I came to Mr. Vonnegut late and in my usual stubborn and roundabout fashion having been told for years to read him by various friends who i'd say had excellent and disparate tastes in books but all seemed certain i would enjoy this Kurt character, and so one day about five years ago i got a copy of his book of letters published after he had died, not one his novels or a short story collection but letters, and in those letters i saw a guy i could relate to and so one fine day i went to that library and checked out a book called God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and never laughed so hard in my life, it was all downhill from their and his work now gets devoured on a regular basis and soon i'll be close to having read all his novels...
They say Kurt Vonnegut wrote science fiction and i'd laugh and say that Kurt Vonnegut wrote nothing close to science fiction, that what he wrote was life, was humanity in all it's folly and glory and arrogance and beauty, you can't classify it and there are times when i'm sitting around doing whatever i do and i wonder what the hell it is? then i remind myself not to worry about it, the reward is in the doing and not the buying, selling or consuming of it, by the modern world's standards i don't do much, yes i cook and clean and mow the lawn and wash clothes but the real men don't call that work, i don't earn any money, i about earn my keep and nothing more, of course Kurt would say i actually do quite a bit and what he'd most like is that in those spare hours not spent cooking and cleaning and mowing i type out pages of my life, i type out stories and ideas and half-assed philosophical babble, and so in my own half-assed way and without ever really knowing it, i went into art.. the art of living...
"The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something." -KV.... let it be stated that i spend a good portion of my day singing and dancing around my humble abode, i also spend a good portion of it conversing with cats...
And he's right, it's no damn way to make a living, selling weed or shining shoes is a much more effective means of supporting oneself and he's right about that reward, i always seem to be in a better mood when i get things done, things that might sit in a folder or file (digitized and otherwise), there is a satisfaction in the doing that i simply do not get from anything else, yes when i demo'ed the bathroom or pulled apart and fixed the toilet, that was all well and good and there was a modicum of accomplishment in figuring out how to do something i hadn't done before but it was nothing like the simple act of staring at the page and typing away, even when it goes badly, which it often does, there is nothing like pissing away the hours, the same goes for the paints, i have no talent or ability but i still i fritter about, making things, for no one and for no reason other than i want to, and so while i may be failing wonderfully at earning money or advancing a career i have gotten quite good and doing nothing at all, a man can work up a mean thirst after a hard day of that, Paul Westerberg said that not Kurt, but thanks Mr. Vonnegut, for helping an aging slacker stay the course...
3 comments:
That letters book is a good read. Nice that you caught him eventually. I was lucky enough to hear him speak at Case Western Reserve. It was a long conversation. Finally, he said he was going to read from something he's been working on but it's been a long night and if people wanted to leave, he'd understand. About three quarters of the audience got up and left. Idiots.
He said writing schools and programs ruin more writers than they create. They strip a writer of his/her voice and force them to follow a set of rules that neuters their writing. He said this at Case!
man i agree, saying Vonnegut wrote "science fiction" is like saying Henry Miller wrote "erotic love novels", or that The Velvet Underground were "an unsuccessful 60s rock band", or calling Bill Hicks "a humorist." labels always come cheap to those who cant be fucked to invest in deeper understanding.
ha Hicks once called himself a dark poet, and only somewhat jokingly. Kurt had a word for the sci fi crowd: "shmoos."
Exile- you're a lucky bastard... and he was dead-on, i've railed at the MFA set for years for those very reasons, why pay (a shit ton of money) to learn what you can do on your own with a library card? read and write, write and read, simple enough, an no expectations other than the joy of doing it... people i went to school with always thought i was an English major, i was for a semester or so in grad school but i was a fucking advert/journo fuckwad, mainly cuz it was easy, i flunked the only creative writing course i ever took, that right there explains a lot...
Kid- about texted you this morning to see what part of the terra you were traversing at present, send this old man some pictures, it makes me happy. I once labeled myself an Urban Lumberjack, i think i like "shmoos" better...
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