VONNEGUT

How many people can be known, worldwide, by their first or last name alone.

You can say, well Vonnegut is an unusual name, and who else etc. But his daughter Edie Vonnegut is an artist whose work I always dug, and found as interesting as her father’s books.

I first fell in love with Kurt Vonnegut’s writing when I was in the service and his early books came out in paperback, before they became so popular and influential that they were reissued in hardcover.

The way I heard it at the time, this was a first in the publishing business (most books of any import then were published in hardcover and reissued later in paperback, not the other way around; books published originally in paperback were the lower class of bookdom, considered “pulp.”)

My first wife and I, at 22 and 21 years old, used to read his stories and novels to each other for a laugh and a little enlightenment. I fell in love with the author of them.

Later on in the 1960s, when I went to the U. of Iowa Writers Workshop on the GI Bill, I met Vonnegut, who was teaching in the fiction workshop, and his daughter Edie, who was a high school student at the time.

Vonnegut was always nothing but kind to me. He treated me with respect, as if we were equals. I never was his student (I didn’t have an undergraduate degree when I arrived so had to get that first, and by the time I got into the graduate school, two years later, he was gone) but he still paid attention to my anti-war (Vietnam then) speeches and writing and anything else I was getting published back then.

He was such a regular guy—intelligent but no condescending intellectual superiority like I got from some other teachers and students there—that I always felt comfortable around him.

I ran into him again over the years, mostly in New York, and he always remembered me and seemed to be up to date on my latest books or other activities, which not only flattered me but made me feel maybe I wasn’t the outsider I always felt like I was, that maybe there was a place for me in the literary and art world that I felt had saved my life.

I hadn’t seen him for a long time, after I moved to L.A. and spent almost 20 years there, or since I moved back East several years ago. But I kept up with his latest writing and his speeches, and my respect for his honesty and clarity in the face of the hypocrisy so prevalent in these times, only grew.

He lived a full life, but I wish he was still around to continue commenting on the charade of power and greed masquerading as morality and idealism.

I didn’t get a chance to thank him for all his simple kindnesses to me, so I’ll do it now.

Thanks man, it was great having you in the world.