Dear Mr. Vonnegut,
It snowed like crazy today. An honest-to-goodness, can't-even-see-out-the-dang-window type blizzard. It was pretty amazing. Snow was piled up five or six feet high around the curb on my street in fantastical, pure white ziggurats. It looked as if the Snow Miser had taken several gigantic dumps on the sidewalk.
I woke up in the foulest mood ever! I had no use for anything or anybody this morning. It's probably just as well that I was snowed in. I just lay there in bed, brooding, thinking about everything in the world that pissed me off. Here is a partial list of irritants:
As the day wore on, though, I became less cranky.
In the evening, I made some guacamole out of avocados, chopped tomatoes and onions, lime juice, and salt, and ate it with homemade tortilla chips. It was pretty darned good if I do say so myself.
I hope your day was better than mine, with the exception of the pretty darned good guacamole which I believe would be up to your standard of excellence, assuming you even like guacamole.
Best Regards,
B^2
P.S.: Man, I hate first posts on new online journals. I mean you spend half the night just putting it together and working out the bugs, and by the time you're done, you're too tired to write anything interesting. Next time I'm gonna write like two weeks' worth of entries beforehand. Totally.
P.P.S.: Yeah, right.
- - - Comments - - -
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: B²
EMAIL: b@weirdsmobile.com
IP: 24.183.56.113
URL: http://www.weirdsmobile.com/b/
DATE: 02/17/2006 02:07:07 AM
Goodbye Blue Monday!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Matt
EMAIL: pleonasm@gmail.com
IP: 87.81.166.251
URL: http://pleonasm.com/
DATE: 02/17/2006 08:51:06 AM
OMG first!!!?!?!!1
The best thing about having zero self-awareness is that you don't know it. That's what I find, anyway.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Scott D
EMAIL: scottdonaldson@gmail.com
IP: 208.27.203.131
URL: http://www.duringflight.com/groundcontrol
DATE: 02/17/2006 10:00:50 AM
I believe that was dog #2 and the message was pretty clear.
"Wake up and give me some snausages!"
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Jim
EMAIL:
IP: 65.167.132.200
URL: http://chaos.corrupt.net
DATE: 02/17/2006 12:25:29 PM
Is this weblog's concept based on Dr. Mr. Henshaw except more grown up?
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Jim
EMAIL:
IP: 65.167.132.200
URL: http://chaos.corrupt.net
DATE: 02/17/2006 12:26:31 PM
Er, "Dear Mr. Henwhaw" that should be.
A Dr. Mr.! That would blow my mind.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: B²
EMAIL: b@weirdsmobile.com
IP: 24.183.56.113
URL: http://www.weirdsmobile.com/b/
DATE: 02/17/2006 01:30:55 PM
I've never heard of that book. Ha! Yeah, I guess in a way it is, sorta. If you wanted to ensure that your child would never become a doctor, the best way would be to name him "Mr."
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Susan
EMAIL: tundrababe@livejournal.com
IP: 68.119.31.9
URL: http://tundrababe.livejournal.com
DATE: 02/17/2006 03:57:26 PM
Mmm...homemade guacamole.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: e
EMAIL: newsyoucanuseornot@gmail.com
IP: 24.153.206.47
URL: http://www.allaboute.net/blog
DATE: 02/17/2006 04:37:48 PM
I loved "Dear Mr. Henshaw" when I was younger. I think I even wrote a book report on it at one time.
I think this was an excellent first post and I'm now hungry for some guacamole.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: bakiwop
EMAIL: bino1@hotmail.com
IP: 68.114.246.23
URL:
DATE: 02/17/2006 08:44:23 PM
you wonderfully creative bastard!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: wooj
EMAIL: wooj@wooj.org
IP: 64.30.170.195
URL: http://blog.wooj.org
DATE: 02/18/2006 10:33:04 PM
I just recently started getting into Kurt Vonnegut. He's totally great.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: marshmallow
EMAIL: pmarshmallow@gmail.com
IP: 66.171.3.74
URL: http://www.tabulas.com/~koyangi/
DATE: 02/19/2006 10:03:24 PM
HA HA HA i get to comment on the first post! HA HA HA
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: bakiwop
EMAIL: bino1@hotmail.com
IP: 68.117.20.217
URL:
DATE: 02/20/2006 04:35:33 PM
Dear Mr. Vonnegut,
Would you please get this guy to post to his weblogs more often? I understand that he has a job and a honey and lots of other interests besides weblogging for my pleasure, but I am a fairly selfish guy who finds him to be a neat-o creator of nifty words ordering, and, well, just friggin' like reading his writings.
