Kurt Vonnegut's America

3 - Vonnegut’s 1970s: A Public Figure

3 VONNEGUT’S 1970s A Public Figure As the 1970s began, Kurt Vonnegut—for so long an unappreciated writer, struggling to publish when and where he could—found himself front and center everywhere. From best seller lists and magazine features to widely reported speeches and commencement addresses, the man and his opinions were sought by an eager public. Young people were a natural audience, but so were their parents, themselves about Vonnegut’s age and happy that at least one of their contemporaries had bridged the generation gap. It was no matter that the author dismissed his opinions as “wampeters,” “foma,” and “granfalloons,” devices from the quasi-religion Bokononism in Cat’s Cradle that underscored the self-consciously artificial nature of this faith. No matter because that was the essence of Vonnegut’s message: not just that there was no absolute meaning to things, but that perfectly useful meanings could be contrived at need, simply if we were honest about the process. The nonfiction pieces collected in Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons span the author’s transition from anonymity to fame. Reassuringly, what he says and how he says it remains consistent—it was this, after all, that had finally brought him fame, once the country was ready for it. But the later pieces appear in more noteworthy contexts. Fame did not discomfort Kurt Vonnegut the essayist, nor Kurt Vonnegut the public speaker. (For Vonnegut the novelist , it would be quite different.) A speaker or writer of opinion pieces is valued because of the credibility and usefulness of his or her message, and by the summer of 1969 the author knew people liked what he was saying and wanted more. He could start by mocking certain preconceptions about himself, such as his reputation as a science-fiction writer. Well, he did know something about science, but when asked by the American Physical Society to contrast science with his equally abundant humanism, he said the best humanist he knew was his dog, Sandy, who was more interested in people than anything Vonnegut’s 1970s 64 else. Covering a space launch from Cape Kennedy for CBS News and the New York Times Magazine, he made fun of not just his scientific background but his present fame and fondness for an occasional drink by passing over the usual NASA promotional materials in favor of a children’s book on astronautics. “We are flying through space,” he quotes. “Our craft is the earth, which orbits the sun at a speed of 67,000 miles an hour. As it orbits the sun, it spins on its axis. The sun is a star.” And what does he make of this? “If I were drunk, I might cry about that” (78). So much for the pompousness of NASA’s selfregard . But the anti-NASA position, that money for space would be better spent for needs on earth, is equally deflatable. “I flew over Appalachia the other day,” he notes, adding that although the region’s poverty can make life horrible down there, “it looked like the Garden of Eden to me.” Why so? Because “I was a rich guy, way up in the sky, munching dry-roasted peanuts and sipping gin” (83–84). His advice for dealing with such matters as science versus the humanities and NASA versus the social needs interests? In neither piece does Kurt Vonnegut give any direct answers. But his behavior during both essays makes it clear that understanding lies in taking a broader perspective, the lack of which has led to the problems at hand. To college graduates he turns the table on predictable commencement advice by telling them that they are not responsible for saving the world, that the best thing they could do with their immediate future is to ease back and have a little fun. Responsibility will come soon enough, and, by being oriented to the joys as well as the tasks of life, they’ll be able to do a better job of improving things. To the audience at the rededication of a library, he says a few predictable things about the great wealth available in books and a few original things about the transformative power of reading them. But he then adds something strikingly original. Fiction writers may have done some damage because of this same transformative power, by relying on the easiest way to reach closure in their narratives, which is to kill off a character: We have ended so many of our stories with gunfights, with showdowns...