Kurt Vonnegut RIP
I don't usually post personal stuff on this journal because I am a very private person and because I started this journal mostly just to have a place to put my fanfiction. But I do need to share something personal this evening.
For those that don't know, Kurt Vonnegut has passed away. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/books/12vonnegut.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin)
Normally, I don't really get all emotional when a celebrity/writer/artist/etc passes away (unless I know them personally) but as some people on this list who know me, know that Mr. Vonnegut was one of my heroes. He and Bukowski have been tied in my heart and my imagination since I was in junior high school.
I own every single work of Vonnegut. I have read them over and over again until some of them have fallen apart. (First edition Cat's Cradle and Mother Night, I am looking at you too. Player Piano, you don't look so hot yourself).
This is a man who touched my very soul with his writing. No matter what mood I was in, where I was, nothing in my life could affect me when I had a dusty, beaten paperback by him in my hand. So many of those books now have yellowed pages and smell of the used bookstores where I bought them. And I always imagined that if, by some cosmic concidence I did happen to meet him, that is what he would smell of. Those old bookstores and yellowed pages.
I can remember one time my brother, took a copy of Slapstick with him to visit our relatives in South America. My little second cousin tore it up. I mean, she really tore it up. When my brother came home with that copy, pages missing, cover falling off, I cried for days. It was like someone ripped me apart. Strange relationship with books, I know.
I feel saddened because now it represents so much lost. The world has lost an amazing writer, a man who could put together a sentence in so few words, to flow and jump off the page. The world seems less for this loss.
I regret that I never got to meet the man before he died. One of the few regrets of my entire life. I had so much I wanted to say to him, show him, share with him. I just wanted to sit and have a cup of tea. Talk about his ideas. I wanted to pick his brain.
"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center." Vonnegut said that. And it is one of the ways that I live my life. Here is to you, Mr. Vonnegut.
Recommended reading, one of his most famous short stories, Harrison Bergeron
For those that don't know, Kurt Vonnegut has passed away. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/books/12vonnegut.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin)
Normally, I don't really get all emotional when a celebrity/writer/artist/etc passes away (unless I know them personally) but as some people on this list who know me, know that Mr. Vonnegut was one of my heroes. He and Bukowski have been tied in my heart and my imagination since I was in junior high school.
I own every single work of Vonnegut. I have read them over and over again until some of them have fallen apart. (First edition Cat's Cradle and Mother Night, I am looking at you too. Player Piano, you don't look so hot yourself).
This is a man who touched my very soul with his writing. No matter what mood I was in, where I was, nothing in my life could affect me when I had a dusty, beaten paperback by him in my hand. So many of those books now have yellowed pages and smell of the used bookstores where I bought them. And I always imagined that if, by some cosmic concidence I did happen to meet him, that is what he would smell of. Those old bookstores and yellowed pages.
I can remember one time my brother, took a copy of Slapstick with him to visit our relatives in South America. My little second cousin tore it up. I mean, she really tore it up. When my brother came home with that copy, pages missing, cover falling off, I cried for days. It was like someone ripped me apart. Strange relationship with books, I know.
I feel saddened because now it represents so much lost. The world has lost an amazing writer, a man who could put together a sentence in so few words, to flow and jump off the page. The world seems less for this loss.
I regret that I never got to meet the man before he died. One of the few regrets of my entire life. I had so much I wanted to say to him, show him, share with him. I just wanted to sit and have a cup of tea. Talk about his ideas. I wanted to pick his brain.
"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center." Vonnegut said that. And it is one of the ways that I live my life. Here is to you, Mr. Vonnegut.
Recommended reading, one of his most famous short stories, Harrison Bergeron