Old man, take a look at my life.

Recently I've developed a bit of a thing for crochety old men. On paper, I mean. It started with a complete obsession with Studs Terkel, compounded by my discovery that Harvey Pekar had edited a really wicked comic book version based on the original transcripts. From there I moved on to listen to a bunch of Terkel's interviews, collected on Voices of our Time and owned by my library (and probably yours). A friend of mine described Studs Terkel as "the man Ira Glass wishes he could be." For any non-NPR-listeners, you can probably replace Ira Glass's name with Peter Gzowski for an apt analogy (although then you would probably argue that Gzowski truly IS Terkel's Canadian counterpart, AND HOW!, and then you could up and die of embarrassment at what a huge radio nerd you are.). He's a man generally interested in the human condition and the human story, and he seems to draw the most amazing truths out of his subjects. I've written before about a couple of my favourite passages from Working, and here is another gem.

“Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell.”

Insight! Horrifying, panic-inducing insight!

Anyway, my Terkel-philia waned a little this weekend, when the audio version of his book Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who Lived It got me so drowsy I almost drove into a ditch alongside Highway 38. I hate to undercut the importance of oral history and undercutting everything I've already said, but listening to this book was a little like being trapped on an elevator with Abe Simpson. So I cut my losses and moved on.

My second old man turned out to be Kurt Vonnegut, a man who has wandered in and out of my reading life for nearly as long as I've been holding books. Again, I've written before about my complicated relationship with him, but I'm happy to report that, if only for today, Kurt and I are back on. Maybe it's just the magic of Rip Torn's dulcet voice reading Vonnegut's words to me. I think that's exactly what it is, in fact. Rip Torn is finally giving a pitch-perfect voice to the words in my memory, and he is pulling it off. I'd go so far as to say this recording is the cure for the drive-home-Monday blues. Vonnegut's cranky words in this compilation of miscellaneous non-fiction from his later years should make you cry with abject grief about the state of humanity, but out of Torn's mouth, the words will make you laugh harder than you've laughed in a long time. Get thee to the library, and check out Armageddon in Retrospect, read for you by Don Geiss. You won't regret it.

And now, a tangential video-finale.

Oh Kurt.

I was reading Kurt Vonnegut's new book of unpublished short stories today, Look at the Birdie. It was pretty okay, full of the usual randomness and implausibility and smart goofy language his writing always is. But after about the third story, I made a realization about myself I've made many times over: I don't really have any strong feelings about Kurt Vonnegut. Don't get me wrong--his writing has always meant something to me. I went through the mandatory self-revelatory experience of reading Breakfast of Champions as a teenager. I bought Welcome To The Monkey House after it was referenced on an episode of the Wonder Years. But I've just never grown to LOVE LOVE LOVE HIM the way so many people do.

Maybe part of the reason is that there are just so many damned people who do LOVE LOVE LOVE Vonnegut. When you get right down to brass tacks, I can't stand loving something everyone else loves. Especially when that something is an author who's been embraced by hipsters and quasi-intellectuals and all the other clubs I wouldn't want to join. It drives me crazy when something I care about is something everyone else cares about too. I know it's snotty, but seriously, google "Vonnegut Tattoos" and tell me you're not disappointed that everyone else has already had the same amazing idea for a tat you had one time. I guess Vonnegut's only one of many authors who's been co-opted by the internet generation, but he's the one who most readily comes to mind. And I know I'm only feeding into the cult by complaining about it, but I don't really care.

Anyway, in spite of my ambivalence, I'm still glad to know Vonnegut. I get a little flutter in my stomach whenever a kid of a certain awkward age comes in the library and asks for Slaughterhouse Five. Even if, a few years from now, that kid is wearing a ratty lumberjack shirt and trying to find a theremin player for his new side project, I will be happy that at least he read one good book.