Kurt Vonnegut's Advice on Life

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite writers. All writers worth their salt should be funny, or at least have some humor going on, and Kurt has it going it in spades. Which isn’t to say he wrote non-serious books. His books are as serious as a zombie apocalypse or a nuclear attack. If fact, one of his best books, Cat’s Cradle, is about the destruction of the entire world by ice. Ice-nine, an ice that metastasizes. But there’s always a soul cleansing , weary, ‘seen-it-all but oops, here comes something else’ humor. For instance, in Cat’s Cradle, Frank Hoenikker, errant son of nobel prize winner and creator of ice-nine, Felix Hoenikker, passes on a chip of it to a crazy dictator who uses it and this leads to the entire world becoming frozen. At one point after all this has happened, Frank says to the narrator, the Vonnegut stand-in, Jonah, something along the lines of it all having been a growth experience for him. (If anyone can grab the exact quote, please put it in the comments.)

It’s too bad Kurt isn’t around to comment on Trump, Elon and the rest of the superhuman crew who emerged out of the portals of Bizzarro World. This is the Golden Age of Granfalloons, which Vonnegut called a false karass, something resembling a real connection, but is instead "a proud and meaningless association of human beings." Which includes social clubs, political parties and nations.

His dry, weary, scotch and cigarette smoke soaked chuckle would be welcome commentary on these widening gyre times, where the expectation of common human civility has fallen so low people have given up the enterprise of ever raising it up again, shrugging their shoulders, trying to maintain life as it once was as best they can remember it.

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Indeed. Tangentially, and not really part of the above story, Kurt thought Dylan’s poetry was gibberish. This was during a time when Tarantula was out and lots of Dylan’s song poetry was, in fact, gibberish. Gibberish with a good line or two, which he usually stole.

Jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule.

But we forgive Bob, because of a lot of other stuff which is indeed poetry and is great.

So what do you do in a time like this? We can rant and dissect and rail to our hearts content in all the online communities, post links on Facebook that get thousands of likes and various simpatico emogi’s, feel some tinge of righteousness and making a noise in the world but as everyone sees, after millions of such post and Twitter too, the wars go on and the atrocities are unending and widespread compassion for one another seems to be the last thing on anyone’s mind as far as a tool for correction and honoring this incredibly rare and beautiful thing we call life and making this world a good place, the hell with making it great, let’s just make it good, fair, how about that? and when we’re finally done posting on the media platform of our choice, because you had to say something at least, at least that’s the common wisdom, we nonetheless are left knowing of course that no one who enacts policy or who matters in solving issues is paying the slightest bit of attention to any of it. Just know that. If it makes you feel better to vent, fine. Go at it. I think we can safely leave the spreading of the word to the thousands and thousands of YouTubers, though, they’ve got it covered from every conceivable angle and in stronger concentration.

Regarding all of this, Vonnegut has some wonderful advice.

“I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer right by my bed, and I’d never have to leave it. But I use a typewriter, and afterwards I mark up the pages with a pencil. Then I call up this woman named Carol out in Woodstock and say, ‘Are you still doing typing?’ Sure she is, and her husband is trying to track bluebirds out there and not having much luck, and so we chitchat back and forth, and I say, ‘OK, I’ll send you the pages.’ Then I’m going down the steps, and my wife calls up, ‘Where are you going?’ I say, ‘Well, I’m going to go buy an envelope.’ And she says, ‘You’re not a poor man. Why don’t you buy a thousand envelopes? They’ll deliver them, and you can put them in a closet.’ And I say, ‘Hush.’ So I go down the steps here, and I go out to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it’s my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately. I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of 47th Street and 2nd Avenue, where I’m secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it. Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. And I’ve had a hell of a good time. And I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.

Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We’re dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go do something.”

This might not be the most practical way to write these days, I certainly don’t, but I applaud the idea.

The wisdom of farting around can not be undervalued. Humans have been doing it for as long as there’s been humans.

How beautiful it is to get up and go do something.

Amen.

Thank you, Kurt.