Thank you,
bakiwop
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Leslie
EMAIL:
IP: 82.35.42.193
URL: http://thynk2much.livejournal.com/
DATE: 02/21/2006 02:18:58 PM
Laughing, because I've never heard of that book either but this is SO BASED ON IT. Your psychic powers are extraordinary!!
Dear Mr. Vonnegut,
How's it going? You're probably asleep right now, wherever you are. Although, aren't old people supposed to need less sleep? Maybe you're awake, watching TV or working on a manuscript. It's pretty funny to think about one of the greatest living writers in the English language sitting on his couch in his boxer shorts, watching reruns of Who's the Boss?
As I write this, I'm looking at a photo I took about four years ago, of the beach at Newport, Oregon. I don't know who the two people are. In the center of the photo is the lighthouse that I visited, I think it was the next day. I tried climbing to the top of the lighthouse, but the ol' fear of heights reared up and I couldn't make it. The staircase was one of those rickety-seeming iron mesh things, with the spaces between the steps, and my brain kept making images of me somehow -- how, I don't know, but the physics of it seemed utterly plausible at the time -- slipping and falling through the gap between the steps to my gruesome death. I doubt that I would have even fit through that gap, even if I had tried to shove myself through. I knew that intellectually, but the animal-brain fear was so intense that logic smashed up against the brick wall of my panic with all the destructive force of a quail egg.
I was shopping at Big Lots the other day, and I inadvertantly startled an elderly lady who was looking at some enormous plastic tubs. I find myself dismayed when I encounter an easily-frightened older person, because it disturbs my preferred notion of aging as a process of becoming more serene, more at peace with the world, and less afraid of things that frighten younger people, like for instance the onrushing demonic bullet train of Death. When you've reached your advanced years, haven't you pretty much seen it all? And what are you afraid of, really (so my thinking goes)? The worst thing that can happen to you at that point is death, and aren't you supposed to have come to terms with your impending appointment with the Grim Reaper by that time? That's the idea, anyway.
It's too bad you're not reading this, because, seeing as how you're pretty well up there, you could probably give me a few choice thoughts on the subject. Maybe too choice -- on second thought, it's probably better that you're not reading this, after all.
In 2002, when the Newport photo was taken, I was still "with" L. I remember this because she made me promise to call her from the motel, and the only phone around was across the street from the motel, and I had to sprint across a highway full of speeding traffic in order to reach the pay phone. I remember standing in the booth and feeling this wave of melancholy wash over me. What am I doing? What is this? I wish I were on Mars. (Sometimes when I feel the urge to escape, I imagine myself on Mars. It's something I used to do when I was a kid. First Man on Mars! Separated from his teammates, the astronaut must traverse the vast Martian plains with naught but a dwindling supply of oxygen and sheer guts.)
When I think about 2002, I don't remember being especially happy. Yet, here I am, four years later, poring over memories of that year with a peculiar variety of fondness. I guess that's the essence of nostalgia -- fond memories of unpleasant times.
I wonder sometimes if my old age will be defined by these two qualities: nostalgia, and fear. Lord knows that's how my thirties are being defined.
Last night I couldn't sleep because my mind was racing, racing with this horrible sensation of being adrift, unfocused, like a marathon runner sidelined with a leg cramp so severe that all he can do is hold his afflicted calf and stare up at the trees, while the other runners speed by, sparing me not even a casual pitying glance. I mean really. What am I doing. Once, a long time ago, I wanted to write stories. I actually even wrote a bunch. And then at some point I stopped, and picked it back up again only sporadically. I'm trying again, now, and oh my God is it difficult. The muscles have atrophied. Everything I'm churning out reads like crap. But I still do it, because I have to. I have to because if I don't, why am I even alive.
