Alack-a-day

Morning are usually downbeat for me, even the shiny blue California morning. I have to function early, walking the dog and seeing if she is declining further into hr senescence, then settling into my breakfast routine, accompanied by news on the radio as I scour the L.A. Times. Ever since I tuned in to the horror narrative on 9/11 I've been wary of whatever new crap the outside world has to offer. Today was no exception. The lead headline blared that U.S. soldiers are all having their tours expanded I guess it would be worse if I actually knew any soldiers, but our foreign plicy obtuseness is a neverending cause for consternation). Then I hear on the radio that a sucide bomb has penetrated the "Green" Zone of "security" in Baghdad, blowing up several Irqi congressmen who were eating lunch. Then we hear Bush's reaction, which is "these kinds of men doing these deeds are the same kinds of me who would do that to Americans on our soil." Jees, does anyone still listen to that horse manure "terrorist" justification for the Surge, which doesn't seem to be very effective deterrent? Okay, maybe Cheney, who is still hard at work tying Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein.

But before I can bemoan that catalysmic stupidity, I note on the bottom of page one the announcement of the death of Kurt Vonnegut. I was truly appalled at the loss, and almost wept. His death is no tragedy, since he lived a full life. But his departure is substantial. Though his literary output has foundered in recent years, his shrewd and humane voice was still quotable, and I truly regret that there will be no more new Vonnegut additions to grab at the airport bookstore.

I suppose, if pressed to name my favorite author, I would probably default to Vonnegut. His prose may not sing like that of Hemingway or Faulkner or Melville, but it was lilting and tuneful nonetheless. Its simplicity and accessibility may demote him in the eyes of the critics, but his popularity will linger as a voice for my generation, the 60s rebels and pseudo-rebels, who easily bought into his nihilism. He is fairly compared to Mark Twain, the man I consider the greatest, most quintessential American author.

No work of Vonnegut's in likely to match up to "Huck Finn" or "Tom Sawyer," though Twain's other novels have largely faded from scrutiny, as have all of Vonnegut's but "Slaughterhouse Five," "Cat's Cradle" and perhaps "The Sirens of Titan." "Caqtr's Cradle" holds a special fondness for me, since it was my intro to Kurt, and contained the wonderful concept of the "Granfaloon." A granfalloon was any large gathering of persons associated for a lame and shallow reason, like members of a fraternity, or employees of General Motors, or the Boston Red Sox Nation. I paraphrase the couplet a character used to describe it, "If you want to see the substance of a granfalloon, just puncture the skin orf the nearest balloon." What a concept!

But "Slaughterhouse Five" is his seminal work because of its high morality and clarity of vision regarding warfare, which he calls "The Children's Crusade," since most battles are fought by clueless 19-year-olds. Betcha George W. never read "Slaughterhouse Five," or if he did as a smoked-out collegiate, would deny it now as anti-American and treasonous. I can imagine what Vonnegut had to say about George's follies. Yet Vonnegut magically was able to use humor to illustrate the insanities of war in its most destructive--in this case, leading ultimately to the firebombing of Dresden, arguably the most lethal military attack ever, and one with no strategic military value attached, except the demoralization of the Germans. The biggest laugh I ever got out of a Vonnegut story was in his description of a play put on by prisoners of war (of which he was one). The skit performed by soliders in drag was "Cinderella," and the title character was given the couplet, at the climactic moment of the Ball scene, "Oh my gosh, the clock has struck/Alack-a-day, and fuck my luck!" Not only did it make me howl, but it so amused the lead character, Billy Pilgrim, that he had to be carried away.

But of course, the humor was a palliative for the misery that lay close to the surface. Life eventually sucked for Vonnegut's charactes, and for himself, and a closing image I have is of Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut's writer alter ego, whose face was sketched by the author himself, shedding tears. When Vonnegut supposedly "liberated" his characters at the end of "Breakfast of Champions," (I believe) he asked Kilgore what wish he could grant him. Kilgore simply pleaded, "Make me young again!"

Touche, and so so sad.