Thoraiya DyerCLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE IRONIC KIND
November 18th 2006 10:41
A Kurt Vonnegut essay
In the 1973 novel Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut wrote, "There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead. It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am a living proof of that: It can be done."
Chaos, or the biochemistry student -- turned POW -- turned sci-fi writer with satirically strange ideas of the universe in toto (and now a cult anti-war icon of 80 years) -- is what Kurt Vonnegut's life is all about. People know him by his intentional gallows humor. I, on the other hand, dote on his collection of bizaare one-liners: "Organized religion is anti-Christian," "Fudge is a love symbol," or "Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease," along with countless droll coinages like infunabulum, tralfamadore, and Bokonism. And who can forget Kilgore Trout?
The man behind the smash novel Slaughterhouse Five is someone you can call a doomsday Shakespeare. It's a bit disturbing to realize how he has masterfully spun tales of black comedic genre which turned out to be the means to mask his own humorless life. Laughter, he says, is a response to frustration, but like tears it doesn't solve anything. During the era of Great Depression, his mother committed suicide on Mother's Day. His father holed up like a hermit and turned his back to the world. He was captured by the Germans while World War II raged on. His captors deposited him in the underground slaughterhouse along with six guards, perhaps a hundred more captives, and rows and rows of butchered pigs and cattle. Dearth of food took 41 pounds off him.
Seven years later his first novel, Player Piano, was published. Critics considered it rubbish. In 1959, his sister Alice died of cancer. Two days later, the train where Alice's husband rode crashed, leaving four orphans to his custody. He got divorced. Then his son suffered schizophrenic breakdown.
Real life depression eventually found a place between the pages of his novels. These novels didn't pass by without an echoing guffaw. Slaughterhouse Five got sold out. Mother Night became an inspiration for a self-titled contemporary film that starred Alan Arkin and Kirsten Dunst, among a few. His name caught on with the public until he became a modern-day cult icon.
You can take apart Vonnegut's novels and toss the sci-fi undercurrent to the trash bin. Like burned dead leaves, black soot will inevitably remain. Vonnegut used it in order to outline the ironies of his existence. He scratches the walls with these ideas like graffiti until anyone who passes by is forced to read, contemplate, and question her own stable, predictable life (if there really is such a thing).
I myself am obliged to welcome the contradiction that is Kurt Vonnegut like a breath of fresh air. Who would've thought that in the face of such "everyday-is-Black-Saturday" life, an author can actually transform people, if he failed to make them laugh anyway? And who would have believed, that underneath the deepest convictions the greatest German-American satirist have doodled, is a bearded schmuck wrapped in papier-mache?
People practically raved about his Dresden experience, saying it was the spirit of Slaughterhouse Five, that it changed his life. Vonnegut dismissed the idea as a cliche and a hype. He was a reformed pacifist. His family adored America. Unfortunately, when the Allies bombed the open city of Dresden, the blind love affair came to an end. Vonnegut soon found out that America relished the idea of cruise missiles dropping like cow dung in Iraq.
Vonnegut concerned himself with metaphysical questions, too -- questions about God -- what God wants, is there a heaven, where does man stand and what is his purpose...then he effaces the questions and thinks he'd rather be an alligator. He believes thinking about all of it doesn't help and can be awfully exhausting. The world, he sees, is not enough to satisfy the glorious capabilities of the human brain.
This questioning even touched on Ritalin intake, which helped alter his depressive moods. Misery, it turns out, is just a state of mind, a working of the internal body chemistry. His only regret was, why hadn't his suicidal parents known it before?
In the end, Kurt Vonnegut's message is straightforward: "Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones." Maybe people didn't learn the lessons of World War II and the cynic and atheist in him would declare "We are doomed no matter what." Again, we're spotting the irony here. If he is so wary of the future of mankind in the hands of destructive individuals, why is he giving us the impression that everything is going to be all right?
Eighty years of Orwellian fiction and tragicomedic existence have come down to reveal a philosophy, not unlike the Golden Rule, that the entire human race could use if it wants to survive. I am tempted to believe that Mr. Vonnegut is just your next-door neighbor who has seen too many horror shows and heard too many Marilyn Manson concerts. He merely warns us to be vigilant, lest we take the violent drama of human affairs too seriously and be wiped out by a next-generation world war.
Writers and artists, Vonnegut says finally, are like alarm systems. He lets us in with the "canary-in-the-coalmine" theory. Canary birds detect gas in coalmines to warn miners before they get poisoned. He sees all artists in the same metaphor. He has, in fact, been a canary bird all his life. He has smelled and told of death, forceful and unwarranted as it is, the massacre of innocent civilians, the sickness in the soul, and the evils of social ignorance. We are, I believe, the coalminers whose time has come to listen.
Copyright Marie N.
