I first started drafting this post in January of this year. As time has gone by, and it’s been yet a little bit longer since I stormed my way through many of Vonnegut’s novels, my words feel increasingly inadequate to describe how much I admire and enjoy this great American writer. So it goes.
I first encountered Vonnegut in a literature course during my sophomore year of college. We read Slaughterhouse-Five. Over seven years later, I followed up on the mesmerizing experience of a Vonnegut novel. He reemerged into my awareness in late 2021 thanks to the fantastic podcast Do By Friday.1As chaotic as the show is, its hosts constantly toss wisdom out like Tootsie Rolls. Merlin Mann in particular is a gifted communicator, and has unmatched enthusiasm for excellent writing. I went out and read The Sirens of Titan, Cat’s Cradle, and Breakfast of Champions. Once all that happened, I wrote the first sentence of this post on January 15.
I had anticipated watching Unstuck in Time, a documentary that was the key discussion point on that fateful episode of Do By Friday. Then I pushed it off a week here, a week there, until it fell off my to-do list entirely. This post got moved between folders of drafts as I kept delaying it. On the surface, I was simply waiting until I had a couple of hours to myself to focus on the documentary in its entirety. But that was just a juvenile excuse to shield me from the anxiety I was getting as I thought through writing about a writer.
I can’t keep pushing it off, and nothing is stopping me from writing more than one post, so this draft has been resuscitated.
Vonnegut was a craftsman of words. He knew how to handle a story at every level. Plots that were ridiculous and poignant, memorable characters with absurd flaws and points of view, and comically beautiful phrases all built upon each other to delight the reader. Of course, his audience’s eyebrows were perpetually cocked as well.
No other set of writing has made me consider my own writing so thoroughly (and found it so profoundly lacking.) I let that experience paralyze me to some extent: what could I hope to contribute to the world when this voice exists? And while at a deeper level I know that is an unhealthy way to approach any interest, it persists. In spite of those thoughts, I keep writing, and will continue to write.
Any creative endeavor is a weighted sum of influences across our lives. Vonnegut has an outsized impact on that sum — or more accurately, I wish to write in a way that shows the impact he’s had on how I think about writing. As with any skill, repetition is nothing; intentional practice and revision makes a difference. No matter what I write in praise of Vonnegut, I know that my writing is not a reflection of my influences in the way I fancy them. Part of that is probably denial of what truly affected how I write; yet I’m hopeful, and sometimes disappointed, that it’s also due to me not taking my own writing seriously.
There’s a difference between tone and intent when I discuss the severity of my writing. In these blog posts, I adopt a formal tone. The topics are often serious, and even fun topics are made pretty dry. I want to take myself seriously, and so I write in a serious manner. But that’s entirely separate from caring about my writing, and giving it the time and attention I pretend it deserves. Words and phrases dangle about like excess weight on the neighbor’s dog that should be trim and lean. I’d be quickly charged with neglect for how quickly I let my posts move from draft to published.
The other side of this serious coin is my subconscious suggestion that serious tones beget an audience taking me seriously. The only connection there is with an audience of pompous half-readers I don’t care about. I should only be taken seriously insofar as my writing is of value and doesn’t waste your time. Vonnegut is successful at what he does precisely because we take him seriously as a hilariously insightful author. We understand his approach, the way he speaks, the wildness inherent to his stories. They’re absurd, fanciful, and serious. He does not take our attention lightly, and we trade that thoughtfulness with yet more of our time.
I was once comfortable being a bit ridiculous. Take this horrifying example from my freshman year of college. My tone of writing — still serious — played off the subject matter in a way that adds to the overall piece. That post’s genre of satirically serious is a funhouse mirror twin of Vonnegut’s serious satire.2I’d say Jonathan Swift is the first example of satirically serious I ever read in A Modest Proposal, yet he also writes serious satire in Gulliver’s Travels. These for-fun pieces are where I’d like to move to in the future, at least sprinkling them in among technology notes and lightly-researched pieces. While I’ve spent time trying to be less cynical, it’s also taken some of the fun away from writing.
Where are we now?3Regardless of what I said above about not editing as much as I should, this post is disorganized and raving. Apologies. Simply put, Vonnegut makes me think. He makes me have fun as well, and makes me have fun while thinking. I’ve never read anything else that makes me analyze the writing style while I’m reading without losing the thread of the story. It’s meticulously crafted and, as such, sounds like the simplest thing in the world.
I don’t think I’ll ever reach those levels, but here’s to trying.
- 1As chaotic as the show is, its hosts constantly toss wisdom out like Tootsie Rolls. Merlin Mann in particular is a gifted communicator, and has unmatched enthusiasm for excellent writing.
- 2I’d say Jonathan Swift is the first example of satirically serious I ever read in A Modest Proposal, yet he also writes serious satire in Gulliver’s Travels.
- 3Regardless of what I said above about not editing as much as I should, this post is disorganized and raving. Apologies.