God Bless You Mr. Vonnegut

Here I am again with another backlog. I wrote this and it appeared only online for the Daily Iowan.
I post it now.

God Bless Your Mr. Vonnegut

And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007)

At 12:46 this morning a friend I had been talking to online told me that Kurt Vonnegut Jr. had just died. Without thinking, without emotion I went to cnn.com. I saw the picture, I read the story. I did the same at usatoday.com and newyorktimes.com. I read each article, I went through the slide shows of pictures and I stared at my computer. I ran my hands through my hair, I blinked and I rubbed my eyes over and over. One of my true heroes was gone. Now the emotion came.

I never imagined I would react this way to the death of someone I didn’t personally know. As I’m writing this my stomach is knotted and I’m stopping every few minutes to squeeze my temples and re-focus my eyes. Thinking about it now, it’s easy to see why I’m so affected. As well as being one of my heroes, Kurt Vonnegut served as my motivation. Motivation to write, motivation to do good, motivation to be conscious of the world around me, motivation to remember humor in the worst situations, motivation to be myself.

I first read Slaughterhouse 5 in my AP English class last year. Besides being the best book I’d ever been forced to read, it was one of the best books I’d ever read in general. We spent four weeks on it. We analyzed it, discussed it, and I chose to do an optional project on it. I read it again, and then again. I tried to get my hands on anything Mr. Vonnegut had written. I see myself in his stories, as I’m sure many people who read him do. His stories are about all of us. Not merely as Americans, but as human beings and the human race. Sometimes we are the protagonists, but mainly we are the antagonists. On the Grand Canyon, he once said that he’d like to carve these words: "We probably could have saved ourselves, but we were too damned lazy to try very hard ... and too damn cheap." He meant for it to be read by the flying saucers that passed overhead.

Looking at my desk I can see remnants of him. A stack of books lie in the corner. Among them: Welcome to the Monkey House, The Sirens of Titan and God Bless You Mr. Goldwater. In the drawer next to me, is Cats Cradle. Amidst the clutter of papers nearest to me, are three fiction pieces I submitted for peer edit in a creative writing class. In all three, the words “so it goes” end at least one paragraph. On my computer, in my queue of movies for Blockbuster Online, is the 1972 film version of Slaughterhouse 5.

To say I idolized him would maybe be going to far, but maybe not. I find pieces of him in the things I write and the way I act in certain situations. I have begun stories, and realized halfway through that I am simply rewriting one of his. I’ve used Cats Cradle as a pickup line when I saw a girl reading it in the library. When something doesn’t go my way, after I’m through with anger and self pity, I can think only to myself: so it goes.

In part, I came to the University of Iowa because of him. Anyone that wants to write knows about or has aspirations of getting into the writers workshop. He was there. He was here. He walked these streets. He ate here, he drank here, he threw parties here, he chain-smoked outside of the Dey House and probably everywhere else. Kurt Vonnegut is one of those people you always wanted to meet. On a list of things you do before you die, it says: Meet Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (possibly get a picture if you don’t act like a pussy and get embarrassed) He’s right up there with the Dali Lahma and Jessica Alba.

There are certain people that have an impact on our lives; family, friends, teachers. Athletes may copy or learn by watching professional sports figures or coaches. For me, a wannabe writer/journalist/freethinker/American/human being, that person was Kurt Vonnegut, the writer/essayist/pessimistic/humanitarian. I didn’t watch him, I read him and I learned from him. So now, at 3:02 am, after I’ve dealt with the initial emotions of his passing and knowing that I will probably think about this until the end of the semester while running my hands through my hair and re-focusing my eyes, I can think only to myself and for everyone else affected tonight, “so it goes.”

Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.

-Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922 – 2007)