by Rebecca Bauer

Created on: June 06, 2008   Last Updated: June 06, 2009

On the morning of April 12th, 2007, my husband caught me crying in front of my computer. I blubbered that one of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., had died the night before, and he looked at me like I was crazy for being so upset about someone I never met. (I think he may be a Tralfamadorian, but that could be a whole other article for all you Slaughterhouse Five fans.) I tried to explain to him that I was sad that the world would never have any new Kilgore Trout stories or jokes about the clap. Mr. Vonnegut's favorite humanist joke: he's up in heaven now!

As Providence would have it, I was devastated by the news of his death because I had been on a reading-binge of his books for a week. First I re-read Timequake exactly ten years after I read it originally. For those of you not familiar with that book, this coincidence was spooky because the story revolves around a rift in time where everyone is forced to live the last decade over again as if on autopilot. When free will kicks in again, no one knows what to do with it until Kilgore Trout announces his creed: "You were sick, but now you're well again, and there's work to do."

I was energized! There was indeed work to be done! When I finished Timequake, I dug out my old copy of Slaughterhouse Five, and I found it even more poignant this time around since I think I was only sixteen years-old when I originally read it. In Timequake, the author waxes nostalgic over Thorton Wilder's play, Our Town. Again, I dug out my battered copy. The day I found out that Kurt Vonnegut died, I was about to read Act III. The graveyard scene always gets me choked up like a blubbering idiot. You know the lines: "Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners...Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking...and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you."

When I read those lines, I was sitting in a hot bath (reading in the tub is one of my favorite guilty pleasures), the house was so quiet that all I could hear was a clock ticking, and I started bawling uncontrollably. In Timequake he says, "I myself become a sort of Emily every time I hear that speech." I imagined an empty chair next to Emily, waiting for Kurt's arrival like Mrs. Gibbs and the others waited for her when she was buried. In my vision, the cemetery has grown much over the last several decades, and there is a new section of graves under a gorgeous red maple called Avenue V. He would say, "If this isn't nice, what is?"

To some he seemed like a grumpy Luddite when he was really a self-proclaimed sentimental old fool. I think every newborn baby should be sent home with this quote 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.' "

As inspiration for my own endeavors at writing, I posted in my journal a passage from Timequake concerning his thoughts on the importance of writing:

"Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer: Many people need to desperately receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don't care about them. You are not alone.'"

He let you know it was okay and even encouraged you to be an Emily in a world that does not appreciate the beauty of Our Town. He made generations of people feel they were not alone.

So it goes.

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