“We’re here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” The passing of Kurt Vonnegut has brought out tributes and memories from comic pros and fans since his death was announced Wednesday night. Mark Evanier had a couple of posts yesterday about him (I swiped the opening quote from one of them), and The Daily Cross Hatch has several write-ups from folks like Peter Bagge and Evan Dorkin. Others posted them to their blogs, such as John Layman:
Probably my favorite living American novelist died yesterday. He was 84, so he was not exactly young. I’ve read all his novels, probably 5 or 6 times in the case of the ones I really loved. Like Galapagos, Slapstick, Bluebeard, Deadeye Dick, Jailbird and Breakfast of Champions.
I’ll probably break one out and read ‘em again. I prefered his later stuff, that was more playful in tone, then his earlier, more “serious” stuff, though I don’t think there’s a single novel he wrote I hated.
Damn. He was one of my favorite writers for a long long time, and even his last novel, Timequake, had impact on me. His novel Mother Night was perhaps one of the most important novels in my development as a writer, and a huge influence on Sleeper.
Vonnegut was a free-thinker, and a German, and his essay books, Palm Sunday and Fates Worse than Death, are both highly recommended. If you haven’t read any Vonnegut, be sure to catch him when they rerelease all his books soon.
Warren Ellis, on his Bad Signal email list:
I have writer’s disease with Vonnegut: was always afraid that if I read too much of him, I’d end up sounding like him. Like Thompson, his deceptively relaxed, rhythmic colloquial style is too appealing to me. Lots of news stories are using a quote from “God Bless You, Mr Rosewater,” and its bitter music is completely seductive.
My fellow Blog@ contributor Graeme McMillan:
I remember clearly getting to Breakfast of Champions and being surprised and depressed by the misanthropy of the book, of the way Vonnegut seemed to feel when writing it; I kept reading even though it felt as if he wanted to kill himself and punish all of his characters for being in his head, and can remember clearly feeling relieved when he saw the light of… what, I’m still not sure. Optimism? Humanism? Not-killing-yourselfism? in the middle of the book. It’s one of those things that you’re sure that Clarence the Angel would point to, if he found you trying to throw yourself off a bridge on Christmas Eve, even if he couldn’t tell you why it was so important, either.
Vonnegut was one of those writers who hit my consciousness hard during my formative years, and I know that I am not alone in that. It is not difficult to understand, when you read his work, that the gallows humor, the seemingly cynical refrain “So it goes,” belies a great despair and hope for humanity.
When I was fourteen years old, my art teacher handed me his battered copy of BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS. “I hope you like it,” he said. This was the art teacher that got me into The Clash and The Ramones, and helped get me into the North Carolina School of the Arts– a good egg, surely. Anyway– when the guy that got you into The Clash gives you a book and says “I hope you like it,” you take it and read it and KNOW you’ll like it.
Then he waited a second before letting go of the book– “You might want to hide it,” he says. “Or at least don’t tell anyone that I gave it to you.” We were in ruralish North Carolina. I didn’t blame him then and I don’t blame him now, and I hope he’s given it to a kid every year since.
(For a while, I even smoked Pall Malls, the cigarettes of the true suicides, because Kurt Vonnegut smoked Pall Malls, and called them the cigarettes of the true suicides.
What do you want? I was fifteen, and Michael Watts’ parents smoked them, so they were easy to get and, I WAS FIFTEEN.)
BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS was the book that changed my life, Saved my life, was my everything. And Vonnegut, surely the closest thing to Twain since Twain, became as crucial in my juvenile pantheon as were Joe Strummer and Bill Sienkiewicz.
My first exposure to Vonnegut was similar to Fraction’s. I was an avid reader in high school and would usually finish the required reading quicker than everyone else. One of my English teachers noticed this and started slipping me extra books to read in between. I think the first one she gave me was This Perfect Day by Ira Levin. The second one was Slaughterhouse-Five. Neither book was on the approved reading list in the Dallas suburb where I grew up (although the Vonnegut book was added back soon after, I believe), and I remember when she handed me the Levin book, she said, “If anyone asks, you didn’t get this from me.” Which made her the absolute coolest teacher I ever had.
John Brownlee has more Vonnegut links over at Table of Malcontents. Including an interview Vonnegut did on Second Life. And I remember when I had my own blog linking to this interview with him from McSweeney’s. I think this was my favorite part:
Q: So is this really the final book? Timequake was supposed to be your farewell, and then Dr. Kevorkian came along.
Vonnegut: I don’t fucking know. I keep thinking I’ll die. Why do you think I smoke so much?
God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut.
