Vonnegut, Imus and Terri Austin

I cannot think of another death of a public figure that impacted me as much as Kurt Vonnegut's death. I mentioned in my post notifying of his death that there was a family connection. The last time such a death had such effect on me was John Lennon's. This image captures a wonderful idea. You might want to take a look at the site, too.

I have not read Vonnegut in many years. I missed Galapagos and Bluebeard and A Man Without a Country. I started on The Bagombo Snuffcase after I posted about his death. Frankly, I have never cared much for Slapstick or Deadeye Dick or Breakfast of Champions. I still have yet to read God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. I have re-read Wampeters, Foma, and Granfaloons many times. I have a copy signed by Mr. Vonnegut. I liked his essays. They were like reading conversations with some of my relatives.

My mother's sister knew Vonnegut and followed his career (as did seemingly some of the other people they all knew). I remember her saying that they could tell when Kurt was writing for the money. She said that of Breakfast of Champions.

What Vonnegut wrote and said was not really that odd to me as a Hoosier. How he wrote differed from what anyone really expected - not the turgidity of Faulkner, not the macho silliness of Hemingway, not the realism of Steinbeck. But underneath the comedy, the science fiction trappings, was something that I recognized in my older relatives. A decency easily angered by injustice and rudeness, a distrust of politicians, a gloomy attitude towards life that was salvaged by a black humor and wisecracks, religious without bigotry or superstition, and so on. They all shared with Vonnegut a life begun in Indiana where they all came to age just before or during the Great Depression. We all also may have shared Vonnegut's problems with depression. I Know I did and do.

Depression immerses one in a gloom destructive when one lacks a sense of humor. My mother and her sister had a terribly black sense of humor. Gallows humor is what some might call it. Vonnegut had the same sense of humor. So did Twain. My own theory is that this kind of humor, which means this worldview, is Midwestern. Come out here and get yourself surrounded by miles of cornfields see what happens to yourself. The same thing created James Dean. Not that Indiana now or seventy years ago was all decency and idyllic pastoral scenes. We had had the Klan running the state in the Twenties, we had the Great Depression, we browbeat the Germans during World War I into assimilation, and since then we have produced Reverend Jim Jones, Charles Manson, and voted for Republican presidents every year since 1964. Besides all that bad news, any drive through the Indiana countryside (once off the antiseptic Interstates) could easily be punctuated by the ripe smell of hogs. I learned a long time ago that a bad smell could invade any beautiful sight. For a very long time I have held to the idea that Midwestern romanticism is tempered with a realism caused by that smell of hog farms (or is it a realism tempered by romanticism) and that makes us superior to those on the coasts. I also call that old time Hoosier. In these days of homogenization, it is a dying breed.

You want a truly black view of humanity unrelenting in describing humanity's failures and corruption? Read Twain's Letters from Earth. Wow. Maybe therein lies the difference between a great author like Twain and a great writer like Vonnegut. For all his despair and depression, Vonnegut never got around to hating people.

I do not know that Vonnegut belongs to the category of great author. I mean great author in the sense of Tolstoy or Twain or Melville or Faulkner. I think he as well as John Updike and Gore Vidal and Dan Wakefield and Tom Robbins are the last writers that are not what Vidal calls academic writers. The read, they wrote, they learned to write better or they did not eat. I must admit never reading Updike or Wakefield, and while I liked Robbins (particularly Still Life with Woodpecker), it is Vidal that I have read the most of that grouping. Vidal's style differs wildly from that of Vonnegut. Here is a description from a Guardian blog:

Vonnegut is often cited as a sci-fi writer, or as one who straddles the "literary" and "sci-fi" genres. This seems to indicate an almost distasteful mania for labelling. Vonnegut was sui generis - once he achieved the tone that was to suit him for the final half of his professional life, all you could say of his writing was that it was Vonnegutian: playful, conversational, apparently guileless, repetitive if necessary, rambling, discursive - but always stiffened by a strong ethical backbone.