I was thinking about this stuff and getting more and more depressed, and then I thought, you know what, as a citizen of the United States, my life expectancy is about 77 years of age. My family tends to hold on to the ol' mortal coil with the grim tenacity of a terrier with a bone, so I'm thinking I could make it to at least 80 if I take care of myself. I'm 37, which means I'm not even halfway done with this life. If all goes well, I could have 43 years left. That's pretty incredible. And it makes me realize that I tend to evaluate my progress, in relation to my age, by comparing myself to other people in my age bracket, or what my idols were doing at my age (Orson Welles...don't even get me started). By those measures, I'm pretty much of a gigantic frickin' failure.
But you know what -- screw that. Because I've never done anything worthwhile in my life the way I was supposed to, including growing up. And I've always let The Way I'm Supposed To Do It dominate my life. For Pete's sake, I can't even stir some peas into my frozen chicken pot pie, because it doesn't say I can in the instructions. I feel weird eating breakfast food after 12 noon because you're not supposed to do that. Maybe it stems from being Asian or something, but I'm so enslaved to the rules, or what I imagine to be the rules, that I am very close to throwing away the entire rest of my life just because it hasn't gone according to how it was supposed to have gone.
And the irony is that I've spent my life railing against just that, the blind following of rules just for the sake of following rules. When I was eight, I shoved a kid into a thorn bush because he wouldn't cross a completely dead, empty suburban street merely because his mom told him not to. I've always had contempt for pointless restrictions, yet I impose them upon myself at every turn. God, I'm such a hypocrite. Or just a wuss who lacks the courage of his convictions.
So. Screw it. Really. I have to chuck this baggage over the side, and right now, because I can't spend another 30 years of my life dicking around with problems whose solutions have been staring me in the face since before I hit puberty. I can't go to my deathbed fretting over things I wish I'd done but didn't, because for one reason or another I just wasn't up to it.
Maybe the thing I fear most is true, and I'm just a talentless hack pretending to be something he isn't. Hey, it's possible! Ha ha. Fuck. But yeah. Maybe. Or maybe it doesn't even matter if I am or not. I should be doing the thing I know I should be doing.
I should be doing the thing I know I should be doing.
I've got 40 years to make that happen.
Damn, just thinking about that makes me feel like taking a nap. But no. No! No sleep 'til self-actualization.
Anyway.
Thanks for listening, Mr. V.
Best Regards,
B^2
- - - Comments - - -
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Jim
EMAIL:
IP: 67.176.255.173
URL: http://chaos.corrupt.net
DATE: 02/22/2006 10:31:23 AM
First Man on Mars! Separated from his teammates, the astronaut must traverse the vast Martian plains with naught but a dwindling supply of oxygen and sheer guts.
That would make a killer Choose Your Own Adventure book!
Personally, I think that whether or not I'm a hack is unimportant. If I have pushed my hacky abilities as far as they can go, then I can die with honor. (Of course, I'm still on course for a dishonorable death, even with that definition.) And hacks can grow into good writers/composers/whatevers. I've seen it happen!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: june
EMAIL: sarah.kg@gmail.com
IP: 65.172.197.33
URL: http://livejournal.com/users/pinstripe_bindi
DATE: 02/22/2006 01:35:49 PM
I am kind of going through a similar thing, only with photography instead of writing. I don't want to make a living out of it or anything, but just doing it makes me happy, and I let it lapse for too many years.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Joel Gosse
EMAIL: kbetzgosse@earthlink.net
IP: 67.100.127.251
URL:
DATE: 02/22/2006 09:21:29 PM
At least you have 40 remaining years (if the earth will hold us humans for that long or before we do ourselves in.) I had my star chart read one time by a neighbor/friend who is a professional astrologist, and voila - I will probably perish of this planet when I hit 54. That's in 16 years!!! Better get moving and do more meaningless stuff and tell people about ideas that never come to anything!
I hear you - I guess we were just not made for these times; me, you, and Mr. Wilson.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Leslie
EMAIL:
IP: 82.35.42.193
URL: http://www.livejournal.com/users/thynk2much/
DATE: 02/28/2006 12:17:18 PM
"And I've always let The Way I'm Supposed To Do It dominate my life."
OH HELL YES. And like you, I've also spent a lot of time pretending that I am totally defying all of that. I never pushed anyone into a thorn bush over it, but I am not kidding, I think I'm going to go outside right now and see if there's anyone around I can push into the bushes. Hopefully it will be a pensioner or small child because I'm pretty tired and would prefer to push someone light.
I'm really loving these entries by the way, the personal ones. And I like the idea of having an audience. And why not Mr. V, whom I adore?
