Dear Mr. Vonnegut:
Nov. 11th, 2008 01:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snurriYou would have been 86 today. Happy birthday, sir.
It's been a year and a half since you died, but these past few weeks I've been thinking about you a lot. Your work has been so important to me. I don't know how you'd feel about me saying that, but it's true. It's probably an odd feeling to have strangers write to tell you how much your books meant to them, how connected they feel to you, how much they cried when you died. I'm guessing it would make you a little uncomfortable, but I hope it would please you a little bit too.
I'm also a writer. Sometimes I think I'm a pretty good one, and sometimes--lately in particular--I suspect I'm rather mediocre. It sounds like you felt that way sometimes, too. The longer I do this, the harder it seems to get. I can't figure out if that's because I'm trying harder, or because I'm learning about my limitations.
We just had an election here. It was a pretty big deal, and mostly I'm pleased with how things turned out. I was really anxious in the weeks leading up to it, but afterward, instead of being relieved, I became more anxious about other, more personal things. It could be a midlife crisis, I guess. I'd like to think I'll live beyond seventy-six, but you never know. Anyway, because of my worries I'm finding myself in a weird headspace. I'm trying to write, but I haven't got a handle on this thing I've started. I'm dissatisfied with the things I've been trying to read. In fact the only thing that seems to hold my attention, at the moment, are your books.
I'd sort of played with the idea of doing a Vonnegut book club with some folks online, but almost immediately after I suggested it I had second thoughts. It's been twenty years since I started reading your books, and most of them I haven't read since then. That sounds sort of like they weren't as important to me as I've said, but actually I think that they hit me so hard that it took most of that time for me to absorb them. Coming back to them now feels weirdly private to me, and trying to structure a discussion about them just doesn't seem right. I want people to read you, especially if they haven't before, but I think I need to revisit you on my own.
I read Cat's Cradle last week. In my memory I had conflated parts of it with Galapagos, as it turns out, perhaps because they both take place largely on islands. I remembered ice-9 and I remembered duprass, but I had forgotten about San Lorenzo and Hoenniker and Mona. I had forgotten granfaloon, one of the greatest concepts ever named. I had forgotten more than I remembered, in fact.
The thing I remembered was the way you wrote. You wrote as though you were impatient with the conceit of story, as if the idea of asking someone to sit down and read a book you had written were a faintly embarrassing one. I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean that you always seemed aware of how flimsy a tool for communication narrative was, except compared to all those others that have been tried. Your books are so quick and funny that even the most easily distracted reader has little excuse for giving up on them; and yet Cat's Cradle is a deeply cutting book, satirizing American attitudes towards "progress" and religion and the third world and America itself, not to mention the excess of creativity which humans expend dreaming up new ways to kill each other. Your books all say things, important things, but they are not self-important about it. They are like fables, a bit, except that one has the impression of an author who is on the verge of giving up pen and paper in favor of slapping some sense into people.
To be honest, I remembered you gentler, or at least more hopeful. But then, I'm not the same person I was when I last read Cat's Cradle. Maybe that reaction has more to do with me than it does with you.
I hope you are enjoying the foma,
Dave
It's been a year and a half since you died, but these past few weeks I've been thinking about you a lot. Your work has been so important to me. I don't know how you'd feel about me saying that, but it's true. It's probably an odd feeling to have strangers write to tell you how much your books meant to them, how connected they feel to you, how much they cried when you died. I'm guessing it would make you a little uncomfortable, but I hope it would please you a little bit too.
I'm also a writer. Sometimes I think I'm a pretty good one, and sometimes--lately in particular--I suspect I'm rather mediocre. It sounds like you felt that way sometimes, too. The longer I do this, the harder it seems to get. I can't figure out if that's because I'm trying harder, or because I'm learning about my limitations.
We just had an election here. It was a pretty big deal, and mostly I'm pleased with how things turned out. I was really anxious in the weeks leading up to it, but afterward, instead of being relieved, I became more anxious about other, more personal things. It could be a midlife crisis, I guess. I'd like to think I'll live beyond seventy-six, but you never know. Anyway, because of my worries I'm finding myself in a weird headspace. I'm trying to write, but I haven't got a handle on this thing I've started. I'm dissatisfied with the things I've been trying to read. In fact the only thing that seems to hold my attention, at the moment, are your books.
I'd sort of played with the idea of doing a Vonnegut book club with some folks online, but almost immediately after I suggested it I had second thoughts. It's been twenty years since I started reading your books, and most of them I haven't read since then. That sounds sort of like they weren't as important to me as I've said, but actually I think that they hit me so hard that it took most of that time for me to absorb them. Coming back to them now feels weirdly private to me, and trying to structure a discussion about them just doesn't seem right. I want people to read you, especially if they haven't before, but I think I need to revisit you on my own.
I read Cat's Cradle last week. In my memory I had conflated parts of it with Galapagos, as it turns out, perhaps because they both take place largely on islands. I remembered ice-9 and I remembered duprass, but I had forgotten about San Lorenzo and Hoenniker and Mona. I had forgotten granfaloon, one of the greatest concepts ever named. I had forgotten more than I remembered, in fact.
The thing I remembered was the way you wrote. You wrote as though you were impatient with the conceit of story, as if the idea of asking someone to sit down and read a book you had written were a faintly embarrassing one. I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean that you always seemed aware of how flimsy a tool for communication narrative was, except compared to all those others that have been tried. Your books are so quick and funny that even the most easily distracted reader has little excuse for giving up on them; and yet Cat's Cradle is a deeply cutting book, satirizing American attitudes towards "progress" and religion and the third world and America itself, not to mention the excess of creativity which humans expend dreaming up new ways to kill each other. Your books all say things, important things, but they are not self-important about it. They are like fables, a bit, except that one has the impression of an author who is on the verge of giving up pen and paper in favor of slapping some sense into people.
To be honest, I remembered you gentler, or at least more hopeful. But then, I'm not the same person I was when I last read Cat's Cradle. Maybe that reaction has more to do with me than it does with you.
I hope you are enjoying the foma,
Dave
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For What It's Worth
Date: 2008-11-11 11:35 am (UTC)*sagenod*
ETA: The letter was a good thing to read on my flist - makes me think of my own personal favourite writers who died and whom I could never talk to except inside my head. Heh.
Re: For What It's Worth
Date: 2008-11-11 08:32 pm (UTC)I think I'm going to write more letters, to Kurt and maybe to some other folks.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-11 02:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-11 05:07 pm (UTC)Yes. That.
Date: 2008-11-11 05:38 pm (UTC)I had no clue what I was letting myself in for. And I can't articulate now what those books meant to me, except to say that pool-pah let me know that I was not alone in thinking the universe was harsh enough--and if I saw it all as foma anyway, we could be kind to each other.
Most of my old favorites I stay away from, for fear of ruining the joy. Vonnegut, on the other hand, will probably mean so much more now. Twenty years later, I think it's time I paid a visit to that private place as well.
Here by way of matociquila.
Re: Yes. That.
Date: 2008-11-11 08:35 pm (UTC)Vonnegut was my gateway drug to "classic" lit as well; since I read him and he didn't suck, I was willing to believe that maybe there were other "approved" books that weren't bad either :-)
Thanks for visiting.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-11 07:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-11 09:00 pm (UTC)By the way, I found this through The Swivet. It was nice dropping by. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-11 09:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-11 10:09 pm (UTC)