So It Goes

One regret I’ll never dispel is that I never got to meet Kurt Vonnegut.

Like many people, I first encountered Vonnegut’s writing in high school, where his surreal storytelling seemed to make a lot of sense to an embryonic adult. The first novel I read was the mostly forgotten Jailbird, but it was good enough for me to seek out the granfalloons, artificial families, Tralfamadorians, and Kilgore Trout. My literary gluttony only ended when I grew sick with influenza; trapped to a bed, I was in the midst of Player Piano, Vonnegut’s first novel about a dystopian society where punch-card computers dehumanize the human worker. I had just reached the point where the story’s hero, the nervous and gentle Paul Proteus, finally rebelled and began running from the authorities. My fever was hot, and I began to hallucinate--suddenly, I was Paul, and I needed to get away. Right. Now.

No, I never finished the book. An absurdity that Vonnegut would appreciate.

I’m sure many will call him the modern Mark Twain; heck, they even looked like each other, especially late in life, when despondency overtook both. Vonnegut, however, was his own writer, a unique narrator who brought a fantastical brevity to modern literature, and a prose that turned a cynical but humorous eye to humanity’s foibles. Lord knows we need it.

War, as with other writers, shaped most of Vonnegut’s work, not just his penultimate novel, Slaughterhouse Five. As a prisoner, he survived the Allied bombing of the German civilian city Dresden, an event that the American government denied for years, yet fully demonstrated man’s inhumanity to man. A lesson like that cannot be forgotten, and Vonnegut struggled to write about it for two decades.

Despite that experience, or perhaps because of it, Vonnegut never lost his own love of humanity. The villains in his stories usually weren’t individuals but characters representing corporations, the science community, the military, even society itself, all twisting good intentions into bizzare contortions. In his most famous short story, “Harrison Bergeron,” people of talent and intelligence are purposely handicapped by the government so that everyone is equal--idealism run rampant. His heroes tended to be the meek, the Billy Pilgrims, Rabo Karabekians, and Eliot Rosewaters, who, for one reason or another, find themselves in the convolution of ridiculous tragedy brought on by a blinded adherence to a higher ideal.

For Vonnegut, humanity was forever building the tower of Babel, never realizing that the blueprints were in gibberish.

Still, the best of his stories, even dark satire like Mother Night, contain more than biting deconstruction of the human condition. Whenever I think of Vonnegut, Buster Keaton somehow slips in. The Great Stone Face persona was a myth--Buster’s characters weren’t emotional automatons going through the motions of comedic timing. He perhaps was the most subtle actor of the silents; joy, fear, nervousness, and frustration all were conveyed through his eyes, quick expressions, and body movement. What Keaton never did do was smile--no matter what chance or fate threw at him, Buster’s characters doggedly persevered, usually to the unheard laugher of his audience. Vonnegut fully understood Keaton’s art. One of my favorite Vonnegut novels is Slapstick, considered to be one of his lesser works. Flawed it may be, but the narrative is Vonnegut unfettered. His hero is a gifted freak who recounts his sad life from the shambles of Manhattan, of how his own well-meaning mistakes helped push away those close to him as the world slowly frayed. But the story is not a tragedy because the storyteller is not tragic; his telling is lighthearted despite itself, and a helpless hope still clings.

That is the essence of slapstick. And that is the essence of Vonnegut.

This week, we lost a voice for humanity, one that loved us enough to gently poke at our own grotesque grandiose. Vonnegut understood us, perhaps too well, and his stories will forever remind us that while we are still human, we sometimes forget the humanity of others. A lasting image of Slapstick is that of the hero’s pregnant granddaughter, crossing the Midwest with nothing but a shopping cart to find the grandfather who doesn't even know she exists. It’s an image that is both lovely and sad. And that’s Vonnegut’s gift to us: loving sadness.

I think I’ll finish reading Player Piano now.