20:27, April 7, 2005
In the 1973 novel Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut wrote, "There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead. It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am a living proof of that: It can be done."
Chaos, or the biochemistry student -- turned POW -- turned sci-fi writer with satirically strange ideas of the universe in toto (and now a cult anti-war icon of 80 years) -- is what Kurt Vonnegut's life is all about. People know him by his intentional gallows humor. I, on the other hand, dote on his collection of bizaare one-liners: "Organized religion is anti-Christian," "Fudge is a love symbol," or "Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease," along with countless droll coinages like infunabulum, tralfamadore, and Bokonism. And who can forget Kilgore Trout?
The man behind the smash novel Slaughterhouse Five is someone you can call a doomsday Shakespeare. It's a bit disturbing to realize how he has masterfully spun tales of black comedic genre which turned out to be the means to mask his own humorless life. Laughter, he says, is a response to frustration, but like tears it doesn't solve anything. During the era of Great Depression, his mother committed suicide on Mother's Day. His father holed up like a hermit and turned his back to the world. He was captured by the Germans while World War II raged on. His captors deposited him in the underground slaughterhouse along with six guards, perhaps a hundred more captives, and rows and rows of butchered pigs and cattle. Dearth of food took 41 pounds off him.
Seven years later his first novel, Player Piano, was published. Critics considered it rubbish. In 1959, his sister Alice died of cancer. Two days later, the train where Alice's husband rode crashed, leaving four orphans to his custody. He got divorced. Then his son suffered schizophrenic breakdown.
Real life depression eventually found a place between the pages of his novels. These novels didn't pass by without an echoing guffaw. Slaughterhouse Five got sold out. Mother Night became an inspiration for a self-titled contemporary film that starred Alan Arkin and Kirsten Dunst, among a few. His name caught on with the public until he became a modern-day cult icon.
You can take apart Vonnegut's novels and toss the sci-fi undercurrent to the trash bin. Like burned dead leaves, black soot will inevitably remain. Vonnegut used it in order to outline the ironies of his existence. He scratches the walls with these ideas like graffiti until anyone who passes by is forced to read, contemplate, and question her own stable, predictable life (if there really is such a thing).
I myself am obliged to welcome the contradiction that is Kurt Vonnegut like a breath of fresh air. Who would've thought that in the face of such "everyday-is-Black-Saturday" life, an author can actually transform people, if he failed to make them laugh anyway? And who would have believed, that underneath the deepest convictions the greatest German-American satirist have doodled, is a bearded schmuck wrapped in papier-mache?
People practically raved about his Dresden experience, saying it was the spirit of Slaughterhouse Five, that it changed his life. Vonnegut dismissed the idea as a cliche and a hype. He was a reformed pacifist. His family adored America. Unfortunately, when the Allies bombed the open city of Dresden, the blind love affair came to an end. Vonnegut soon found out that America relished the idea of cruise missiles dropping like cow dung in Iraq.
Vonnegut concerned himself with metaphysical questions, too -- questions about God -- what God wants, is there a heaven, where does man stand and what is his purpose...then he effaces the questions and thinks he'd rather be an alligator. He believes thinking about all of it doesn't help and can be awfully exhausting. The world, he sees, is not enough to satisfy the glorious capabilities of the human brain.
This questioning even touched on Ritalin intake, which helped alter his depressive moods. Misery, it turns out, is just a state of mind, a working of the internal body chemistry. His only regret was, why hadn't his suicidal parents known it before?
In the end, Kurt Vonnegut's message is straightforward: "Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones." Maybe people didn't learn the lessons of World War II and the cynic and atheist in him would declare "We are doomed no matter what." Again, we're spotting the irony here. If he is so wary of the future of mankind in the hands of destructive individuals, why is he giving us the impression that everything is going to be all right?
Eighty years of Orwellian fiction and tragicomedic existence have come down to reveal a philosophy, not unlike the Golden Rule, that the entire human race could use if it wants to survive. I am tempted to believe that Mr. Vonnegut is just your next-door neighbor who has seen too many horror shows and heard too many Marilyn Manson concerts. He merely warns us to be vigilant, lest we take the violent drama of human affairs too seriously and be wiped out by a next-generation world war.
Writers and artists, Vonnegut says finally, are like alarm systems. He lets us in with the "canary-in-the-coalmine" theory. Canary birds detect gas in coalmines to warn miners before they get poisoned. He sees all artists in the same metaphor. He has, in fact, been a canary bird all his life. He has smelled and told of death, forceful and unwarranted as it is, the massacre of innocent civilians, the sickness in the soul, and the evils of social ignorance. We are, I believe, the coalminers whose time has come to listen.
Copyright Marie N.
20:27, April 7, 2005
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Comment by Deorre
Stress Alive
Man Lessons
Great essay.