So He Went: Kurt Vonnegut Dead at 84

 Kurt VonnegutIf you've only read one Vonnegut novel, it was probably Slaughterhouse Five (1969), and most likely, you read it in high school when you didn't know what postmodern meant. You probably still don't know what postmodern means. Kurt Vonnegut certainly did. Or at least, his idiosyncratic figurative and meta-narrative techniques have frequently been associated with that literary genre. By removing chronological order from a narrative like Slaughterhouse Five, he suggests that the linearity and sense of progression we'd all like to mark in our own lives is little more than a rationalized delusion.

In this most morose of satires, Billy Pilgrim, a juvenile and inept soldier, haphazardly survives the atrocities of World War II precisely because of his ineptitude. Captured in combat and placed in a meat-locker named Slaughterhouse Five, Billy emerges unscathed from the Allied fire-bombings in Dresden that incinerated more than 135,000 lives.

The novel feeds its flagrant stabs at the destructiveness of war with a more subtle undercurrent; post-war Billy experiences material successes that land him in suburban America, unable to relate to his children, in a state of perpetual mental breakdown and obsessed with hallucinations about an extraterrestrial race.

Vonnegut staged his apocalyptic fictional worlds by creating characters that stumble through settings that refuse to accommodate basic human emotional needs. Despite the postmodern character of his work, Vonnegut is a humanist writer at his core. His satires generally point the finger at villainous “systems” rather than humanity's foibles and communicates the most raw and powerful human emotions: grief, loss, solitude and sadness.

Other novels such as Breakfast of Champions (1972) and Cat's Cradle (1963) draw on similar themes of senseless violence, chaos and the visceral experience of a life disconnected.

Vonnegut also published short stories, essays and plays.

Devastating personal circumstance nourished Vonnegut's anti-war fiction. He enrolled in Cornell University, but enlisted before finishing his degree. Vonnegut's unit was shattered early in combat, leaving him unprotected behind enemy lines, which led to his swift capture by the Germans. The parallels between Vonnegut and Billy Pilgrim run deep: like Billy, Vonnegut witnessed the bombing in Dresden and the resulting deaths of innocent civilians.

Although humor pervades all of Vonnegut's work, it's a humor tainted with bitter cynicism that ran along the course of his lifelong depression. Despite successes as a writer and lecturer and popularity among peers for his wry witticisms, Vonnegut attempted suicide in 1984 using alcohol and sleeping pills.

The extent of Vonnegut's influence is evident in his sustained popularity. Nearly half-a century after the publication of Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut idolizers pop up in all sorts of institutions and from a plethora of social backgrounds. Although his writing is closely associated with black humor and satire, it was Vonnegut's underlining sincerity that enabled his work to breach social and academic boundaries and come to mean so much to so many people.

-Melanie McGanney


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