for that one make-believe Vonnegut book that exists only in my creative earthling mind.

Naming things is hard. Babies. Books. Bands. A name puts a stop to one phase of a thing's creation. It defines a thing indefinitely. The name of a book, especially, is such a permanent thing. Bands break up and reunite and split into solo careers. Babies grow up and take nicknames and married names and professional names. Book titles always stay the same.

Vonnegut liked books. He thought it would be a shame if his grandchildren grew up without experiencing books. Again, we could blame the Internet. But there's nothing to blame. His grandchildren will always have books. And so will their grandchildren always have books. They will be green and hard-covered and stacked up the walls.

Vonnegut was not a religious man. He was a humanist, but he understood that the choice not to have faith was an option most often exercised by members of a privileged class. He felt lucky to have that option. In many other ways, he did not feel lucky. He warned us that the history and politics and societal trends in this country were not on the luckiest of streaks. We are rolling the dice with the current administration. I imagine that's what he would have said if he were asked to resort to this trite little metaphor I've gone and created here.

Despite (or maybe because of) his not being a religious man, nor a particularly patriotic man, Vonnegut had a strong sense of the need for community. This is a clear theme throughout his books. I don't get much of a kick out of politics myself, but I do get a kick out of religion. The part of my faith that I subscribe most strongly to is the social justice part, which clearly has a foundation in the human need for community.

Am I getting any closer to claiming Vonnegut as part of my karass? Probably not.

Ordinarily, I mark the passing of time in years. At night I mark the passing of time in minutes. In this earthling year 2007 I turned 34 and Vonnegut would have turned 85. He would have written out the word eighty-five instead of the number 85. Trained in AP style, I type the number 85. Vonnegut, himself was trained as a PR hack like me and didn't start writing novels until after he spent quite a few years in the PR business. This is nice to know. Even PR-hacks like me can still have hope.

Hooray for hope!

Vonnegut despised semi-colons. I don't have much use for them either. I tend to edit them out of the articles I've been tasked to improve. I do have a foundness for em-dashes, though. Upon a quick inspection of a few of his books, I would guess that Vonnegut found little use for em-dashes. Me - I tend to over-use them.

Hooray for em-dashes! 

Vonnegut said, "Tellers of stories with ink on paper, not that they matter anymore, have been either swoopers or bashers. Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn't work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they're done they're done.

"I am a basher," he said, which surprised me. He said all of this, by the way, in Timequake, which he wrote with Kilgore Trout in 1996 when he (Vonnegut, not Trout) was 74. It was his last novel but not his last book.

Typically, I am a swooper. I tend to bash more when telling stories for work and swoop more when telling stories for this blog, which is also surprising. In this post, however, I have been bashing. (Strike that. It is now many, many earthing minutes later, and I am still swooping. I can't help myself.) 

The minutes of time that I'm marking here are getting away from me. I've intended all along to end this post with Vonnegut's three favorite quotes and to post-script it with the title of that all-encompassing, make-believe Vonnegut book I've been trying to name. I'll tell you right now that I came up with the title for that book in my own creative earthling mind somewhere in the middle of writing this post.

First, here are the quotes:

"How the hell did I do that?" - Ted Adler

"Who is it they say I am?" - Jesus

"We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is." - Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (his son)

Hooray for Vonnegut!       

(That was it. The title of the make-believe Vonnegut book in my creative earthling mind is Hooray for Vonnegut! Did you recognize it?)

(Okay, sorry. One final self-referential plug. After this I'll be done. If you have any interest in reading the last post I wrote as a tribute to a dead author in the style of said dead author, you should go here.)

Comments

[Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah]

Hooray for Vonnegut indeed.

[karen]

I never read him- i never really knew he existed(my bad, my bad) until a couple of yrs ago when i saw him on... Charlie Rose, i think.

He totally blew me away- even when i didn't especially agree w/what he was saying(you know me, Ali :0)). I loved him. I loved his voice, his laugh(or was it giggle?) and his looks slayed me. I heard he'd died via NPR and i miss him.

I love em-dashes, too. They're like breathing marks in music.

[jen]

Does Karen play any instruments?

[karen]

Hey Jen!!!

I played clarinet for 7(freaking) yrs and i never cared for it. I still have nightmares that i forgot the mouthpiece somewhere and it was concert time. Or didn't have any reeds-- some kind of wardrobe malfunction. Of course, our director was a former Navy musician- sigh.

I love to sing, though. I love harmony, especially- and tenor- up an octave. I sing in our choir @church and i sang in Madrigals(a capella group) in HSchool. I made a few special concerts like All New Englands and All States- but, i tend to put dashes where i normally would breathe. Weird? Weird.

[jen]

I love a capella. Especially in Church choir. Especially gospel choir. I love people that can carry a tune. Me -- not tune worthy, but I can play the piano.

Hooray for singers!

Hooray for instruments!

Hooray for music!

Hooray for Alison who always puts good songs and thoughts into my head!

[Rick/Dad]

A little known fact. In 1954 Sports Illustrated was in its infancy and KV was hired as a writer even though he admitted knowing very little about sports.

One of his first assignments was to write a caption about a race horse who had jumped the rail and galloped across the infield at Aqueduct Race Track. Vonnegut pondered the assignment, typed one sentence then walked out of his office never to return.

His caption: "The horse jumped over the f---ing fence."

[Alison]

Hooray for Jen and my new stove!

About the horse caption: I love it. What else is there to say?

[jen]

I'm so embarrassed I didn't clean the inside of it. Hope it was worth Jerm's trouble.
Hooray for Jerm !!!