As much as he joked about pissing off the Swedish Academy, I wonder if the Noble really would have helped him. If anyone has read Sinclair Lewis, there is a difference between his books before and after he got the Nobel. I would have given anything to hear his Noble acceptance speech. I think it would have been a hoot.

Mentioning Gore Vidal makes me think how much also he reminds me of conversations with my older relatives in his essays. His acerbic, even catty tone, reminds me of certain relatives where Vonnegut reminds me of their humor. I read Vidal's Duluth, liked it, but he lacks the kindly cynical humor of Vonnegut. Vonnegut talks quite a bit about writing here.

Vonnegut never lost touch with that old Indiana. Like my mother's sister, he never came back here to live either. Neither did Red Skelton, Marjorie Main, Carole Lombard, Dan Wakefield, or Cole Porter. Actually, my aunt did return to Indiana for a few years in the early Eighties but left happily for Connecticut. I remember visiting her there and hearing her defend Indiana rather vigorously. She just could not live here. She claimed that the influx of Southerners to work in the factories had ruined Indiana. For her, Indiana was a good place to be from. I think Vonnegut said similar things.

Reading the obituaries, I found myself surprised by the use of the term counter cultural to describe Vonnegut. Budd Shulberg wrote this in the Glasgow Sunday Herald:

But in his post-Dresden creativity he found the deceptively light-hearted,comic voice that linked him to Twain and would become his trademark. It was the doomsday laughter that would become his calling card on the new generation looking for a clear break with the past and seeking a new language that would shock and even irritate their elders with its irreverent approach to serious matters.

Kurt Vonnegut didn't only speak their language, he invariably originated it and handed it back to them in a way that made them feel it was in their nature to develop and use to communicate. Not since F Scott Fitzgerald in the jazz age of the 1920s has an author been so identified with a particular generation which accepts him as its spokesman, installing him as a cult figure whose age might accurately be described as the age of Vonnegut.

As I have said before, my mother's sister, Mary Ellen Finholt, encouraged my interest in Vonnegut. I can imagine many things but my Aunt Mary Ellen as belonging to the counter-culture is not one of them. I recall being nineteen and asking my mother what was his sister's political affiliation and my mother guessed her as being a Republican. I then asked my aunt if she was a Republican. I think she took it as an accusation but was also a bit amused. She told me that she would vote Socialist if there was a Socialist Party worth voting for. Now here was a widow of a former GE junior executive, graduate of Purdue's chemistry department, who was solidly middle class (and that description would anger her greatly if she were still alive), and a Socialist in sympathy. I think they thought that a certain socialism was the decent form of economics for human beings. I guess the correct term would be social democrats.

If you want to read something about a Social Democratic Party here is a link. Wikipedia has an article on social democracy here. You might notice that the Social Democratic Party page mentions another Hoosier quoted often by Vonnegut - Eugene Debs. From another appreciation in the Sunday Herald (written by Ian Bell), is this highlighting of the Debs' connection:

For example, one of the late novels, Hocus Pocus, was dedicated to the memory of Eugene Victor Debs. Vonnegut knew perfectly well that the name meant less than nothing to almost all of his compatriots. He knew that their censored histories did not allow for the fantasy of a socialist and pacifist who was, several times, a very serious candidate for the presidency, and who won more votes (meaning millions) than "any other candidate nominated by a third party in the history of this country".

Vonnegut quoted Debs in his dedication: "While there is a lower class I am in it. While there is a criminal element I am of it. While there is a soul in prison I am not free." It would be news to Fox News and the neo-cons, but once upon a time those were very American sentiments.And Vonnegut knew it.

