Note: I was asked to introduce the late Kurt Vonnegut at a Famous Author's Lecture Series sponsored by Nova University in the Fall of 1983. And so I said...
It's been 12 years since I read my first book by Kurt Vonnegut, Junior.
Since then I've managed to collect and read most everything he's written.
I keep a copy of his "Slaughterhouse Five" on my desk at the Fort Lauderdale News...beside my Strunk and White's "Elements of Style".
Struck and White are very good when it comes to style.
But I read Vonnegut for his grace.
I suspect that makes me a typical Vonnegut fan.
Let me explain with the story of how I became a Vonnegutian.
I read my first Vonnegut in the Fall of 1971.
The book was Slaughterhouse Five.
This was the same year they gave me a piece of the Pulitzer Prize for some some stuff I wrote about some kids in the Ohio National Guard who shot, killed and wounded some other kids at Kent State University.
I was working at the Miami Herald when they told me I'd won a piece of a Pulitzer because some kids got shot.
That was around May of 1972.
A month later I was fired from the Miami Herald.
Which is a whole other story involving a gin soaked lunch which led to my role in writing a fictional account of a sunken German U boat which was somehow picked up by the Associated Press which led to my loss of employment.
Not that I am complaining.
Anyhow...
Needing a job, I went to work for the Catholic Archdioces of Miami even though I was a bewildered atheist at the time.
No matter.
The Archbishop himself hired me to teach seminarians how to write sermons.
Naturally, there was a certain complexity.
Like I was trying to show the seminarians how to make the Gospel relevant to to folks during the dregs of the Vietnam War.
While the seminarians were trying to bring me to Christ.
But then my then wife* announced she was having a affair with a Cuban refugee who sang bass in her church choir. *Deceased
Which prompted a priest friend at the Archdiocese to recommend the services of a local doctor do to my periodic moments of uncontrolled tears.
Concerned for my emotional well-being, the doctor gave me a prescription for 10 milligrams of Valium to be taken four times a day,
While my Catholic priest friend gave me a copy of Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" and urged me to say the "Our Father" upon arising and ending my day.
Oh yes.
In the interest of full disclosure, my Catholic priest friend and I spent a good bit of our day drinking martinis in the bar at the Shalimar Motel across from the Archdiocsean Chancery followed by long naps behind closed doors in our separate offices.
Bottom line?
I was first exposed to Vonnegut's genius under the influence of large quantities of gin, fits of despair, psychotropics and prayer.
During which time I came to realize that, in Kurt Vonnegut, I'd found someone who understood!
Especially important to me was the part in "Slaughterhouse" where, having come unstuck in time, the main character Billy Pilgrim finds comfort and joy in the magnificent breasts of Montana Wildhack, an adult film star with an engraving of the Serentity Prayer on a medallion nestled between her magnificent breasts:
"God grant me the serenity
"To accept the things I cannot change,
"Courage to change the things I can,
"And the wisdom to know the difference."
Oh yes.
Cutting to the chase, my wife divorced me and married the Cuban refugee bass singer.
While I eventually joined a fellowship where they begin their meetings with Montana Wildhack's Serenity Prayer.
So it goes.
Billy Pilgrim and Montana Wildhack
Together on Tralfamador