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Kwod Vide

It was sometime in the 1980s.

Ideally, it would have been the early 70s, but it wasn't. In fact, I'm not so sure, now, that it would have been ideal for it to have been the 70s. When this took place, that is. Obviously, at a certain point, it was ideal to be the 70s. Otherwise, what would have happened? We would have gone straight from December, 1969 into January, 1980. And I wouldn't exist. So, for me, anyway, the 70s were particularly ideal, seeing as how they produced me. Well, not them, specifically, but you know how it goes.

My father saw the list of books on summer reading that year, which included Kurt Vonnegut's 1963 excuse for a master's thesis, Cat's Cradle.

The following is an approximation of the conversation that followed:

"Wow. What a great book to get for summer reading! That's one of my favorite books of all-time."

"Yeah. Yeah?" The desultory response is probably down to the fact that I was a high school student, not necessarily jazzed about a summer reading list. I am almost 98% certain this wasn't my real reaction. In reality, I probably took this in with a bit of interest, as my dad has always been a voracious reader. Both my parents, in fact.

Cat's Cradle is the one book assigned for school I remember really, really enjoying. The second, though it may not be so, chronologically, was Catch-22, of note because it also received a glowing, pre-read recommendation from my father. In fact, with Joseph Heller's book I may have gotten to it before it was assigned because of the recommendation. The first book I ever remember really, really enjoying, as we're covering that sort of thing, was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Back to Cat's Cradle: It shone. It sang. It did all of this at the end of the world as we knew it (largely liquid). Never before had I read anything so... vivid. I skipped reading White Fang because I couldn't get into the book. Wolves and dogs and the prose just didn't... sing for me. This I remember because I had to create a diorama for it, and simply pasted a crude drawing of a wolf-like looking dog into a shoebox with a series of sticks glued together in the shape of either a fire or a hut. That it was a crude drawing wasn't a statement. I was around 10 or so, and have never, ever possessed particularly good drawing skills. I apologize to my teacher in that 4th or so grade class. And I also would like to state that it's nearly the last time I ever flubbed my way through a book report.

Here was a world I could believe in. I could imagine it existing alongside our own, bleeding in at inopportune times. It was my first introduction to a wonderful sort of fatalism. I loved the conversational tone of the book. The interruptions. It captured life, for me, how it happens, how it may happen, and how it matters (or not) if it happens that way. Of course, these I'm applying years after the fact. At the time, who knows what I was thinking?

All right, here's a stab, so as not to leave you, wondering what a teenage version of me might be thinking after reading Cat's Cradle for the first time: I must read more.

On my father's recommendation, I went on to Slaughterhouse-Five. I hit The Sirens of Titan. Bluebeard, Hocus Pocus, Jailbird, Player Piano, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Breakfast of Champions, the lot. Not all that year. Or even the next two years. Over the next ten, I read them all.

And then, in the autumn of 1997, I heard about Kurt Vonnegut's forthcoming final novel. Timequake.

It was the same old Kurt. Only better, because now you could really see more and more of his life, and his process on his final novel, come bleeding into the pages, into my little squashed bedroom above a dodgy stretch of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. The bedroom failed to house a bed, in fact, settling for a metal futon that was probably akin to sleeping on railway tracks. With a thin mattress laid over them. And pillows. Which would all look awfully silly laid over a set of railway tracks. Tragically so, if a train were to come along. There are probably laws now, to prevent people laying mattresses and pillows over railway tracks. In the name of terrorism prevention. Otherwise I'd suggest you go out and try it out. Or I'd go out and try it out, to see if the comparison.

There was something sad, and something beautiful, knowing this was it. The last novel. The last... victory lap, it's described as on Amazon.com. It was this personal bleed through to the narrative that compelled me to mail the short story I wrote after reading Timequake to Mr. Vonnegut with a short note, thanking him, and explaining that the story came directly after reading Timequake. Like a bolt of lightning. Perhaps I should explain: immediately after finishing the book I took a shower, returned to my room, and proceeded to write a short story called "Destiny Calling (PDF link)."

And now, we don't have the last novel, but we have the last moment recorded in which Kurt Vonnegut was alive. There are plenty of other moments, as many people have put it, based on his own writings, in which he is alive and well. Just none from here on out, in a boring, linear fashion.

I heard him speaking from his heart more than any other writer I've read. Which is why his books were sad, funny, dark, manic, and gorgeous, all at once. And to lose a little something of that from the collective snow globe of our energies is a little sad. We can only hope someone thinks to refill the thing before we're a collection of sad looking white flakes drying out in a plastic snow scene.

I guess I'll end like this:

"When I was younger, I wasted the hell out of it. And I rarely have problems with gigantic birds or look to toasters for the time."

16 Apr, 2007

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