Washington, DC
The late Kurt Vonnegut influenced my reading interests and writing style in the '70s, as was the case with many high school and college students at the time. For me, characters like Kilgore Trout and Billy Pilgrim became part of the search for meaning in a world poisoned by hypocrisy.
I recently reread Der Arme Dolmetscher and was reminded of Vonnegut's uncanny ability to reveal the absurdity so plentiful in politics and war. My reading of Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle in the '70s sparked other explorations in the "new journalism" of Tom Wolfe and the "gonzo journalism" of Hunter Thompson. Over time, however, I grew less accepting of the self-indulgent qualities of, say, Thompson making himself the center of anything he wrote or of Wolfe's use of free association and excessive literary technique. In terms of journalism, I'll take Ed Murrow any day.
Through all the journalistic pretension of the '60s and '70s, however, Vonnegut stayed true to his humanism and to a lived experience as a war veteran, Purple Heart recipient and unrelenting antiwarrior. While Tom Wolfe continues to support President Bush, the man who survived the WWII Dresden Fire Bombing inside a meat locker called Slaughterhouse Five remained opposed to the Iraq War until his last days. Kurt Vonnegut left this world a far better place. So it goes.
The late Kurt Vonnegut influenced my reading interests and writing style in the '70s, as was the case with many high school and college students at the time. For me, characters like Kilgore Trout and Billy Pilgrim became part of the search for meaning in a world poisoned by hypocrisy.
I recently reread Der Arme Dolmetscher and was reminded of Vonnegut's uncanny ability to reveal the absurdity so plentiful in politics and war. My reading of Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle in the '70s sparked other explorations in the "new journalism" of Tom Wolfe and the "gonzo journalism" of Hunter Thompson. Over time, however, I grew less accepting of the self-indulgent qualities of, say, Thompson making himself the center of anything he wrote or of Wolfe's use of free association and excessive literary technique. In terms of journalism, I'll take Ed Murrow any day.
Through all the journalistic pretension of the '60s and '70s, however, Vonnegut stayed true to his humanism and to a lived experience as a war veteran, Purple Heart recipient and unrelenting antiwarrior. While Tom Wolfe continues to support President Bush, the man who survived the WWII Dresden Fire Bombing inside a meat locker called Slaughterhouse Five remained opposed to the Iraq War until his last days. Kurt Vonnegut left this world a far better place. So it goes.