04.12.07
Billy Pilgrim is dead. So it goes.
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”
According to Dinitia Smith’s obit in today’s The New York Times, that passage from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater sums up the philosophy of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who died yesterday at age 84.
I believe it.
Back in the early 1980s I arrived at his home in New York City to interview him on the occasion of the publication of a new novel — its title escapes me after all these years — after a mad dash from a late plane at LaGuardia and crosstown traffic in Manhattan, arriving nearly an hour late. Having suffered the displeasure of more than one heavyweight novelist over tardiness to an appointment, I was ready for a blast of disapproval.
A tall man opened the door. Below his Brillo hair and bulging eyebags lay a bright smile.
“You made it!” he crowed, reaching out for my hand, pumping it firmly, and pulling me into the house as if I were a long-lost relative.
He waved away both my apologies and my offer to cut the talk short if he was running late. He would not start the interview until he had poured me a cup of freshly made coffee.
Just as we sat down his wife, the photographer Jill Krementz, popped into the living room and snapped a picture of us. “For his files,” she said with a small smile, then left.
And for the next ninety minutes Vonnegut and I talked. He treated me not like another annoying newspaper guy (probably because he had been a reporter himself once, for Chicago’s City News Bureau) but like an equal, and considered every question carefully, giving a measured answer in perfectly shaped paragraphs.
I wish I could remember the book that was the topic of the interview and what else we talked about — that story is buried somewhere in my papers — but all I can recall is Vonnegut’s warmth and courtliness.
This afternoon I’m going to dig Slaughterhouse-Five out of my library and read a few passages in tribute to a great writer and a deeply compassionate human being.
Kevin said,
April 12, 2007 at 8:38 am
Any chance that the book you’re referring to is “Player Piano”?
John C said,
April 12, 2007 at 8:43 am
The phrase that’s been running through my head since I heard the news is this: “You are what you pretend to be. So be careful what you pretend to be.” My Vonnegut is blurring together. But I think that’s from “Mother Night.”
Rest in peace.
Henry said,
April 12, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Kevin –
“Player Piano” was published in 1952. I think, but am not sure, that the book I interviewed Vonnegut on was “Jailbird,” and that would have been in 1979, not the early 1980s as I had thought.
Over the years there were so many author interviews that they’ve all run together in my head.
Henry said,
April 12, 2007 at 3:59 pm
John –
I believe you’re right, that’s from “Mother Night.”
One of my favorite Vonnegut quotations:
“Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.”
He was a man of perspective, wasn’t he?
Kevin said,
April 13, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Thanks for pointing that out.
Player Piano was just the only book that I recognized from Vonnegut, as it was one of the several books required for my English class including 1982 and Brave New World.
Small world.
pete said,
April 16, 2007 at 7:42 pm
>>it was one of the several books required for my English class including 1982 and Brave New World.
Gonna take a wild stab here, and guess that one of those required books was “1984″ rather than “1982.” Inflation, donchaknow!
Henry said,
April 17, 2007 at 5:14 am
“1982″ or “1984,” it turned out to be quite a decade.
Washington City Paper: News & Features: Blogs said,
April 18, 2007 at 9:07 am
[...] Like lots of other people out there, I was sad to learn about Kurt Vonneguts death last week. But though I was all but raised on his novels, the first piece of writing by him that I fondly recalled when I heard the news wasnt Cats Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, or Welcome to the Monkey House. A bit of PR for a paper company came up first. In the early 80s International Paper featured Vonnegut in a two-page ad, giving him the real estate to offer some advice on how to improve your writing. The ad may have appeared in tons of places, but I remember reading it as a kid in Rolling Stone. (Geek confession: I also remember clipping it and taping it to the wall of my room. Also, I’m pretty sure the ad was the first time I heard of James Joyce.) [...]