Dear Mr. Vonnegut,
I read your most recent book -- A Man Without a Country -- last night at the bookstore. I'm sorry I didn't buy it, but frankly, I don't have the twenty bucks at the moment, and at 192 pages, it's just too tempting to read the whole thing in the store. I hope you understand.
It's a great book, and one that I would recommend, not just wholeheartedly, but with a slightly crazy-eyed fervor, to anyone feeling the strain of life in Bush's America. You know what's great about your writing, is that you somehow manage to be outraged, cynical, and bitterly sarcastic while at the same time never losing a bit of your humanity, compassion, kindness, and wit. Your style isn't snarky -- it's what snark wants to be when it grows up.
I thought a great deal about this, one of the last passages in your book (I'm quoting from your original essay, so it might not match the passage in the book itself). It's taken from a conversation between you and the late, great graphic artist Saul Steinberg:
I said, "Saul, I'm a novelist, and many of my friends are novelists, but I can稚 help feeling that some of them are in a very different business from mine, even though I like their books a lot. What would make me feel that way?" Six seconds went by, and then he growled, "It is very simple: There are two kinds of artists, and one is not superior to the other. But one kind responds to the history of his or her art so far, and the other responds to life itself."
I said, "Saul, are you gifted?" Six seconds went by, and then he growled, "No. But what we respond to in any work of art is the artist痴 struggle against his or her limitations."
- - - Comments - - -
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: june
EMAIL: sarah.kg@gmail.com
IP: 65.172.197.33
URL: http://livejournal.com/users/pinstripe_bindi
DATE: 02/24/2006 01:10:37 PM
I'm a 5. I need to observe and understand the world, hate needy people, and enjoy being alone.
That thing is scarily accurate, considering it only asks 2 questions.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: marshmallow
EMAIL: pmarshmallow@gmail.com
IP: 66.171.3.96
URL: http://www.tabulas.com/~koyangi/
DATE: 02/26/2006 08:26:29 PM
i have no idea what this enneagram is! must try it!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Leslie
EMAIL:
IP: 82.35.42.193
URL: http://www.livejournal.com/users/thynk2much/
DATE: 02/28/2006 12:12:33 PM
I think there are both positives and negatives to basing one's reality in the moment. I think it means sometimes we feel things more deeply, which is not innately bad. I also wonder if perhaps it allows us to leap more sometimes, because we don't have that long-term thang hanging over us as much.
Re point #2 however, I admit I got confused and couldn't decide if I agreed or not. :) I suppose it depends on how much you are self-defining by your uniqueness. Over the course of my life I've moved from feeling totally alien to feeling like maybe I'm just special in a good way, my own way.
FOURS UNITE.
Also: MARRY ME SAUL.
Dear Readers,
I tend to have a difficult time following discussions of weblog entries in the usual comments areas. It's not so bad on something like What! where the comments are usually fairly brief and on the "lite" side. But on Dear Kurt Vonnegut, I'd like to encourage more personal, in-depth discussions, and the way the comments system is set up right now makes it difficult for me to do that. I find the message board much more handy for this kind of thing. So, from now on, I'm shutting off the regular comments, and instead there will be a link to the Forums where you can post responses to the entries.
Usually when I do this, the amount of feedback drops off precipitously, and that's OK -- I don't expect this journal to generate a whole lot of responses. It's hard to know what to say sometimes, especially with more personal entries, and I don't feel slighted if there aren't any comments. But if you do feel moved to respond, there's a place to do that, and your response will be richly appreciated. Unless you trash me, in which case screw you, buddy!
Thanks for coming by.
Best Regards,
B^2
Dear Mr. Vonnegut,
Long time no write! Oh, how the time slips away. Let's see...what's going on here lately....
(1) Earlier this week I shut down my "main" weblog, What!, and replaced it, as usual, with practically the same weblog under a different name, The Tigers of Wrath! I'm not sure why I'm so enamored of exclamation marks lately. Maybe I'm trying to pump myself up with an exciting! weblog! title!
The differences between What! and The Tigers of Wrath! will likely only be noticeable by me. Every time I change costumes, I'm going after something else, like a different tone, or a particular style or attitude. I don't know why I have to change the entire identity of the weblog in order to put this change into action. Whatever it is, I think it's intrinsic to my personality. I tend to view identity as something fixed and unchanging, even as it's being formed. Like super glue, you've got a certain amount of time to get things set the way you want, and then it's set forever. Or writing -- if I don't like how something's going, I'm more likely to scrap the whole thing rather than go back and revise, or just press on.
