Dunking Tralfamadore

By Adam Griffith

No sooner do we search for truth do we find nine people willing to lie to us and only one speaker of truth out of every ten. Imagine then the weight we should give to the words of a man who was one in a million when it came to telling the world the truth through humor and wit. This collection is one author’s letter of appreciation to the literary father who inspired his work and the work of so many others.

Dunking Tralfamadore: The Lessons Vonnegut Wanted to Teach Us decodes and updates the truths of the great Hoosier and entertains with stories inspired by Vonnegut’s writing. The voice of reason and wit cannot be stymied by death, it can only change speakers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adam Griffith
• Release date: Sep 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466172173

Adam Griffith

Adam is a noted winner of trivial awards, recipient of dust-gathering degrees, and author of oft-overlooked literature. A native of the west coast, he is currently on his second attempt at acclimating to the south, this time in Florida. His time is split between being an iconoclastic writer and mercenary rhetoric professor.

Book preview

Other Books by Adam Griffith

The Harbinger and the Shepherd

Favorite Vonnegut Books of Adam Griffith

Galapagos

Breakfast of Champions

Slaughterhouse-Five

Hocus Pocus

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Dunking Tralfamadore:

The Lessons Vonnegut Wanted to Teach Us.

Adam Griffith

Published by Hungry Panther Publishing - Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011 by Adam Griffith

All rights reserved. No part of this book can be reproduced or copied save for brief, cited passages used in literary reviews.

Any similarity between any persons, living or dead, in the fiction is purely coincidental and should not be construed as anything but a work of the author’s imagination. Any similarity between any persons, living or dead, especially those mentioned by name, in the non-fiction sections was completely on purpose.

This is not a biography, was not authorized or endorsed by Kurt Vonnegut, his estate, or any of his relatives. This book deals with his ideas and works as a historical figure and not as a co-author or contributor.

Cover art by Adam Griffith

Edited by Dee Burkhart

Special Thanks to:

Mom

Jim Blaylock

Dee

and Cat

Table of Contents

Foreword

Everyone-else-ist

Betrayed by Jimmy

Ever Thusly

Middle-word

Fuck San Bernardino

The Education of Cell-29

Zombies Ate My Pension!

Afterwards…

Foreword

As with most young writers and humorists of my generation, and even more so the generations preceding mine, I was heavily influenced by Kurt Vonnegut’s writing. Like so many other college boys who grew up on Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five I applied to Iowa’s Writers Conference, and, like so many others, I wasn’t accepted. Instead, I moved to Southern California, studied under other science fiction greats like James P. Blaylock, and moved in a direction not guided by Vonnegut, though the respect and influence owed to him remains.

Vonnegut said he actually didn’t like to consider himself a science fiction writer, although that is what he is best known for. Even though his work contained decidedly science fiction mainstays like time travel, alien abductions, dystopian futures, and whatever you would consider ice-9, the true purpose of his work seemed to be social commentary with the story as the vehicle. Indeed, I believe he spoke with the voice of a father trying to guide the ignorant child of America to a greater purpose. As with most ignorant children, America chose not to heed the wise words of Vonnegut’s speeches, his books, and memoir. Man Without a Country is more or less labeled an autobiography, although I would consider it more of a final plea from someone who knew us, loved us, and thought we could do better. I regret never getting to meet Vonnegut, and thus missed the opportunity to tell my literary father figure, I’m sorry. I thought we could do better too.

Vonnegut has also been labeled, and he said he liked this even less, the last true modernist. I always believed this was something of a misnomer, not only when it was applied to Vonnegut, but pretty much anyone it was applied to who survived to write and evolve past 1960; after all, what are writers if not learning, changing critters? The things Vonnegut did in his writing, and did brilliantly, would be hurled from the tops of the ivory towers of publishing houses and chased to the street below by jeers from editors if they were penned today, even though many of his works were written well after we all became post-modernists. He spoke directly to his reader in ham-fisted Meta commentary constantly. He actually wrote himself, not Kilgore Trout, who was his alter-ego, the writer he said he would have become had nobody ever paid him for his work, but actually Kurt Vonnegut, into Breakfast of Champions. And he played mathematical jokes on his readers at the end of Hocus Pocus that would have aroused the ire of even the most avant-garde undergraduate writing workshops. All of this made him decidedly un-modernist and a rejection of all things post-modern. If there are rules about writing, we can only assume Vonnegut knew what they were and didn’t care a whit to follow them. I believe this attitude was a combination of his outsider’s approach, as he had no formal education in creative writing, and his naturally rebellious, skeptical ways. But look at what he produced when he decided his message trumped any conventions the novel might impose; we, as readers, writers, and thinkers, are richer for his irreverence.

This is my homage to the great Hoosier. I do not claim to write like him, do not claim to speak for him or his living family members, and do not pretend I am the heir to a throne he didn’t want and likely would never have sat upon as the last great modernist. I am simply a writer who came to believe in the message Vonnegut put forth, both about writing and the world as he saw it, and took these lessons into my own writing to hopefully give them a good home, although I am far more Kilgore Trout than Kurt Vonnegut these days. I share his love of