My Dinner with Kurt: A Journal Entry
Well, it’s about 10:30 and the night went better than
I’d hoped for. First of all, Molly and I got to
the Blackwell Inn early. We were the first at the table.
I ordered a drink, a gin and tonic, and was making nervous
chatter with Molly when I saw Kurt Vonnegut with the kids
who organized the talk, Matt, Jake, and Bill. Kurt looked
just like himself, just a bit older and a bit frail.
He walked with a cane. But he had a little Kevlar envelope
with him that was full of books of a poet friend of his and
he kept insisting that people look at the books even though
all we were interested in was him. We got up and met
him, shaking his hand. He said, "so you’re
Manny? I signed a book for you today. And I’m
going to read your novel immediately."
I was thrilled, telling him so, and took my seat facing him
at the dinner table. We had a great dinner conversation
in which we talked about Bush is an asshole, about his time
teaching at Iowa, about Indiana, about writing, about his
childhood, about NYC, about why he still writes. It
was a normal dinner table conversation. He told Molly
that he would have married her if he’d found her first
in Indiana. He asked what part of Indy she was from
and what street she lived on. He knew where her neighborhood
Southport was. Then, and this is great, Molly asked
him about smoking and he said something about he didn’t
want to talk about that, probably because he didn’t
want to be lectured to, but then Molly says because Manny
wants to have a smoke with you. And Kurt smiles and
says, "I’d like that." So me and Kurt
Vonnegut go outside along with Bill and we have a smoke even
though I don't smoke anymore. But it's Kurt Vonnegut,
see? We talked about sports and the weather. He
made a joke: "Got a match? Yes, my ass and your
face." It was one of many jokes he cracked that
night.
We then made our way to the auditorium. There were five
thousand people in line for 1200 seats. They had to
turn away thousands of people. It was like a rock concert.
But it took forever to get the evening started. The
guys were nervous as hell. So was I, pacing, lots of
energy. Finally, I got tired of waiting and went back to find
out what the delay was and found Kurt waiting in the back
sitting on a metal fold up chair. He looked up and said
"what the hell is going on? I want to get out there
already. Let’s get the goddamned show on the road.
The noise is driving me crazy." He looked exactly
like the Grinch does when he says "the noise, Noise,
NOISE!" and grasps his forehead.
Poor old guy, but once we got him miked up and I introduced
him, he was a consummate professional. Just a joy to
interview. I totally went off script. He ran with
every question, giving his off-color anecdotes and the best
moment of the evening, he sang a song for the crowd.
It was sweet and innocent. He recited two of his poems,
“Requiem” and “Joe Heller.”
The saddest moment of the night was when he said he was tired
of living and wanted to go home: to Indiana when he was nine
and his parents and sister and brother and dog and cat were
alive. “But I can’t do that.”
It was real and touching.
The crowd loved him. They just wanted to be in his presence
because he’s just a lovely person to be around.
He asked me to sing a song and for the life of me I couldn’t
think of one. So then he says, well dance, and I stood
up and did a little jig and the people laughed and it was
alright. He told people to practice an art even if they
did badly. That this makes you human.
At the beginning, Kurt leaned over to me and said, can we
be as obscene as we want to be?" And I said, you
won’t offend me, that’s for sure. So he
wanted to open with a joke about Bush. He says to me
in my ear, “Bush is so stupid that he thinks Peter Pan
is a washtub in a whore house.” The joke brought
the house down. He spent a good deal of time shitting
on Bush. I tried to push him towards giving us hope
for the future, but he wasn’t having it. "Wanna
talk about redundant? I’m writing a book about the end
of the world and it's the end of the fucking world."
It was priceless. He reacted well to me bringing up
his Uncle Alex and his motto that we should always take time
to realize and say, "if this isn’t nice, i don't
know what is." And he said that about this evening,
and it meant a lot to me that I was a part of that because
he announced that this would be his very last public appearance.
After, the talk was over, I told him as we walked off stage,
"Kurt, you really kept me on my toes there."
And he looked at me and laughed because he liked it that he
is still so goddamned quick. After, we took some pictures
with people and then he and I and the poet Harvey Wasserman
and the student organizers Jake, Bill, and Matt, and my Molly
went to the hotel and had a drink with him and chatted.
I gave him a card from me and Molly and he stuck around for
45 minutes and then went up to bed.
At the end of the interview on stage, I told Kurt: "I
just want you to know that your work has meant the world to
me and I thank you for your words." And then everyone
stood up and gave the poor old guy a standing ovation.
Kurt turned out to be a prince and tonight was a red letter
day in the life of this writer. Kurt said to me, "any
writer is a colleague of mine." Jesus, that made
my heart swell.
