Timequake - Kurt Vonnegut [53]
50
I am so old that I can remember when the word fuck was thought to be so full of bad magic that no respectable publication would print it. Another old joke: “Don’t say ‘fuck’ in front of the B-A-B-Y.”
A word just as full of poison, supposedly, but which could be spoken in polite company, provided the speaker’s tone implied fear and loathing, was Communism, denoting an activity as commonly and innocently practiced in many primitive societies as fucking.
So it was a particularly elegant commentary on the patriotism and nice-nellyism during the deliberately insane Vietnam War when the satirist Paul Krassner printed red-white-and-blue bumper stickers that said FUCK COMMUNISM!
My novel Slaughterhouse-Five was attacked back then for containing the word motherfucker. In an early episode, somebody takes a shot at four American soldiers caught behind the German lines. One American snarls at another one, who, as I say, has never fucked anyone, “Get your head down, you dumb motherfucker.”
Ever since those words were published, mothers of sons have had to wear chastity belts while doing housework.
I of course understand that the widespread revulsion inspired even now, and perhaps forever, by the word Communism is a sane response to the cruelties and stupidities of the dictators of the USSR, who called themselves, hey presto, Communists, just as Hitler called himself, hey presto, a Christian.
To children of the Great Depression, however, it still seems a mild shame to outlaw from polite thought, because of the crimes of tyrants, a word that in the beginning described for us nothing more than a possibly reasonable alternative to the Wall Street crapshoot.
Yes, and the word Socialist was the second S in USSR, so good-bye, Socialism along with Communism, good-bye to the soul of Eugene Debs of Terre Haute, Indiana, where the moonlight’s shining bright along the Wabash. From the fields there comes the breath of new-mown hay.
“While there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
The Great Depression was a time for discussing all sorts of alternatives to the Wall Street crapshoot, which had suddenly killed so many businesses, including banks. The crapshoot left millions and millions of Americans without any way to pay for food and shelter and clothing.
So what?
That was almost a century ago, if you want to count the rerun. Forget it! Practically everybody who was alive back then is deader than a mackerel. Happy Socialism to them in the Afterlife!
What matters now is that, on the afternoon of February 13th, 2001, Kilgore Trout roused Dudley Prince from his Post-Timequake Apathy. Trout urged him to speak, to say anything, no matter how nonsensical. Trout suggested he say, “I pledge allegiance to the flag,” or whatever, to prove to himself thereby that he was again in charge of his own destiny.
Prince spoke groggily at first. He didn’t pledge allegiance, but indicated instead that he was trying to understand everything Trout had said to him so far. He said, “You told me I had something.”
“You were sick, but now you’re well, and there’s work to do,” said Trout.
“Before that,” said Prince. “You said I had something.”
“Forget it,” said Trout. “I was all excited. I wasn’t making sense.”
“I still want to know what you said I had,” said Prince.
“I said you had free will,” said Trout.
“Free will, free will, free will,” echoed Prince with wry wonderment. “I always wondered what it was I had. Now I got a name for it.”
“Please forget what I said,” said Trout. “There are lives to save!”
“You know what you can do with free will?” said Prince.
“No,” said Trout.
“You can stuff it up your ass,” said Prince.
51
When I liken Trout there in the entrance hall of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, awakening Dudley Prince from PTA, to Dr. Frankenstein, I am alluding of course to the antihero of the novel Frankenstein—or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, second wife