At an appearance at the Connecticut Forum, the late Kurt Vonnegut had this to say, “I have a message for future generations, and that is: ‘Please accept our apologies.’”
That was a running theme of his. He saw the actions of today’s (whichever today happened to be appropriate) leaders as causing endless troubles for the as-yet unborn. He would know, having watched Dresden (the teapot capital of Germany) turned into matchwood. He saw what war could do, loosed with amoral glee by frustrated technocrats and playboy rich kids, and he hated it. He wasn’t afraid to say something about it, either.
Vonnegut was 84 when he finally became unstuck in time, as multiple media outlets have quipped. His works, however, seemed written by someone much older. In Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, the “aesthete” Anthony Blanche quotes T.S. Eliot, though in another context, “And I Tiresias have foresuffered all.” Before I get a torrent of annoyed letters, I know that I am taking that bit out of both contexts and recasting it in another way. All I will say is this: I am the author. I’ll do what I want. Vonnegut, in the madness that is the modern age, had foresuffered all.
He laughed at the world, or – in my opinion – he tried to laugh with the people smart enough to see the insanity. His novels, stories, and essays were all written in plain, simple English, but they all had a viciously barbed wit. His humor was always tinted with sadness. It was funny, until you thought about it. For that, he will undoubtedly walk across that rainbow bridge to the American literary Walhall, taking his seat with Mark Twain and the rest.
I wrote part of this before the massacre at Virginia Tech. A nation stood still when the fullness of Cho Seung-hui’s rampage was revealed in all its horror. In a compassionate move, respecting the emotions and concerns of college-aged men, Professor Joseph Day gave his students an opportunity to discuss the event (taking a break from the weighty business of ancient Rome.) As students weighed in, a thought began to run through my head – much like Vonnegut’s “Barnhouse Effect” – what would Kurt Vonnegut say?
I would think that, and this is largely because this is what I think, he would comment on the fact that the United States spends more on “defense,” more on killing other people, than any first-world nation. Mental health awareness programs aren’t even a blip on the radar compared to the aircraft, ships, weapons systems, heavy and light ordinance, and the other materials necessary to kill people effectively. In a country at war, as it has been since 1941, we’re surprised when someone takes the role of government into their own hands – for whatever reason. Why? Are we that blind as a nation?
In all probability, though, he would encapsulate all that and more with his simple phrase, “So it goes.”
Kurt Vonnegut was brave enough to speak out when he saw madness. As the world around us begins to fall apart, again, there will be a void where he would have offered some comment on the situation. He was, by his own admission, a man without a country. Not because of treason or exile, but because he spoke the truth as he saw it in a world increasingly predicated on lies. Wrong or right, his integrity is a testament.
I accept your apologies, Kurt. You tried. The rest of them will never be forgiven. Not in a thousand years. Not by history, anyway, the only one who matters.