(2) I think I'm over the whole reviewing block issue, and able to churn the stuff out again on schedule like a good hack. But the other writing...not so good. I haven't really resolved the problem of when to write. My natural inclination is still to write late at night, and I'm trying to train myself to write during daylight hours, but without much progress. Maybe if I remind myself that the stuff I write at night usually isn't much good anyway, because it's too often either rushed or I'm too tired to really think things through or write exactly what I want to write.
(3) Reading the Brenda Ueland book, If You Want to Write..., which has yielded some really good, inspirational stuff, I came across the observation that the creative force is (at its best) born of a generosity of spirit, a desire to add something positive to the world. And when you're feeling crabby and misanthropic, that tends to block the creative flow because you're not feeling like giving the world anything, except a good kick in the pants.
If that's true, then I'm doomed. I can't go out of doors or open a web URL without ending up with a fresh dose of frustration with the human race. And it's not just the "other side" that's creating the frustration -- it's the people I'm supposedly allied with, the progressives and Democrats, the artists, the smart kids.
If there's anything more depressing to me than the bigotry of the right, it's the bigotry of the left. There are a few people out there who seem interested in a real discussion, in a serious consideration of the state of the nation, but they're drowned out and ignored by ideologues more interested in asserting their points of view than entertaining anyone else's. Closed, narrow, hateful minds. And when this is pointed out to them, do they get it? No, they just go right on with their venomous bullshit.
So, yeah, I'm pretty fed up with the world and I'm not sure what will make me want to talk to it.
(4) The springtime always makes me think about Southern California. Not that I would want to live there again, unless about five pages of conditions were met. I don't miss the L.A. of 2006. I think what I miss is the L.A. of the 1970's and early 80's. I used to read Harlan Ellison's columns about life as a script writer in Hollywood, and there was something about his casual hedonism that I found strangely romantic. I'm not sure I can put my finger on exactly what it was. A kind of urbane, laid-back breeziness that is only possible in a place like SoCal. I felt it when I lived in the Valley in the early 90's. Something about living in an atmosphere of low-grade celebrity. You can be nobody and still feel like you're a member of some mysterious club.
I wouldn't move back to L.A. because the city seems to be (or at least feels, to me) harder-edged and meaner every time I go back there. But sometimes I imagine this alternate reality for myself, where I stayed in L.A., kept pursuing the film career, and eventually got one of those low-level creative jobs, like writing for some doomed cable sitcom or directing local TV commercials or something. (Man...it's kind of sad when you can't even hit it big in your fantasies.) It's not the specifics of this alternate reality that appeal to me, but the overall feeling, which is like being immersed in an unending present, a place out of time, without the sense of life hurtling forward into some dark unknown.
Well, I'd better get to bed. Thanks for listening to all this prattle.
Best Regards,
B^2
Dear Mr. Vonnegut,
I pulled the olde bicycle out of the garage today and took it for a ride. My thighs felt like tubes of string cheese afterwards, but I felt a lot better, mentally as well as physically, afterwards. More focused and alert.
Please tell me it's not this simple. Please.
In other news, do you want to hear my important insight for the day? Here it is. I think it's vitally important that people who want to write, that is to say, writers, should not only write, but they should be people who write. Meaning that they write, I mean a lot, because writing words, for a writer, is like breathing air, for a clarinetist.
In this way can incredible specialness be achieved.
Fuck my legs hurt.
Best Regards,
B^2
Dear Mr. Vonnegut,
I'm strangely depressed tonight, which is probably a shitty time to start blathering away on a letter. But hey. You're an old man. If I wait around until I'm in a sunny mood to write to you, you'll be dead and gone already. Hell, I'll be dead and gone already.
H suggested that maybe part of the reason for my creative doldrums is that life right now is going OK, that people often turn to creativity as an escape from shitty life circumstances, and maybe right now there's nothing particularly compelling me to write stuff as opposed to just living life. Which of course made me think, should I try to fuck up my life somehow, as a way of kickstarting my creativity? Like, I could stab myself in the eye or something. But H said no, the point is that life is cyclical and I shouldn't worry so much about this stuff now because everything comes around again, including the creativity. Or something like that.
