In Memoriam: Kurt Vonnegut Jr., 1922-2007
Apr. 12th, 2007 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thatcrazycajunI wasn't going to add to the multitude of mournful posts my friends-list has this morning on the untimely death of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., author of such modern literary classics as Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions, from a brain injury sustained in a recent fall. However, on reading more about him today online, I learned that among his several occupations and avocations, he had also been, like Your Humble Correspondent, a graphic artist and produced felt-pen illustrations, silk-screen art and even an album cover for Phish. This being the case, a fact of which I somehow managed never to learn all these years until his death yesterday at 84, I felt obligated to post a memorial on my page to mark his passing.
Several reports today and earlier describe him as a modern-day Mark Twain, and I would be hard put to dispute the characterization...especially having seen him in person, as I did in my college days when he came to the LSU campus in Baton Rouge to speak. His attitudes, his demeanor, his very appearance seemed almost cultivated to invite such a comparison, and his oeuvre certainly stands up alongside that of the late Mr. Clemens for importance and quality in the canon of Western literature. His talk at my school, titled "How to Get A Job Like Mine," was a mind-expanding experience for one only noddingly familiar with his work. He appeared to move and speak as if drunk or stoned, but the content of his speech was so clear and sharp in its wit and intelligence that one suspected the man of putting on a drunk act to lull listeners into taking in what he had to say. He used an easel and large drawing pad of the sort often seen in hotel meeting rooms to illustrate some of his points, demonstrating the skill he used to such effect when not writing, and just entertained the hell out of all of us in the audience for two solid hours.
To the surprise of absolutely no one who knows anything at all about the man, he was to the end of his life a vocal critic of our government, most recently of the current Iraq misadventure (cf. Rolling Stone, 2006); a toppler of icons and butcher of sacred cows to the very last. That which we laughingly refer to as Western civilization is vastly the poorer for his death...but also incalculably the richer for his having lived and worked among us. My heart goes out to his seven children, his colleagues and many, many fans.
Several reports today and earlier describe him as a modern-day Mark Twain, and I would be hard put to dispute the characterization...especially having seen him in person, as I did in my college days when he came to the LSU campus in Baton Rouge to speak. His attitudes, his demeanor, his very appearance seemed almost cultivated to invite such a comparison, and his oeuvre certainly stands up alongside that of the late Mr. Clemens for importance and quality in the canon of Western literature. His talk at my school, titled "How to Get A Job Like Mine," was a mind-expanding experience for one only noddingly familiar with his work. He appeared to move and speak as if drunk or stoned, but the content of his speech was so clear and sharp in its wit and intelligence that one suspected the man of putting on a drunk act to lull listeners into taking in what he had to say. He used an easel and large drawing pad of the sort often seen in hotel meeting rooms to illustrate some of his points, demonstrating the skill he used to such effect when not writing, and just entertained the hell out of all of us in the audience for two solid hours.
To the surprise of absolutely no one who knows anything at all about the man, he was to the end of his life a vocal critic of our government, most recently of the current Iraq misadventure (cf. Rolling Stone, 2006); a toppler of icons and butcher of sacred cows to the very last. That which we laughingly refer to as Western civilization is vastly the poorer for his death...but also incalculably the richer for his having lived and worked among us. My heart goes out to his seven children, his colleagues and many, many fans.
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Date: 2007-04-12 03:18 pm (UTC)http://baiku.livejournal.com/297616.html