Rediscovering Vonnegut, Rediscovering Me

It's been a while since I posted anything here. New job responsibilities and a decision to go on a writing hiatus made it seem pointless. I even made the announcement on Facebook that I was going to stop writing for an indefinite amount of time. Then something truly miraculous happened: The world somehow went even more batshit crazy than it had before. At least, the sizable corner of it known alternately as the United States of America and 'Murica did. It was those who tend to employ the latter term whose insanity and gullibility were on equal display January 6th.

In case you're living in an alternate universe that I would very much prefer to live in, you know that was the day a horde of Donald Trump's supporters descended upon the U.S. capital and did their best French Revolution impression. People were hurt, some died, and property damage and theft rounded out the horrific triumvirate of insipidity. We had, to my way of thinking, officially entered a time where all the surface-level  BS would never return to its subterranean depths again. It was here to stay and it was only going to get worse before it got...I didn't know that it would ever get better. However, the writer in me watched with cool, dispassionate interest, cataloging and extrapolating.

I had no idea he was doing any of that. Having dived headlong into my new job, a job I love, by the way, I had, much like Luke Skywalker in "The Last Jedi," cut myself off from the Force. But the Force has other ways of reasserting itself. Much like how the character of Rey came into Luke's life to rekindle his heroism, another type of powerful influence returned to me in the form of a seemingly random audiobook selection on the shelves at work.

Those who know me, those who have read this blog, and those who have read my first novel all know my first real literary hero was Kurt Vonnegut. Despite an apparent hipster-led assault on his literary reputation over the past decade, he remains the singular influence on my writing voice and sensibility. The elitists can go to hell of they want to diminish me for that. 

Ever since the global pandemic started, I have experienced the urge to reread Vonnegut. I own most of his work. The urge usually occurs whenever I am feeling lost or needing to find my center. Other authors have come along since that fill a similar niche, but none has the powerfulness of Vonnegut's simplistic prose and grand yet grounded notions about the human condition. For most, his best work is "Slaughterhouse Five." It was the first thing I read thanks to an English Lit class. Of the five short novels we read in those 7 1/2 weeks, his was the one that prompted me to run out and buy another novel of his during the semester. 

My favorite Vonnegut novel remains "Breakfast of Champions." My own novel, "Dreamers at Infinity's Core," was an attempt to mimic the approach of Vonnegut's work and put my own stamp on it. I believe that time has come again. 

I've been listening to the audiobook during my drives to and from work. Read by gifted actor Stanley Tucci, the reading is nothing short of incredible. Unlike Ethan Hawk's ponderous monotone on "Slaughterhouse Five," Tucci understands how Vonnegut's prose should be read. Somewhere in all that brilliance, I heard the basis for a novel I have wanted to write for several years. I didn't know it until recently, but I have grown tired of treading the same familiar ground. I want to write a novel that is about something, not just reacting to it. I want the idea to be the thing, not the plot device to propel characters from scene to scene. I want dialogue to be simple but resonant, meaningful. 

Most of all, I want to write about what's going on in my head before it takes me over. And yes, I mentioned the insanity of January 6th because it will be one of two framing devices for this novel. The other is the Mayan calendar. I already know the title and it isn't going to change:

2012
2021

It's time to make Vonnegut proud~