Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
1922 — 2007


The first.

The first book that really really did that "thing" to me. Those of you who read (GOB) can relate.

There's a thing when you read if you're a 'reader' and the thing is nose stuck too close to the page as breath holding you move through the book. It's like you meet the book in the store, you turn to your random page (mine is 78 but everyone has something different), you read the page, a line jumps out, you say fuuuuuucccck you buy the book, you can't wait to get home, you get home, you take off your clothes, slowly methodically you open the book, and you begin inside the book, hips trembling with each turning page, hours and hours and hours go by until...as you move through...you finish the book with a sigh, with a reflective look towards and away from that last page and then once in a while and only once in a while, you turn on the bath you slide in and you re-open the book and read it all again. With new eyes, it becomes better. BUT only sometimes. As I Lay Dying...yes multiple readings...Auster, multiple readings, Palahniuk, Winterson, Ehrich, ALL MULTIPLE READINGS and of course....Joyce. Multiple multiple readings...

I don't remember how I read before. I do remember the Count of Monte Cristo as being the first book I devoured. About 7 years old, my grandfather would let me read all his withered and old first editions of the 'classics for kids' or whatever the hell. I like them...but soon my little eyes started to go to the shelf above. He told me I wouldn't understand it. That I wouldn't be able to get it.

I sat in my grandmothers chair in the middle of July and devoured it. Afterwards I moved on to Moby Dick.

But after these and the entire Dickens collection I moved into the book that began to do that thing to me. That could place me in the middle of train tracks with the whistle coming closer and closer and I would struggle to finish the last page before the train hit me.

ANYWAY

The book, the book, the first book was...Slaughterhouse Five. So it goes, so it goes...To this day, the book I pick up and re read and re love and become re enchanted with. I read everything else, he wrote...essays, short stories, EVERYTHING and loved him for it. It's like your first kiss, you never forget as teeth bashing and sloppy as it is,that first book. A nostalgic obsession.

I fell in love with Billy Pilgrim, I started complaining about my eyes so I could see an optometrist maybe maybe like Billy, and be abducted with him to Tralfamadorian zoo, I now fall in love with Montana Wildhack, I didn't get porn-star-ness when I was 10. And Barbara..."bitchy flibbertigibbet" with "legs like an Edwardian grand piano". The language and language and irony and humour...I think this may have been what grabbed me, what did it for me.."mustard gas and roses" the odour of decaying corpses on a drunks breath...the idea of mortality, dying bubbles in a glass of champagne...so it goes so it goes...

My blackberry buzzed at 4am this morning. Groggy eyed I fumbled in the dark to read my CNN breaking news story. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. died Wednesday, at the age of 84, his last words I'm sure marvelling in his ability to live so long smoking so much!

I have to thank Mr. Vonnegut for teaching me at that early early age about language, the imagination and everything good in reading.

And so it goes I guess...

Rest In Peace big guy. Thank-you.