Friday, April 13, 2007

Vonnegut and son

A post on "Alas, a blog" (good name) about Kurt Vonnegut and his recent death quotes at some length from his novel "Cat's Cradle." I'd say it's worth re-quoting:

God made mud. God got lonesome. So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!" "See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars." And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud. I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done. Nice going, God. Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have. I feel very unimportant compared to You. The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around. I got so much, and most mud got so little. Thank you for the honor! Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep. What memories for mud to have! What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met! I loved everything I saw! Good night. I will go to heaven now. I can hardly wait... To find out for certain what my wampeter was... And who was in my karass... And all the good things our karass did for you. Amen.

Also worth re-quoting is this rather touching comic bit from "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater":

Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies -- "God damn it, you’ve got to be kind."

Incidentally, my pediatrician for a time while growing up in Milton, MA, was Mark Vonnegut, Kurt's son. I must say that I didn't know until now -- and neither did my parents, I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts -- about the details of Mark's, uh, colorful personal history, recorded in his very own Wikipedia entry:

He briefly worked at Duthie Books and was also briefly chief of a twenty-man detachment of special state police that provided the security for Boston State Hospital. During the Vietnam War he filed an application with the draft board to be considered a conscientious objector, which was denied. After taking the physical examination, he was given a psychiatric 4F classification and avoided conscription into the U.S. Military.

He is the author of The Eden Express, which describes his trip to British Columbia to set up a commune with his friends and his personal experiences with schizophrenia, which he attributes in part to stress, diet and heavy marijuana use.