And So It Goes...

I'm carrying this book around like a baby.

Kurt Vonnegut's eyes are the last thing I look at at night and the first thing I look at in the morning.

What I see in those eyes changes daily.

I'm reading as fast as I can, mostly in stolen moments, which is very frustrating. Life is not cooperating with my need to engross myself in this book right now. In a perfect world, I'd be in a self guided college English course, rereading Mr. Vonnegut's stories and novels in chronological order, analyzing them in the context of this biography, trying to make sense of it all, but my world is very far from perfect. So I read on and on in snippets, ever anxious about the review I need to write in exchange for my advanced copy, feeling at once rushed and unwilling to hurry. I don't want this book to end. I don't want to know what happens next, because I know what happens in the end.

Context is everything, and I was missing a lot of context while reading Vonnegut's books over the last thirty years.  I reread both Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions a couple of years ago, and they both made me laugh and cry repeatedly, so sad and yet still hopeful. I knew so little about one of my favorite authors that I am somewhat ashamed. Somehow, in the 1970's I became fixated with war stories, soldier's memoirs, especially Vietnam and WWII, probably because I knew and loved some pretty damaged veterans, and I saw them struggle to live a regular life. I tend to compartmentalize their sadness or brokenness as a logical result of surviving the insanity of war. I suppose I saw Kurt Vonnegut through that tinted lens, and failed to see all the other shades of sadness in his life, both before and after his release as a POW. I'm guilty of thinking in my narrow mind that he wrote these cathartic works and went about his quirky way as an esteemed author. I was very wrong. I'm beginning to get a sense of how difficult a project this must have been for anyone to undertake, and a deep respect for the author who convinced Kurt Vonnegut to let him write it.

Of course, when I am done living in the book altered reality of  And So It Goes , I suppose I owe it to myself and Mr. Shields to read his biography of Harper Lee, Mockingbird.

Mr. Shields writes a wonderful blog about writing if you care to give it a look. He's a fine writer, and based on his kind comment on my little corner of the blog world, and his taking the time to email me, a fine person as well. If you're a biography fan, or a Vonnegut fan, his book will make you think, laugh, cry and so on.

Happy reading!


ps!!!

I'm outraged that Blogger deleted the amazing work of art that is The Dishwasher's Tears.

If you love your blog and you don't want to lose it, in your dashboard, Settings Tab, Basic, Blog tools is an Export Blog choice. Blogger will download all the text in your blog to your computer and you will have it on your hard drive. HOWEVER, pictures and embedded items do not follow.

Or, you could open a wordpress account and import from your blogger site with a few permission clicks. Everything is there, easy peasy. I'm working on my transfer now, it's here if you fancy a look. I like the change myself.

Or, if you really want to go all out, the website blog2print will turn your blog into a book and sell it to you for a fee. You should play around just to see what your blog looks like as a book, it's fast and free, unless you want to touch it!

Happy Weekend everyone.

Hope the Dishwasher is back online soon. I need a fix.