Writers praise late Kurt Vonnegut for his influence

NEW YORK -- Like his friend Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut was a hero to baby boomers -- though he was raised in an earlier time.

Nearly 40 when the 1960s began, Vonnegut was less a peer of the young rebels who loved such novels as "Cat's Cradle" and "Slaughterhouse-Five," than a wise, eccentric and cranky uncle, scorning the world's madness but rarely failing to get some laughs or challenge some minds.

Vonnegut, who died Wednesday at 84, didn't need Vietnam to figure out that the system didn't work, that the 1950s were a lie and that you shouldn't believe what grown-ups tell you. His absurdist humor, the survival tactic of a former prisoner of war whose mother had committed suicide, proved as useful and as up-to-date to the postwar generation as a Bob Dylan song.

"Growing up when I did, at a time of widespread alienation and disgust, Vonnegut's irreverence was very appealing, and certainly influenced my own views of contemporary life," said novelist Ken Kalfus, 53.

'An icon'

Norman Mailer, another World War II veteran who found an audience with younger readers, noted that Vonnegut was "an icon to several generations of young Americans who rushed to read everything he published."

Novelist Rick Moody recalled reading his books "several times" and wondered if "I could have gotten through my middle teens without him."

"I became a writer because of him," said novelist Jess Walter, 41. "

Kalfus, too, found that Vonnegut was an author who stayed with you long after you thought you had outgrown him. You don't have to be young to appreciate that "we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be" or agree that "laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion."

Some learned though his books, others from the man. John Irving studied at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop in the 1960s, when Vonnegut was a faculty member then known, and often dismissed, as a science fiction writer.

Irving remembered Vonnegut as a self-effacing presence who "didn't have an agenda about what `the novel' should be." Vonnegut also appreciated that you didn't have to be in the classroom to get your work done.

"I had a young child at the time and when he heard about that he said, `You mean you have to work in writing whenever you can?"' Irving explained. "He then told me, `You're certainly giving me enough pages every week, so why not forget about the class part and stay home and take of your kid?'"