Editors note: 2022 would have been the year of Kurt Vonnegut's 100th birthday. The Kurt Vonnegut Museum And Library was accepting submissions for their annual literary journal and this is what I turned in. I may or may not have followed the assignment but at least I got something done and turned in before the deadline.
Growing up, there wasn't much of an emphasis placed on reading books in my house. The only books that were readily available were children's books so it seemed like reading was a skill to be learned and once that was done books no longer served a purpose. The act of reading was seen as something that was only needed to get through schoolwork and not much else beyond that because books cost money. Besides, it was the 1980s so there was television to be my babysitter and best friend.
There wasn't a library within walking distance from my house so trips to the local library were seen as an inconvenience once my siblings and I aged out of Saturday story time. Reading for entertainment or enriching ones life was something that wasn't on anyone's radar. That and I didn't have that cool older cousin or younger stoner uncle that would tell me what records to listen to, movies to check out or books to read.
That's why when I first encountered Kurt Vonnegut, his words didn't really have an impact on me. Harrison Bergeron was tucked away in the back of my 10th or 11th grade English/Lit. textbook and didn't even register as a speed bump in my head because my brain wasn't wired for reading at that point. I read the story and then I may or may not have completed the associated assignment (more than likely did not) and went on trudging through my day.
At a very young age, I learned that I didn't really fit in anywhere but there was also a lack of guidance to point me in a direction that would lead me to find something to grab onto. My frustration wasn't so much general teenage angst. It was more of a sense of “What the fuck am I doing here?” which then led to a heaping helping of teenage angst.
My later teen years sent me looking for some sort of substance. I already figured out that religion of any kind was not for me and it was looking like day to day society wasn't for me either. At the time, life in my little corner of Pittsburgh could pretty much be summed up as graduate high school, work at a soul sucking job for forty years which was then followed promptly by death and I couldn't get right with that. So much of everything that I was surrounded by felt like complete bullshit.
Around the time of all this existential pondering, I was getting heavily into Punk Rock and music in general. Since I didn't have many friends and the internet wasn't a thing yet, there was a lot of poke and hope in trying to find records that said the things I was thinking and sounded like I was feeling.
Music is what led me to hanging out with one of my sister's friends. On weekends, he'd pick me up and we'd hit used record and book stores around town. I would wander around these stores aimlessly browsing and, with great frequency, John would stuff books and records into my hands and say, “You need this.” The books were usually fifty cents to two dollars so I aways took them home with me. And well over twenty years later, I can confidently say that I did in fact need those books and records. They helped build the foundation of that substance I had been looking for.
It was through those weekend trips to different book stores that I was able to build up a decent collection of Vonnegut paperbacks. Out of all of those books that I ended up taking home with me, I always spent the most time with the Vonnegut titles. The writing was simple enough to chip away at my hardheadedness but had enough meaning to it that the life lessons that Kurt was trying to impart slowly started to seep in.
Welcome To The Monkey House latched onto my brain and has not let go to this day. It was in this collection of short stories that I was transported once again to the year 2081 to be reunited with Harrison Bergeron. But unlike in high school, the story stuck with me. The more I read that story, I tend to relate with Harrison's father, George, more than any other character. Every time I have a thought there always seems to be some sort of noise or other pollution in the air to chase the thought away. Age has taken me away from relating to Harrison. My youthful delusions of invincibility have been replaced with the harsh realities of bad knees and a bad back.
The Long Walk To Forever still hits like a gut punch no matter how many times I've read the story. On more occasions than I would like to acknowledge, I have felt like Newt. Except that I never even got to the point of “one foot in front of the other, through leaves, over bridges.”
The writing of Kurt Vonnegut (with a twist of Hunter S. Thompson) taught me to be an angry optimist. As humanity has become stuck in a rut and history is repeating itself, I find my brain shouting “Be Better!!!” more often these days as I read the news. Kurt Vonnegut put these very big and difficult ideas into the simplest of terms in easily digestible stories but he has been ignored and now the species is teetering at the edge of existence and it's about to fall over.
That's why I always try to get Kurt Vonnegut's work under the noses of people younger than me because his work always felt like he was shouting cautionary tales into the void for future generations to receive the message. As someone who lived during The Great Depression and survived the firebombing of Dresden, the wisdom and perspective that are in Kurt's work is something that should be treasured but could be easily lost as time marches on toward willful ignorance. My generation and every preceding generation has failed to conquer the greed that is killing us all so let's see what the kids can do.
Every time that I had a younger relative that reached some sort of milestone such as a graduation or a 16th or 18th birthday, I would give them a copy of Welcome To The Monkey House. I may have jumped the gun with my daughter, though. I think she was still in elementary school when I gave her her copy of the book. That can be chalked up to bad parenting on my part. Or great parenting, depending on who you ask.
It's never too early to start the youths on their Vonnegut journey. I will do what I can to prevent someone else from having the same first exposure to Kurt Vonnegut that I did. I was too dumb to notice what I had in my hands at the time. Over the course of my life, Kurt Vonnegut was the key to a lot of locks in my brain and if I can save anyone the trouble of banging their head against a wall by putting one of his books in their hands and saying, “You need this,” I would consider that a job well done.
