Slog News & Arts

Line Out

Music & Nightlife

« Lifelong AIDS Alliance: Now Ba... | Animals in the Art Gallery »

Thursday, April 12, 2007

More Responses to the Question: What Were You Doing When You Learned Kurt Vonnegut Died?

posted by on April 12 at 16:54 PM

Paul Collins, novelist, memoirist, lives in Portland: “I was signing on and saw it on the Gmail ticker, and I just sat there stunned for a minute, because it was Kurt Vonnegut who single-handedly made me want to become a writer in the first place. I’ve always been glad that I was later able to tell him this in person. But to your question: yes, I was staring at my computer. This is how I hear of most deaths. In fact, I don’t think I’d even be convinced of my own unless I got an e-mail about it.”

John Hodgman, writer, emcee, TV guy: “I was at Green-Wood cemetery in Brooklyn. I was doing a little cameo in the Flight of the Conchords show (if you do not know their work, I hope you will look into it). I felt very sad, obviously, but he leaves behind such a large and good body of work—not forgetting, of course, his cameo in Back to School—that I felt more of a kind of melancholy appreciation than shocked grief.”

Frances McCue, poet, essayist, lives in Seattle: “Well, I’ve just gotten in from my stepdad’s funeral on Cape Cod. It was in the same town where Vonnegut had lived for many years, the same town where I’d lived, as a child growing up with my grandparents. I remember that reading Slaughterhouse Five, my recollections of that town—a place where a drunk cop directed traffic and old barns turned into clothing stores—became smeared into one illusion. I swear that I can see him walking into the newsstand and I’m about seven years old, eating an ice cream on the bench outside. Hearing that he died, just this morning after coming back from that place, was really jarring. I loved how Vonegut never said the cliched thing, the ordinary thing—and yet he was so full of common sense. He reminded me of Jim Harrison.”

Bruce Bawer, political and cultural critic, lives in Norway: “I was at my computer, doing my daily round of newspaper websites and blogs. I saw the headline at the New York Times website, and immediately read Dinitia Smith’s article. Her line about how in the 1960s and ’70s “Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States” choked me up a bit, for mine was one of those dorm rooms. During my freshman year of college (1974-5) I devoured all of Vonnegut’s then seven novels, plus the collection Welcome to the Monkey House, and for months thereafter everything I wrote sounded like Vonnegut. Though his later books left me cold, and though in recent years I was reminded of his existence mainly by his occasional, cringe-worthy political comments, I still warmly recall the enthusiasm with which I gobbled up those early books in my now even more distant-seeming youth.”

Adrianne Harun, fiction writer, lives in Port Townsend: “Feelings? Shoot. When I was a little kid, we had those massive boxes of crayolas with a zillion colors and that lovely, absolutely ineffective sharpener in the side of the box. As I’ve grown older, I’ve seen a lot less variety of color in my life, and as these old guys like Vonnegut go, it’s as if another row has been extinguished. Vonnegut was one of those writers who seemed as if he’d always been here as a writer—and always would be. It’s always something of a shock to realize that one is gone—and then to realize too all over again the impact of the work left behind.”

John Olson, poet, lives in Seattle: “I had just gone to bed and turned the radio on to 1090 am to listen to Mike Malloy. I felt a jolt, a feeling that one of our last truly wise men was gone, and that the surrounding landscape of venal cowards and rapacious imbeciles had one less critic around to point out their foibles. Then I reminded myself that Vonnegut was 84 years old, a heavy smoker who wanted to sue the tobacco companies for not killing him sooner, and that his time was coming; that there’s a special providence in the fall of a Vonnegut. If it be now, it is not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. Mortality is a bitch. The readiness is all.”

Paul Constant, Stranger critic, fiction writer, bookstore employee: “I was at work, at the bookstore, and so it was a good place to find out, I think. Everyone else seemed pretty sad about it, too. I feel very sad about it—he was the first adult author I’d ever read who was, you know, good. I didn’t want to Slog about it because I knew that everyone would either write ‘God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut’ or ‘So it goes.’ (‘So it goes’ is winning by a landslide, according to Google Blog Search.)”

The earlier responses today—from Jonathan Safran Foer, Miranda July, Deborah Jacobs, and lots of others—are here. I have been unable to think about anything else today.

RSS icon Comments

1

I saw it on Slog. Very sad. He was an amazing person.

Posted by Prospero | April 12, 2007 4:59 PM
2

Vonnegut's last book, in 2005, was a collection of biographical essays, "A
Man Without a Country." It concludes his poem "Requiem," which has these closing lines:

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.

Hi ho.

Posted by THE DOGS MAY BARK | April 12, 2007 5:21 PM
3

Thanks "Dogs." Your plagiarism of the New York Times Obit was such brilliance. Bravo. What a great honor bestow upon one of the most brilliant authors of all of the 20th Century. We all should be so lucky.

so it goes.

Posted by Woof | April 12, 2007 6:08 PM
4

Adrianne Harun rocks. I used to wait on her everyday. Love that woman.

Posted by catnextdoor | April 12, 2007 7:11 PM
5

Sorry, Woof - but I didn't read or access the NYTimes Vonnegut obit; earlier today I found the above item on Vonnegut (via Google), posted way before his death. I can assure you plagiarism (as a retired journalist) is not my style. So who should I credit with the knowledge that Vonnegut referred to his one-time son-in-law Geraldo Rivera as a "scumbag"? Yes - and using "so it goes" is somewhat unoriginal as well.

Posted by THE DOGS MAY BARK | April 12, 2007 11:08 PM
6

I was in my postal vehicle, getting ready to deliver some mail after my lunch. I was listening to the Ed Schultz show and wishing something else was on.

Hearing about Kurt's death just made me sad, knowing that I might never get to hear another word from this tremendous, hilarious spirit. He doesn't believe in heaven, though I kind of hope he's wrong. Kurt Vonnegut didn't just make me want to be a writer, he's the guy that made it possible for me to even conceive that I could. Before Vonnegut, I thought all writers wrote prolifically about sunsets and deep emotional truths, but after Vonnegut (A.V.) I discovered that writing can be as crazy and as wacky as you want it to be.

God bless you, Kurt. May your next journey be as lovely as the one just left. I'll never forget you, and I hope no else will either.

Posted by Tahoma Activist | April 13, 2007 6:55 AM

Comments Closed

In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).