She's right about the shitty life = artistic flowering. All of the really productive periods of my life have been during tough times. The time when I was actually writing and submitting, I was so poor I was eating tomato and onion sandwiches for lunch because I couldn't afford lunch meat. And my last really big creative time was after my divorce and when I just felt completely alone and adrift.
Maybe I'm not looking for an escape these days because I've already escaped. I'm in a safe little cubby hole, protected and not alone.
Introspection sucks.
I read this interview in Salon tonight with Maddox -- you know, "the" Maddox -- who's got a new book out. I'm not a regular reader of his, but like lots of other people I like his writing. He's funny and sharp and not just mindlessly tasteless. Still, there's something about him that's always bothered me. Not just him, but most of the people I know of who've been whaling away at whatever they're doing for years and years. Including you! And I could never really put my finger on it until now:
These people know, more or less, who they are, and are comfortable with themselves.
I don't know who the hell I am. That's why, among other things, I keep redesigning my site all the time. It's just one small outward expression of this inability to pin down some kind of identity that I can live with. Always second-guessing, always finding some new perspective that makes everything I've been doing seem weak and lame. Am I funny? Am I serious? Ironic? Earnest? Who knows? And there's that infinite regress of get over yourself that keeps me from ever really asking those trite but necessary questions that might actually reveal something of what is really going on.
I've always been a splintered personality. That's why, even as a kid, I never mixed friends. I'd have two or three best friends, and I was like a different person with each of them. And the worst thing would be to have to be in the same room with two or more of those friends at the same time, because which personality would I use in a situation like that? I guess I'm still that way, although I'm a lot more integrated than I used to be. And hm, writing this makes me realize something: I perceive the idea of a unified, consistent personality as being inherently superior to a diverse and unpredictable personality. I think that's why I so thoroughly compartmentalize my life. I don't want people who know me one way to see any other side of me. That's why I create a dozen different websites for my stuff instead of just posting everything in one place: a site that has all this crazy mixed-up shit on it seems lame and half-assed compared to one where the person just writes one way all the time.
But maybe that's just not who I am. Crap, maybe I'm just meant to always be in flux. If that's true, how do I use that? Is there any way that this actually works for me? Did I mention introspection sucks?
Best Regards,
B^2
Dear Mr. Vonnegut,
Last night I was at Borders with H. On H's suggestion, instead of doing my usual "skim through 20 books" thing, I chose one novel and read that exclusively.
Choosing a suitable novel was surprisingly tough. I've discovered that there are certain commonly-occurring stories that I just don't have any interest in. One of them is the "tragic incident in a small town/neighborhood causes long-buried secrets to be revealed" plot. The "long-buried secret" thing seems to be immensely popular in fiction. But I find them kind of boring. I guess because the "secret" always ends up being sexual abuse, murder, or infidelity. There were at least three novels in the "New Releases" section that were about this. Usually with these I flip through them to the end to find out what the big secret(s) is/are, but last night I couldn't muster even that much interest!
Another type of novel I tend to avoid is anything where the jacket flap copy says something like, "meet the [family name] clan..." Clan is one of those danger words for me. Whenever you have a novel about a family that's described as a "clan," you know it's going to be all "quirky" and "comic and bittersweet." Either it'll be a "crazy parent(s)/long-suffering child(ren)" storyline, or a "long-suffering parent(s)/crazy child(ren)" storyline. Or the worst, which is "crazy parent(s)/crazy child(ren)."
So, what kind of stories do I like? I think I tend to gravitate towards stories about loners, or at least characters who are on their own. It occurs to me that the common element in the above two plots is that they're both about communities and families. I guess I can't relate to that kind of story, since I feel pretty disconnected from both.
When I was a kid, I used to take long walks by myself through the fields behind my house, and pretend I was either (a) an explorer lost in the wilderness, trying to make his way back to his party; or (b) first man on Mars. I still go for stories like that. I loved all those Jack London survival tales about guys building fires and fighting off wolves and all that. Or of course the Odyssey. But it doesn't have to be a macho adventure story. In a way, Nicholson Baker's Mezzanine, which is essentially about a guy going up an escalator to his office, is in the same category of story as the Odyssey, albeit in miniature.
