My Conversation with Kurt Vonnegut

I wish I could remember more about the conversation I had with Kurt Vonnegut several years ago. The words I mean. Everything else is crystal clear. It coincided with the release of "Timequake" and a talk he was giving about it at the University of South Carolina, which was near the alternative newspaper I wrote for at the time. I shared an office with two other journalists, and told them they had to go to lunch right away because Kurt Vonnegut was calling. I absolutely could not talk to Kurt Vonnegut with people listening.

It was silly, I know. But this is the only interview I have ever had that actually made me nervous, and I've spoken with other celebrities, and said absolutely silly things to them. Like the time I interviewed a member of the Tams. I asked him what songs the Tams had been known for. "You know that little song called 'Under the Boardwalk'?" And he was an original member too. Just goes to show you.

But Kurt Vonnegut, I knew about.

There were two very distinct things that I do remember about the words Vonnegut said that day. He said, for one thing, that he was through writing. After "Timequake," there would be no more novels from him. Of course, I chuckled and asked him why. A universe where Kurt Vonnegut isn't writing? Who could imagine it? But Vonnegut just said, "Because I'm too damned old."

That touched me a bit. My degree is in English and I grew up thinking that authors were gods. Time couldn't touch them. I thought that old age, for them, was a sort of perpetual twilight, where they would linger ad infinitum between Here and There until the heavens turned to dust.

I was, as Vonnegut unwittingly pointed out to me that day, quite wrong.

The other thing that Vonnegut said to me that day that I will never forget is that I knew absolutely nothing. Vonnegut was of that opinion because he'd asked me what my degree was in and I had told him, "English."

"English majors," he said, "don't know anything."

He then proceeded to tell me that science was where the real knowledge was. Scientists are interesting that way. I didn't defend my degree, but just let Vonnegut go on about the virtues of the sciences and the scientists. I didn't tell him that I'd almost become one myself, that I practically ate science books as a child.

I don't think Vonnegut was really talking about a subject, however, as much as he was on about an ideology. I think he meant that you couldn't know anything unless you are in possession of a mind full of questions, a mind willing to experiment and collect information, and then to adjust according to what you find. Otherwise, there is only memorization and justification, and no real learning takes place. I think he was right.

I felt a little twinge when Kurt Vonnegut died April 11. Actually, I felt a big twinge. My favorite authors are always checking out on the 11^th of things. But I'm awfully glad we had him for a while.

So it goes. ###