Decency, just treating people as well as you want to be treated, underlies Vonnegut. I say that this trait was a common one in Indiana. We can be a racists, sexist, homophobic state, but we can surprise with our individual demands for common decency. I recall an anecdote in John Gunther's Inside the USA about a racial incident in Indianapolis. A woman's maid could not get into a theater because of her race and the woman's employer torn into the theater's management. Yes, I recognize the absurdity in such a story but that is Indiana. We know life is a bit absurd and we can smile about it. We can tolerate a lot of bad behavior so long as it is "over there", but we can get terribly irate when confronted with rudeness. Howard Stern failed when his shock jock radio show was brought here. Our current governor promoted himself as a true Hoosier but his rudeness and insults proved him to be a fake and his polls show that we know it. Being decent to one's fellow human beings is not easy. Actually, it is quite hard and I will be the last to admit that I treat everyone well. No, rudeness and cruelty and pettiness come too easily. Especially in these days when such character flaws are touted as virtues by our President and his band. I can only echo what Mr. Vonnegut said a good deal better - Christian means following the Beatitudes and the Golden Rule. Again, from Budd Shulberg:

In my long life I've known a lot of cynics and a lot of believers. Invariably they're two different breeds. But in Kurt Vonnegut we have a unique kind of author who bridges those two disparities. He is not so much a believing comic as he is a cynical believer. In today's Iraqian world of dislocation and social unrest, be holds a lantern up to human decency beset by global madness and chaos. But despite his knowledge that human decency may be fighting a losing battle, he never truly loses hope, though he would never put it so boldly, or nakedly.

That is why he is ever the cynical believer, able to express himself with that mixture of hope and despair - and by some leap of faith do it with the humour that has made him such a unique voice. Not since St Mark himself, with the possible exception of Joe Heller, have we had an American author, be it in Breakfast Of Champions, Galapagos, Bluebeard, Hocus Pocus or Timequake; nor have we had the good fortune to have an author so humorously serious and so seriously comic.

The Don Imus melodrama pointed out to me how much we need Vonnegut's decency. It might also show how much remains of our American decency. Much has been made of the criticism of Imus - how it shows a certain hyprocrisy towards rap music. I am not so sure that is true. I am not one for giving Al Sharpton much credit but he and Reverend Jackson both criticize rap music.

I never understood Imus's appeal. He slurs, he was rude, he anything but funny. Not exactly what I want to wake up with. In the same vein, I do not buy or listen to rap. When was the last time that any rap[per had anything to talk about money and drugs and gold-digging women? So, I may not be the best person to comment on all this.

No, it all shows the same coarsening of our character for the sake of a buck. If the criticism of Imus is anyway hypocritical, it is in the media companies firing him but pushing the rude boys of rap. Hypocrisy seems inherent in the criticism, too. Those that want to criticize the critics ignore the cheapening of ourselves. Weren't the conservatives beating the liberals over their figurative heads about the coarsening of our culture thanks to the liberals? Remember the book that Bill Bennett wrote about virtue - between gambling jaunts? As Cindi Lauper sang a long time ago - money changes everything. Big money did not impress Vonnegut.

I am not so idealistic to believe that much will change soon. All we can do is lay our individual bricks and see what happens. However, we must lay the bricks and not hire it out. Today's Washington Post has columnist Howard Kurtz comparing the Imus melodrama with the Duke debacle.

Everyone, including Don Imus, agrees that the remarkable women of the Rutgers basketball team were unfairly maligned by his racial slur.

But what about the living hell visited on three young men from the Duke lacrosse team? In all the coverage of the sexual assault charges that were finally dropped last week, very few have talked about how the media slimed them.

A harder case, as Kurtz points out but still a media circuses put on in a certain way because the media companies thought we would watch and they could sell advertising.

The combination of race, crime, sports and a blue-chip university proved irresistible for a business that thrives on creating national soap operas. Did the indictments, as the team's lacrosse season was canceled, have to be covered? Of course. But media outlets framed the story as one of privilege vs. poverty, black vs. white, athletes above the law -- if, of course, it happened.

Kurtz concludes with this:

It would be a welcome development if the national uproar over Imus turned into a sustained examination of others who pollute the airwaves. But the media's attention span is such that they will soon be chasing some new scandal, dropping the decency crusade as quickly as they abandoned the Duke case once the racial story line they had pushed collapsed under the weight of the facts.

