Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut

I haven't written a book report in 35 years or so. The truth is, I want to write about last week and my six nights of culture overload, but I've been struggling with that piece for, well, for over a week now. I've had some thoughts (some even coherent). I wrote down some scribbles on a napkin while having dinner at City Girl the other night. But still - nothing real to write here.

So today is a cold, rainy Saturday. I should be finishing my taxes and helping my son with his taxes. But instead I am sitting in Jam N' Java in Arlington Center, finishing yet another Vonnegut. I read most of his stuff when I was in high school and college, sandwiched between Herman Hesse and Carlos Castaneda and Harlan Ellison. Just before Kurt died, coincidentally, I began reading his later works. I like reading his recent stuff because I like to listen to him as a cranky old man - depressed about the state of the world, anticipating his oncoming death, but still unable to suppress his love of beauty and people and of love itself that I always found coming through his words, no matter how depressing his stories. I though Cat's Cradle (which describes the end of the world) was a funny love story!

Vonnegut has always repeated and quoted himself over and over in his books and stories, and it seems that he did that with even more frequency in the last books he wrote. But I don't mind. Just like I don't mind listening to my old friends tell stories that I have heard them tell many times before - especially those that I lived through in their original telling. Even if the facts and details of the stories change a bit with each retelling - sometimes a good story is better than the truth. Just ask George Washington!

Now I am barely a dozen pages from the end of Timequake. I'm not anxious for it to end. There is no suspenseful plot line whose conclusion I am dieing to learn. But neither am I reluctant to finish this book, like I was two weeks ago as I was finishing a different book. Then, I had nothing in the queue to read next and I went into a near panic: Quick! To Brookline Booksmith! At Once!

This time I am slow to finish because I would rather laze away a rainy afternoon, then go to the extreme effort of reaching into my bag for the next book in my pile. Which should it be? Should I finally finish Leo Buscaglia's "Love", an old, used, worn and heavily underlined and annotated copy which was given to me by a pretty girl at Darwin's one evening - the first time something like that had ever happened to me, so I am sure I will never finish _that_ book - just so I can relive the pleasure of receiving such a wonderful present every time I look in my book bag. Or should I finish "Faithless" by Joyce Carol Oates - which sits on my nightstand, adjacent to my bed? Or should my next book be Lorrie Moore's "Birds of America" - an author I've never read but who was recommended to me by a woman I once dated.

Anyway, none of that is my book report of Timequake - which after all, was the pretense of this journal entry to begin with! So not even close to a book report, here are some of my favorite lines from Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut

"a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit"

"My uncle Alex Vonnegut... taught me something very important. He said that when things were really going well we should be sure to notice it. ... Uncle Alex urged me to say this out loud during such epiphanies: 'If this isn't nice, [I don't know] what is.' "

"I am eternally grateful to [my Uncle Alex] ... for my knack of finding in great books... reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else may be going on."

"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."

"I have taught creative writing during my seventy-three years... I told my students that when they were writing they should be good dates on blind dates, should show strangers good times."

"I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about... You are not alone."

And finally, here is my favorite line from Vonnegut's "A Man Without A Country" which is also quoted somewhere in Timequake as well:

"When you get to my age, if you get to my age, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged: 'What is life all about?’ ... I put my big question about life to my son the pediatrician. Dr Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: "Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.' "

yeah.