Armageddon In Retrospect - Kurt Vonnegut [2]
The most radical, audacious thing to think is that there might be some point to working hard and thinking hard and reading hard and writing hard and trying to be of service.
He was a writer who believed in the magic of the process—both what it did for him and what it could do for readers. The reader’s time and attention were sacred to him. He connected with people on a visceral level because he realized that content was not the whole story. Kurt was and is like a gateway drug or a shoehorn. Once the reader is over the threshold, other writers become accessible.
“Does anyone out of high school still read me?”
He taught how stories were told and taught readers how to read. His writings will continue to do that for a long time. He was and is subversive, but not the way people thought he was. He was the least wild-and-crazy guy I ever knew. No drugs. No fast cars.
He tried always to be on the side of the angels. He didn’t think the war in Iraq was going to happen, right up until it did. It broke his heart not because he gave a damn about Iraq but because he loved America and believed that the land and people of Lincoln and Twain would find a way to be right. He believed, like his immigrant forefathers, that America could be a beacon and a paradise.
He couldn’t help thinking that all that money we were spending blowing up things and killing people so far away, making people the world over hate and fear us, would have been better spent on public education and libraries. It’s hard to imagine that history won’t prove him right, if it hasn’t already.
Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts. What they subvert is the notion that things have to be the way they are, that you are alone, that no one has ever felt the way you have. What occurs to people when they read Kurt is that things are much more up for grabs than they thought they were. The world is a slightly different place just because they read a damn book. Imagine that.
It’s common knowledge that Kurt was depressed, but as with a lot of things that are common knowledge, there are good reasons to doubt it. He didn’t want to be happy and he said a lot of depressing things, but I honestly don’t think he was ever depressed.
He was like an extrovert who wanted to be an introvert, a very social guy who wanted to be a loner, a lucky person who would have preferred to be unlucky. An optimist posing as a pessimist, hoping people will take heed. It wasn’t until the Iraq War and the end of his life that he became sincerely gloomy.
There was a bizarre, surreal incident when he took too many pills and ended up in a psych hospital, but it never felt like he was in any danger. Within a day he was bouncing around the dayroom playing Ping-Pong and making friends. It seemed like he was doing a not very convincing imitation of someone with mental illness.
The psychiatrist at the hospital told me, “Your dad’s depressed. We’re going to put him on an antidepressant.”
“Okay, but he doesn’t seem to have any of the symptoms I’m used to seeing in depression. He’s not slowed down, he doesn’t look sad, he’s still quick on the uptake.”
“He did try to kill himself,” the psychiatrist said.
“Well, sort of.” Of all the medications he took, there wasn’t a toxic level of anything. He had a barely therapeutic level of Tylenol.
“Do you not think we should put him on antidepressants? We have to do something.”
“I just thought I should mention that he doesn’t seem depressed. It’s very hard to say what Kurt is. I’m not saying he’s well.”
The difference between my fans and Kurt’s is