Kurt Vonnegut R.I.P.

I don’t really have a story about Kurt Vonnegut, except that when I read Breakfast of Champions in high school I was happily surprised to learn that you could write an entire novel of jokes, amusing observations, and primitive drawings. And when I read Slaughterhouse Five last year (I’m embarrassed to say it was for the first time), I was stunned by the strength, beauty, and simplicity of its language. It’s really one of the most beautiful books ever written.

So the story I have is only about Kurt Vonnegut in its last few lines. Hopefully it will be entertaining enough that you’ll hang on until then, and when we get there I’ve also appended a Gillian Welch song that is really about Elvis, but seems somehow appropriate to the occasion.

Anyway, when I was living in Seattle I went with friends to a concert by a choral group, and after we went to the Sazerac Bar in the Hotel Monaco downtown. Around 11 they started closing down the restaurant and setting something up. This was during the Seattle Film Festival. What was going on? we asked. It was the after party for “Breakfast of Champions,” a waitress explained, starring Nick Nolte, Albert Finney, Barbara Hershey, and Anthony Michael Hall, all of whom would be showing up soon.

We were in the bar, separated from the restaurant — and hence the party — by a low wrought-iron partition. But we figured out, after a few drinks, that on a return trip from the bathroom you could just drift into the party if you wanted. So although there was a guest list at the front door and a line of people trying to talk their way in, we had access to the party.

My friends didn’t want to go in, but they wanted me to, and they wanted to watch my adventure from their safe perch in the bar by the wrought-iron partition. There were preternaturally tan young women roaming the party. They had pig tails held tight with rubber bands, and those cool black half-frame glasses that had just become popular.

As soon as I got into the party I realized two things. One was, I was going to have to find someone to talk to, to give myself some credibility (so I wouldn’t be standing there alone). Two was, I was going to have to ask a lot of questions of the people I talked to, so they wouldn’t ask who I was, and find out I didn’t really belong there.

I looked around and saw a tall guy standing uncomfortably near by. I went up and introduced myself. Turned out he was a lawyer for Real Networks, the software company that makes Real Player. They had been an investor in the film. I quickly abandoned my second rule for this conversation and told this guy about how I was an environmental lawyer, and a writer on the side, blah, blah, blah. He was happy to have another lawyer to hang out with, and he introduced me around to a number of the people at the party. When I talked to them, however, I peppered them with a series of questions. It became a game, to see how long they would go without asking who I was. These were Hollywood people. It was challenging, but it was also doable.

I just remembered that Bruce Willis was also in the movie. That’s important. Anyway, finally, I met the director. Alan something. I should also mention that all of the actors were over in another part of the room, keeping to themselves, and for some reason I never went over there.

Anyway, I meet the director, and before he can ask a question I tell him my theory about Bruce Willis. “Bruce Willis is the most under-rated actor in America,” I tell him. This was back in the 90’s, when Willis had only done Die Hard and few other movies, so this claim had a plausible amount of novelty to it. “No one realizes it,” I said, “but he’s a tremendously gifted dramatic actor.” Then I talked about how his tough-guy persona was like a mask that kept everyone from seeing the real Bruce Willis, and that the real Bruce Willis was nothing like the world thought of him, and also how ironic and tragic this was. Maybe there was something of Vonnegut in this, I don’t know.

“That’s amazing!” he said, “because that’s what my movie’s about!”

Then he talked for about 20 minutes about what his movie was about. I don’t really remember much of it, and I never saw the film. There were three of us talking to him, though, and near the end of our conversation he pointed to each of us in turn, touching each of us on the chest and saying “You’re part of Hollywood! You know what I’m talking about!”

Also, as we were talking, one of the pig-tailed women brushed by, ran her hand across my back, and gave me a look over her shoulder as she walked away.

My little adventure had been a success. I could go back to my friends.

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb if I say that the movie version of “Breakfast of Champions” is not remembered as one of Hollywood’s great achievements. As I said, I never saw it. Maybe it’s a great work of art. But under the glamour, the party did have a strange tension to it. Nick Nolte didn’t even dress up. He showed up, and hung out, in his bath robe. So I’ve always assumed that the movie version didn’t exactly work, that it was the work of a talented group of people who couldn’t quite grab onto and recreate Vonnegut’s magic.

I’ve thought a lot about that party over the years. How funny it was that I snuck in, how I carried off the charade of belonging to a crowd I had no license to run with. But it didn’t occur to me until the other day that the crowning irony of the evening was that the entire scene — the fancy hors d’ouvres, the Hollywood people who talked only about themselves, the self-absorbed director and the twenty-somethings in pig-tails and funky glasses — had been inspired by a writer who hated just the kind of showy pretense the party exemplified. Poor Kurt Vonnegut. If he only could have seen the party thrown in his honor that night at the downtown Monaco Hotel. It would have been one more thing to cause him to merrily give up hope, and gleefully declare the human race a failed experiment of people who wanted to impress rather than love each other, and who could only conjure the elusive beauty of art by accident, if they could at all. He would have been fascinated by the whole scene, I think, equally enlivened and appalled.

Here is the song. Hold yourself and sway a little as you sing it.

Elvis Presley Blues

By Gillian Welch

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died
Day that he died

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died
Day that he died

Just a country boy who combed his hair
Put on a shirt his mother made
and went on the air

And he shook it like a chorus girl
He shook it like a Harlem queen
He shook it like a midnight rambler, baby
Like you never seen
Like you never seen

I was thinking that night about Elivs
Day that he died
Day that he died

I was thinking that night about Elivs
Day that he died
Day that he died

Now he took it all out in black and white
Grabbed his wand in the other hand
And he held on tight

And he shook it like a hurricane
He shook it for to make it break
He shook it like a holy roller, baby
With his soul at stake
With his soul at stake

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died
Day that he died

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died
Day that he died

He was all alone
In a long decline
Thinking how happy John henry was
When he fell down dying

And he shook till it rang like silver
He shook it till it shined like gold
He shook it and it beat that steam drill, baby,
Well bless my soul
Bless my soul

He shook it and it beat that steam drill, baby,
Well bless my soul
What’s wrong with me?

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died
Day that he died

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died
Day that he died

Just a country boy
Who combed his hair
Put on a shirt his mother made
And went on the air

And he shook it like a chorus girl
Shook like a Harlem queen
Shook it like a midnight rambler, baby,
Like you’d never seen
Like you’d never seen