You can find the same thoughts predating Kurtz at Masson's Blog. Masson posted a long piece over at his blog on Imus that came from Daily Kos. Conversation takes place between human beings who respect one another. I call that part of treating people decently. Not that this is easy. One thing Vonnegut taught us how decency is hard work. Those who would be our moral arbiters vocally decry their dislike of hard work. (How many times did Bush whine about the presidency being hard work during his debates with Kerry?). May we see the time soon when we the people take into our own hands and mouths the job of righting this country. We have lost too much depending on our so-called leaders. Those zealous progenitors of fear who lead us from fear of Commies to fear of liberals to fear of Islamic terrorists striking everywhere - even Moonsville! Not to mention all the other fears we are told we have to fear. I agree with the Kos piece that Masson so kindly posted, but I think it must be a conversation that we must do ourselves. We must tend to our own country and not outsource the work to so-called leaders of any stripe.

Vonnegut harked back to another age when we were told that we had nothing to fear but fear itself. When we laugh at ourselves. When the only countries we bullied were in Central and South America and not with any great effectiveness. We became the good neighbor for a while, too, back then. Now we look down our noses at such notions. We act with the fear of bullies. No, something more than that. Gore Vidal uses the term sissies in some of his essays. Yes, that fits more Bush and his crew. Trying too to prove their manliness, they lead us into all sorts of silliness. Take a look at Happy Birthday, Wanda June and wonder how we let ourselves be fooled into giving these types the keys to the car. Again, from Ian Bell's Sunday Herald piece:

Vonnegut was very careful.You probably remember that this newspaper gave some space recently to the octogenarian's final book, and to the man. There he was, at the last, flaying George W Bush (let's guess: not a fan?) and the condition of his America. His America, mark you: Vonnegut grew up in the great Depression, he fought for his country, and in its name he hauled away the carbonised corpses of the men, women and children of Dresden. He was a patriot. He was, perhaps, the last of the great American liberals, saving Gore Vidal. And he was unwavering.

Like the Washington patrician, Vonnegut had a historic memory. He remembered what America once was and what its promise once had been. This was ironic (and funny) given that reviewers persisted in calling Vonnegut a science fiction writer long after he rejected the label. In his actual alternative universe America was bigger, better, and less wilfully forgetful than any George Bush.

We boast that we are better than anyone else, but are we really? When we stop being frightened by the noisemakers of the right, we might be on the way home. Imus insulted a bunch of girls. I know, it is more correct to call them women, but at my age of 47 they are still girls. Women ought not be insulted heedlessly but a grown man insulting girls goes beyond the pale of any conceivable good manners. Yes, good manners. We seem to have found them again for the moment.

Take a listen to Vonnegut talking about our current politics.

Those criticizing the tawdry manners of today need to band together and say we will not take this any longer. Am I proposing censorship? Yes, I am. I propose that liberalism loses nothing by having good manners, of having standards. Liberalism failed in distinguishing between censorship by the government and personal discrimination. That I do not want to listen to Nelly does not mean that the government has any business forbidding Nelly. I consider that another Hoosierism. We will just ignore what we do not like and hope by setting an example that others will likewise not encourage the bad behavior. It does not always work. It did not always work here, either. Indiana once had a reputation for lynching those who broke the law. This censorship marks us differently from the conservatives who would censor anything that they dislike, sweeping those things that they disagree with under the figurative carpet by force go governmental power. We have faith in the ultimate power of the people to run their lives while the conservatives do not.


Here is Vonnegut talking about censorship: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xgfDcLzv7A

Maybe commonsense returned to Indiana and maybe not. Here comes the third person causing me to reflect on Vonnegut: Terri Austin. Not Mrs. Austin in and of herself but the reaction to her vote against the movement to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. The attacks rages against Mrs. Austin for voting against a shoddy constitutional provision that would enshrine bigotry. Whether common sense and decency is on its way back will be answered soon enough. I remain hopeful but guarded when I read things like the comments to this letter in the local newspaper. Think about it, folks. Can we not do better, should we not do better, in how we treat our fellow humans?

I think I will let Mr. Vonnegut have the final word: http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=18090