Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite authors, died last night at the age of 84. I wish I could write about him more eloquently. So it goes.
I first read Vonnegut, like many, when I was assigned Slaughterhouse Five in a high school English class. I devoured it, loving that it was funny and political, and had a unique voice and absurd characters (Kilgore Trout, anyone?). I suddenly realized that I shared that love with my father, and that many of Vonnegut's novels, long-ago read and dog-eared, had in fact surrounded me on shelves at home for my entire life. Eventually, his short stories spoke to me too. I adapted one ("The Long Walk to Forever," a tale the writer himself described as "a sickeningly slick love story from The Ladies' Home Journal, God help us") for the stage in college, an experience which led Graham Atkin to talk to me about directing, which in turn made me think seriously for the first time about maybesomehowperhaps pursuing a career that involved theatre in some way.
So I guess Vonnegut influenced me--like countless others--in a lot of ways, some direct, some not so direct. Here, for no particular reason, is one of his drawings of an asshole:
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some reading and re-reading to attend to.
1 comment:
The thing I think most of vonnegut was how well he could get me to drastically rethink things I'd taken for granted for so long. There are so few writers like that now.. Someone (who shall remain nameless for the sake of HIPAA violations galore) told me he was hospitalized where I work. I got really excited and said "There are so many things I wish I could talk to him about!" But by that point he was already in a coma. Perhaps it's because I finished Breakfast of Champions not too long ago, but I prefer to think of this not as his death but as his writing himself into a different part of the story. He'd be capable of nothing less.
(p.s. I don't know who this Graham Atkin fellow is, but he sounds really wise, because you and theatre go together smashingly, madam.)
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