American novelist Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007
Vonnegut is one of my very favourite authors. I’ve read most of his works and find myself nodding along, or with a wry smile, when I enjoy his wonderful turns of phrase and quirky, but often piercingly accurate, insights into human nature.
‘Slaughterhouse Five’ is a well known work of Kurt’s. Poignant as it’s based on his experiences as an American prisoner of war in Dresden at the time of the allied bombing raids, which caused massive destruction and terrible loss of life, reports of over 20,000 killed, as firestorms ripped through a city centre that was densely populated. This novel is a profoundly anti-war story, as books that accurately depict what really happens in a war, tend to be.
Trapped in the amber of the moment.
Tralfamadorians, who are aliens that can experience all moments of time simulatenously, abduct the hero of the story, Billy Pilgrim, who questions them why he has been abducted?
“- Why me?
- That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
- Yes.
- Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”
Typically entertaining from Kurt. Absurdity meeting reality and having a discussion about which is which. Life after all, is a mystery to most, and utterly absurd the closer you examine it.
Another wry quote insight, that I’m fond of, is the passage containing the figure of seventeen percent… from ‘Timequake’
This very summer, I asked the novelist William Styron in a Chinese restaurant how many people on the whole planet had what we had, which was lives worth living. Between the two of us, we came up with seventeen percent.
The next day I took a walk in midtown Manhattan with a longtime friend, a physician who treats every sort of addict at Bellevue Hospital. Many of his patients are homeless and HIV positive as well. I told him about Styron's and my figure of seventeen percent. He said it sounded about right to him.
As I have written elsewhere, this man is a saint. I define a saint as a person who behaves decently in an indecent society. I asked him why half his patients at Bellevue didn't commit suicide. He said the same question had occurred to him. He sometimes asked them, as though it were an unremarkable part of a diagnostic routine, if they had thoughts of self-destruction. He said that they were almost without exception surprised and insulted by the question. An idea that sick had never entered their heads!
Mostly we might call the remaining, 83% of humanity, ‘non player characters’ these days, it’s the same insight from a different generation.
A few more insights into the human condition and the fundamentally non serious thing we call existence, from Kurt’s novels.
Kurt Vonnegut asked his son Mark (a pediatrician and author) what he thought the meaning of life was, and Mark replied: "We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” - Mother Night
“We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.” - A Man Without a Country
My favourite slice of wisdom, ever, from Kurt would be the following. Vonnegut often recalled his late Uncle Alex, a life insurance salesman from Indianapolis, who frequently complained that people rarely noticed when they were actually happy. Uncle Alex would interrupt quiet, pleasant moments, such as drinking lemonade under an apple tree, to declare, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is”
I try my best to implement this strategy whenever I notice that, this particular moment is, indeed, a wonderful experience and I am very happy to be alive and enjoying this gift.