Views » April 13, 2007

Thank You Mr. Vonnegut

By Joel Bleifuss

With the April 11 death of Senior Editor Kurt Vonnegut, In These Times lost a dear friend. And the world lost a man who kept his moral compass always pointed in the right—excuse me, left—direction.

Kurt never ceased to be outraged by man’s inhumanity to man. And while he could always find a corner of joy in the world—the fate of which he often despaired—he was ever ready with a droll, one-line quip that would eviscerate the pretensions of the powerful.

I first met Kurt over the phone, when I interviewed him early in 2003 during those dark weeks leading up the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. During our talk he railed against the “PPs” or psychopathic personalities who had taken over the government “by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable.” He was speaking, of course, of Bush and Co. “Those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C students,” he said. “Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!”

That was Kurt’s strength as a political essayist: an ability to give voice to commonsense decency—accompanying it with a left hook that would leave the reader cheering.

Was he over the top? Perhaps. But also remarkably sane during those dark months early in 2003 when millions of citizens massed in the streets, and media mandarins and Democratic poobahs ignored them, nodding their assent as Bush marched the nation off a cliff to war.

There were two folks Kurt was wont to quote: Jesus and Eugene V. Debs.

In the May 10, 2004 issue, in an article titled “Cold Turkey”—the most popular of his essays that we published—he wrote, “For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. ‘Blessed are the merciful’ in a courtroom? ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”

In that essay he also invoked Debs, who like him was both a socialist and a Hoosier: “Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran five times as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning: ‘As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I’m of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.’ Doesn’t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools or health insurance for all?”

Skeptical of the promises of technical salvation, Kurt was a self-proclaimed Luddite. Though he used a fax machine, he heartily scorned computers: “Bill Gates says, ‘Wait till you can see what your computer can become.’ But it’s you who should be doing the becoming, not the damn fool computer. What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do.”

It was In These Times’ pleasure and privilege to publish the work of Kurt Vonnegut. We applauded his humanist ethics, his one-off sense of humor and his in-your-face contempt for Beltway venality. We felt In These Times and he were a perfect fit, and he seemed to agree. One of the nicest faxes we received from Kurt read, “If it weren’t for In These Times, I’d be a man without a country.”

We have lost a citizen who spoke for us all. So it goes.

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• Reader Comments

  And now we are a country without THE MAN.
  So it goes.

  Posted by hcgorman on Apr 13, 2007 at 8:49 PM

  Memories of Kurt

  The General in the bed next to Billy complaining to someone about how Billy has these recurrent nightmares and he has to listen to him beg for surrender and planning retreats in his sleep. The fantasy of how the aliens that had abducted him and put him in the zoo. Their explanation to zoo visitors of how Billys species viewed reality; looking through a long, large pipe attached to a car on a moving train. He saw only what appeared through the pipe. The trains themselves had no bias, but once you lay out the tracks thats the path they followed. I thought this was one of his finest metaphors to the mass consciousness.

  
  I have used the word karass countless time over the years, and still consider Cats Cradle his best novel overall. I would love to know if there is any quote out there where Kurt comments on a dispute a few years back and now recurring about new agricultural chemicals that could keep plants from freezing. Ice-6?

  Working often part time within a variety of different school districts, I had the opportunity to promote reading Kurts novels to thousands of young students. But reading has become a lost art. I wonder if the next Vonnegut to come along will attract enough eyeballs to enable them to do it full time.

  I would love to read fond recollections of other readers to his books. Doing so might will inspire me to share more of countless impressions, and others to do likewise. A sort of digital wake, where we all share insights and laughter we attained while reading his words. Somehow I suspect that is just the kind of Tribute Kurt would want, especially here on ITT. A Google search on him was how I found this site, and Im sure many others. Not only was this site his declared ‘home,’ but his last written words appeared in this forum. Quite an honor; I hope we will prove worthy.

  
  Farewell Kurt. You will always live in our thoughts.—Arpie

  Posted by recursive prophet on Apr 13, 2007 at 9:03 PM

  Kurt is in heaven now.

  
  His favorite joke!  As a 20-something smart-ass, I have (God willing), a good part of my life ahead of me, and thanks to Mr. Vonnegut and the common sense he preached I have something to share with the world—not my own intellectual property, but something to share nonetheless.  After reading “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” and the words (more or less), “There’s but one rule we all have to learn: Goddamnit you’ve got to be kind to one another!”  I was hooked.  What else is there to say?  Years from now when I start a family, or join another family I should say, I can honestly say to them that there is beauty in the world and all the evidence I would need is Mr. Vonnegut and what he gave us.  I do not mourn him, I doubt he’d want that.  He is alive in millions of other moments so why should I?  Why should any of us?  Take the tube off of our collective face, jump off the damn railroad tracks, and look around at the beautiful scenery he left in his wake, at what we are missing out on by lamenting his demise (or anyone’s demise—even that of our country’s sense of justice and liberty).  So, what moment should we choose to “see”?  The moments that held us captivated with the faint light present in this world, the light that Vonnegut revealed to all of us.  Adios, au revoire, and aloha, Mr. Vonnegut.

  Posted by karabekian on Apr 13, 2007 at 9:38 PM

  Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.

  Thank you Mr. Vonnegut.

  Posted by David in Canuckistan on Apr 13, 2007 at 10:19 PM

  Unfortunately we lost one of the greatest satirists and writer’s of all time.
  so it goes

  Posted by dean on Apr 13, 2007 at 11:10 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 28 posts.

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