The news of his death halted me to continue Lolita. Kurt Vonnegut (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007), the man who gave life Kilgore Trout, died from suffering brain injuries after a fall at his home in Manhattan.
I have been working this article since his death, started writing as requiem for the man who wrote novels just for indulgence to Planet Tralmafador. No, requiem isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s an elegy for the comic writer who farted in his writings. Or maybe to pay my last respect to the black humorist who thought me the beauty of war and human frailty. I don’t know. I am no death vulture. Besides, dude, I am just a groupie with a cute ass trying to call himself a lover of his crappy novels. But Vonnegut is different.
One, Vonnegut is a writer. Two, he is one of my God Poet. And so on.
I used to snatch his books from the musty corners in Recto along with the other authors I care to read. I am his kid, dude. I can feel his fusty books, as Jedi feeling the force, rotting like hell in dingy corners in Recto or book stalls. I remember I bought Slaughterhouse Five for only 30 pesos (Oh, the book reminds me of a luscious dream). I chose Breakfast of Champion instead of Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. I finished Slapstick in just a night contemplating every word of it in our bathroom enough to suffocate me from the smoke of Lucky Strike, the night I lingered the scent of my Ice Princess (Ha-ha, I can still remember what song I played while reading the book). Some of his novels I read are HTML files downloaded directly from IRC chat-room.
I thought the only thing that could stop the motor of the world is writer’s death. I am wrong. It saddened me that the world is still changing; the camera of life is still rolling, spinning its beauty in dismal vogue. The world seems doesn’t change at all. His death is just an ordinary day in a pixilated world obsessed with info-porn. No the same funeral fashion like what happened to Jean Paul Sartre funeral march. I am not kid who feel sad over the death of his kitty, but frankly speaking, dude, I haven’t got laid since his death.
Perhaps I’m just vain. Looking for something to write, something he can call himself a grand thing. And Vonnegut is the perfect character, a god in cage whom I can play with. A writer’s death is someone’s vanity. So why am I writing this piece? To borrow from Breakfast of Champion: “Because I felt like it, you stupid machine,” The Man said to the bear.
Kilgore Trout summed up our masquerade and what we really are in The Man’s tombstone: Not even the creator of the universe knew what the man was going to say next. Perhaps the man was a better universe in its infancy. Don’t ask me its meaning, dude, I don’t understand either.
I sure will read all his books again, as if reading like a kid for the first time, skimming with awes on its theme and style of episodic non-sequitur stories. Playing with The Postal Service’s Iron and Wine, I wonder how much yosi I can consume reading Sirens of the Titan.
I’m not sad. My only regret is that I never had the chance to thank him.
So it goes.
Tags: Sartre, Trout, Writing, Vonnegut
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a director wannabe. A lonesome chimera.
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