Though I've barely been reading the past week or so (hate my boss for it and his sick and depraved desire to keep me engaged, creative, and happy... What a dick!), the book I've picked up is Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.
Cat's Cradle, which I've read a few weeks back left a profound impression: how science can often answer the Why, and the How, but barely ever thinks about Why Not because that's not how idealists roll, that religion and politics conspire to control us, and that sometimes, the fact that Marines hate mud can and will end the human race. Reading it was like descending into a depressed mind, not unlike my own, one that laughs at pain and sneers at regret.
So, obviously, I went into a research spiral, trying to figure out who was Vonnegut and who hurt this precious baby angel. He was mad and what hurt him was friendly fire from all sides. So let me info-dump in your general direction.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. named after his father – yet another Kurt Vonnegut – was born November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, which he liked. It kind of went downhill from there.
He used to go to private school until the Great Depression hit, which may have started the same month. His parents were struggling, his Mom even became an alcohol and prescription drugs addict, which was very fashionable at the time.
Although he was the baby of the family, Kurt became a full-time pessimist, and remained very much that until his death in 2007.
Young Vonnegut was a gifted child journalist and studied chemistry at Cornell, where he mostly dedicated himself to the student newspaper.
When World War II broke out, he was only 16. Hating chemistry more than words could say, he was promised the opportunity to study mechanical engineering by the US Army, and at his ripe age of 20, starting to lack infantry men, the Army broke that promise and shipped him off to fight the Nazis as a Private and intelligence scout.
To say that being captured in the Battle of the Bulge (no relation to the porno) and having a dinstinctly German name sucked, would be an understatement, and yet his life was made more difficult by the fact it was 1944 and though the war would end soon, no one knew exactly when, so POW camps were often air-raided to full annihilation, justifying the brown color of the Germans' pants.
He was held in Dresden, which.... well, you've probably seen what the Allied forces did to it. The incendiary bombs levelled that city with the ground, killing upwards of 60.000 civilians. The irony was that Kurt and other prisoners survived that in an abandoned slaughterhouse that was 60 feet underground. That would make a great name for a novel. Who would build a meat locker that deep? Germans. Next question!
Mom killed herself with drugs the same year, too, by the way.
So he came back and married his childhood sweetheart, Jane Cox, because she could really use a different name. And to support his growing family (Why three children? Who cares! He got mouths to feed!) he accepted an advertising job at General Electric, writing fiction on the side.
Nobody wanted to read it, though.
According to him, he wasn't much loved by the critics because a wave of German immigrants made a good life for themselves in America, and though he wasn't one of them, he was often associated with the nouveau riches ambivalent about nationalistic sentiments.
His favorite sister Alice died of cancer in 1957, her husband dying in a freak accident two days later, Vonnegut and his old lady took in the three of their kids, racking up the mouth-count to an impressive 6. Writing short stories wouldn't cut it, so he moved on to bigger fish, namely novels.
The six kids and the PTSD probably did a number on his relationship with Jane, and they started fighting like rabid dogs, which led to the painful dissolution of their marriage in the seventies. He was writing about broken families a lot at the time, so it only made sense.
Since he liked J-names, or something, he started dating and eventually married a photographer named Jill Krementz, definitely German, possibly Jewish, apparently still alive.
He stood up against the militarization of the US in 2001 after 9/11 and was generally anti-war, which nobody blamed him for, but also cared.
So, his renewed passion for yelling at God about the regrettable intelligence and lacking responsibility of humankind lasted for another thirty years until he fell down the stairs of his own house ... to his death.
What a guy!
So why am I bringing him up now? And why is being pessimistic so great?
Well, because being optimistic sucks. You can't be blind to the fact that nothing matters and nobody cares, and rolling with it doesn't feel genuine sometimes. But make no mistake, being a pessimist doesn't mean you have no hope. Being a pessimist only means you fight harder for it. So Kurt reminded me that I'm not done fighting. Nor should you.