Anyway, the book I finally chose was a macho adventure story. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. I've only read one other book by McCarthy -- Child of God, this crazy book about a cave-dwelling necrophile. I'm not sure what this one's about yet. So far it's about a guy who stumbles on what looks like a drug deal gone bad and a suitcase full of $2 million cash, grabs it, and then goes on the run. What I like about this is that it's a super action popcorn movie kind of book, but all dressed up and literary so I don't feel vaguely ashamed of myself for reading it. Plus, you've gotta like a book that has spurting arteries splashing blood on the walls within the first few pages. I might also add that there are no quotation marks in the dialogue, because punctuation is for fancy men.
I knew they were making a movie of it, but I didn't know it was being made by the Coen Brothers. Neat. They're the only ones who could make this and not turn it into a generic thriller. I don't even want to think about what would have happened if Oliver Stone had gotten his hands on this.
I might go back to the bookstore tonight and try to finish it.
Best Regards,
B^2
Dear Mr. Vonnegut,
I went back to the bookstore, not Borders but B&N. And you know what? They didn't have the book! What is with that? Actually, I know what is with that. The same thing happened when H was looking for the latest John Irving book and they didn't have it. No Country for Old Men is coming out in paperback next month, so they probably pulled all the hardcover copies off the shelf in advance. Which I don't know how to feel about. On the one hand, it seems lame, since what if someone wants to buy the book NOW? But on the other hand, isn't it actually kind of nice of B&N to pull the hardcover so that you don't buy it and then feel burned when you see it a couple weeks later in paperback for like half the price? That's what happened to me when I bought The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Bought the hardcover (at B&N, actually) for like $25 and the very next week I see it in paperback at $12.95. So I don't know.
What I ended up reading was a hodgepodge of stuff. I spent some time looking at a couple of your books: Cat's Cradle, Galapagos and Bagombo Snuff Box. Then I looked at The Milagro Beanfield War, but it was way too dense for a bookstore jaunt -- I'll have to check it out from the library some time. Read through some short story anthologies. I went looking for the Irish epic, The Tain, that the Decemberists album was based on, but I couldn't find it. I thought about reading up on Irish folktales, but decided to read some horror stories instead. Yep.
By the way, I've determined that B&N/Starbucks iced coffee is a monumental ripoff. Not only is it almost a dollar more than regular, hot coffee, but if you order a large, what you get is a small sized amount of coffee with a great big bunch of ice. Or maybe I'm missing something. Is the coffee they use for iced coffee some kind of concentrated syrup? Doubt it. Anyway, from now on I'm just getting the regular coffee, even if it's stinkin' hot outside. Isn't that how the Bedouins do it? I really should just bring my own damn coffee.
Best Regards,
B^2
Dear Mr. Vonnegut,
So, the big news is that I am officially engaged to be married! For reasons that remain mysterious to me, Miss Hannah has consented to become my wife.
You might be able to relate to my situation, since you were also married before, I think at the same age I was, even (23). Even though, technically, I've been here before, there's nothing about this that feels remotely the same or even familiar. It's such a different experience that there is no comparison that makes sense. Sometimes I feel like I'm pretty much the same person that I was at 10 or 20, but then something like this happens and I see how much distance there is between the me of now and the me of then.
I feel happy, which I expected, but I also feel transformed, which I did not expect. Something essential has changed, shifted, inside and I am not sure why.
I've been kind of jaundiced about the whole marriage thing ever since my divorce, seven years ago. Although I wouldn't take away a day of it, I felt like I had done that and it didn't work out and I wasn't "the marrying kind" and was done with that particular institution. If you'd asked me a week ago, I would have said that marriage was just a piece of paper and that a commitment between two people before God was all that mattered. So I was surprised as all get out when I popped the question and she said yes and suddenly it was all different somehow.
I don't know why the formalities should matter, but they do. The way you can imagine a sunny spring day but when you step out into one it is and it isn't like what you imagined. Or the way you can love somebody and they can love you, but saying the words is what makes it real. It wasn't that my relationship with or my commitment to Hannah wasn't real before, but now it has a reality and a strength that I didn't imagine was possible.
I'm better at making fun of my feelings than articulating them. So I'm not sure how to describe the way things are now except that the future that I always imagined with this girl I love now seems closer than ever.
Best Regards,
B^2
For Skattie.