Kurt Vonnegut

I read Breakfast of Champions when I was 15. This was an unusual usage of free-time for a 15-year-old girl. It was an action, like most at that age, motivated more by a crush I had on an older guy than any intellectual impulse.  I read it because of him. I loved it for an entirely different reason.

Vonnegut is raw and blunt and honest and hilarious and SPOT-ON. I subscribe less to his philosophy than to his delivery, the way he plays with language and words. Sentences like: "His mouth tasted like horseblanket puree" (Sirens of Titan) or "Helmholtz and Miss Wiley were behaving like pilot and co-pilot of an enormously pointless voyage through space that was expected to take forever" (also Sirens of Titan) are so on point, they send me reeling with laughter for minutes. Vonnegut's real genius, I know, is when he employs this style and these hilarious and bluntly honest metaphors on really serious topics (Slaughterhouse Five). But I admit, I care less about the serious topic than the way he conveys his thoughts. I am a person that likes to draw lines and create links between things, to draw an accurate map of reality in my mind with links and words and metaphors. And to me, he is the master of that.

Five years later and, I admit, I'm reading Vonnegut again because of a guy. Again, the guy has let me down but Vonnegut hasn't. His zinging metaphors and dark, hilarious and blunt observations are keeping me company and entertained as I settle in Denmark this first week. I love him the same way I loved Lemony Snicket (author of A Series of Unfortunate Events) growing up. Its just a hilarious, no frills, often dark approach to life that will always resonate with me. Maybe next time I'll rediscover him on my own impulse (we can hope...)