Kurt Vonnegut

Why Kurt Vonnegut?

I remember listening to an alternative radio station in college late one night. They broadcast the commencement speech given by Kurt Vonnegut at a noteworthy university. I can't recall the name of the college but I'll never forget his message. I didn't know it was Kurt Vonnegut because I tuned in just after the broadcast started. I heard this man saying important things. I'll never forget this: "People write today with nothing on their minds. That's the trouble. There's nothing gnawing away at them. I write because I have to. Because there's something eating away at me and I must get to its truth." I am paraphrasing but that was his basic message. And that's how I think of Vonnegut- as a man compelled to write.

Equally if not more important, K.V. helped me in my own writing tremendously. He taught me that you can imagine anything you want, that there is no limit to the extravagent and unrealistic concepts we can create. They need not be plausible- the fact alone that we can think these wild thoughts makes them real to some extent.

I was first introduced to K.V. in high school, forced to read Slaughterhouse-Five. As with Dostoyevsky, the fact that this was forced upon me, and analyzed academically removed any natural interest I might have had. At some point in my late twenties I picked up the book again. This time I was floored. I finally understood what all the fuss was about. In a generally short book he captured so much- his humanism and anti-war stance, his fascination with science fiction and his sarcasric wit (the fellow soldier in the boxcar who repeatedly says, "you think this is bad? This is nothing. I'll tell you what's hard...", only to die a short time later). Slaughterhouse showed me how skilled K.V. was with his use of language and phrasiology ("so it goes...").

Immediately following Slaughterhouse I read "Sirens of Titan" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater". And then perhaps my favorite, "Cat's Cradle". In all his writings, K.V. brings a humanist element mixed with complete and total meaninglessness. I'd like to share a few of his more riveting statements:

"We have to be continually jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."

"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops."

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."

"Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance."

“We have no Democratic Party. It’s financed by the same millionaires and billionaires as the Republicans."

“You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society."

“I began writing because I found myself possessed. I looked at what I wrote and I said ‘How the hell did I do that?"

~~~

I could write pages of praise to K.V. That is how taken I and many others are with him. Allow me to add one final list:

These are Kurt Vonnegut's "eight rules for short story writing". Not only are they true, they are in classic Vonnegut style, funny as hell. I only recently came across this set of "rules" but I must admit, I practice a great many of these rules in my stories:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

This man was legendary. I am only beginning to feel his influence. So it goes...

Melissa Carter August 2007