(Long Island, NY) Recently I stumbled across an old press release from Long Island University announcing an MFA program in writing featuring a workshop by Kurt Vonnegut. I had been searching for a Long Island connection with Vonnegut, beyond the summer cottage, location settings in his novels, and the other well-known facts.
When I found the LIU press release, I felt envious of those people who could have enjoyed that workshop back in 1997. I was in Texas at the time working as a regional reporter, bouncing from San Antonio to Grand Forks, North Dakota and other freezing cold mountain states with alarming regularity. It’s ironic that at the time Vonnegut would have been giving the workshop, I was just getting acquainted with his fine work.
In 1997, I became addicted to his books Breakfast Of Champions, Cat’s Cradle, and Bluebeard. If I’d only known he was doing college work at LIU that year! I could have dropped everything, made an excuse to get an assignment on Long Island, and had a nice chat. And why not? We’re both veterans, we both have the writing game in our blood, and we’re both convinced that nobody will care much about our work in, say, ten million years.
Of course, some people would get the mistaken idea at this point that I consider myself and Vonnegut to be peers. Don’t you believe it. It’s just not possible for the two of us to walk on a level playing field. The idea the he and I are peers is as absurd as the notion that Britney Spears has something relevant to say. About anything. Well, she might have a few words of wisdom about how to match tube tops with Capri pants, but we won’t hold our breath for a dissertation on the literary merits of James Joyce and Henry Miller, now, will we?
Kurt Vonnegut hasn’t written the most IMPORTANT book ever written, but he has written the BEST, at least in America. Breakfast Of Champions is, in my own opinion, the best American work of fiction available.
I won’t waste time telling you what it’s about. I won’t bother you with details. I’ll just say that I would like to have that book tossed into my coffin before they close the lid.
As I was digging into my Long Island/Vonnegut research, I remembered a recent major interview done on Long Island. A Rolling Stone correspondent had contacted the author at his Long Island summer home to ask about the state of America, our addiction to gasoline, and whether or not it was the end of the world as we know it. Kurt Vonnegut was adamant that gasoline will be our final doom, one way or another. Too true. I wish he would write a full-length non-fiction book with wall-to-wall observations like these.
I’d write one myself, but it would be dismissed as the ravings of a crackpot, and there would be exactly five sales: one to my parents, two to my siblings, and another two would come from those I hold dear outside of family. The rest would wind up remaindered, and my name would go on an FBI watch list for a few years until they decided it wasn’t worth the money to look at me any more.
Vonnegut is probably convinced that such a book coming from him would be dismissed as the ravings of a crackpot, but the major difference here is that people would definitely buy this book, and consider it his most relevant work to date. I, for one, would call it a nice epitaph for the American Century.
There’s some tiny little part of me that hopes the man would somehow stumble across this rambling screed, get inspired enough to write the damn thing and put it out there, but I know writers all too well. We read the praises of our work, smile briefly, then shake our heads. We say to ourselves;
“Wow. Sure fooled ‘em that time.”
It’s the writer’s curse. We’re absolutely driven to get words down on paper, but we have little confidence in them once they are there. Maybe this goes away after you’ve written say, your fourteenth novel. Vonnegut’s was Timequake, what he may or may not have described as his “victory lap” as a novelist. I found it ironic that the book was published in 1997, the same year he did the workshop at LIU, the same year I should have dropped everything and flew out to LI for a chat.
In spite of the 1997 coincidences, wishful thinking, and all the rest of the info I dug up, I had to give up the notion of writing a Long Island article about Kurt Vonnegut. I figured that what was already known is too well known to be of any interest, and the minor stuff was, well, too damn minor. Instead, I find myself here on a rambling screed to encourage anyone and everyone with two brain cells to rub together to go out and find a copy of Breakfast Of Champions. It should be considered a national treasure, though Kurt Vonnegut probably wouldn’t think so.
