A TRIBUTE TO WRITER & ARTIST KURT VONNEGUT

By Kimberly Goff

The world lost a great man last week. Here in the Hamptons we lost a friend, a neighbor and a creative influence.

Even before I moved to the Hamptons, I had read Kurt Vonnegut's books in high school. He was a celebrity and a hero. Slaughter House Five, Vonnegut's ninth book, was published in 1969 and caught the attention of a generation of antiwar protesters and political activists. Years after being a soldier and a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany, and writing many other books, Vonnegut had become a counterculture idol. When I came here as a teenager, I was thrilled to learn that Kurt Vonnegut was a friend of my mother, Elaine Benson, and that I might meet him someday. I considered myself a Vonnegut groupie.

In the mid-seventies, I owned a store on Main Street in Bridgehampton. Kurt was living with Jill Krementz in Sagaponack. Jill became a customer and friend. I visited their house and heard stories from Kurt about his grown children. He was personable and funny. I had been told he was depressed, but what I saw was an older man with intense charm, sloppy khaki clothes, circles under his eyes and a wonderfully warm face. He was a real person who showed interest in me, even though I was considered too young to bother with. Kurt and Jill would give me a lift to the city ever so often, and Kurt used those rides to learn as much about me as he could. For years, he teased me about my boyfriend (later husband) who had a passion for motorcycles.

In those days, the Elaine Benson Gallery hosted many benefits, including the John Steinbeck Meet the Writers Book Fair for the benefit of Southampton College's writing program. Jill Krements is a writer and photographer and had books in the book fair for many years and showed her photographs in the gallery. Years later, Kurt was presented with the Steinbeck award for excellence in writing. In 1993, Kurt made a poster for Midway College in Kentucky. It was a self-portrait. He collaborated with a silkscreen artist in Kentucky named Joe Petro III. This was the beginning of a working relationship, which resulted in more than forty images of Kurt Vonnegut's design being produced to be shown in galleries. Kurt's signature energy and whimsy were obvious in the work. By 1993, I was working with my mother and we were lucky enough to show these pieces starting in 1996. People often showed surprise that Kurt Vonnegut, the writer, was also an artist. Kurt had told me years before that there were many artists in his family. He always sketched and doodled. He always wanted to be an artist.

The cartoonist Saul Steinberg was a friend of Kurt's, and dedicated one of his silkscreens to him. In talking about the silkscreen, Kurt told me of Saul Steinberg's talent in the context of the war. He explained that Saul's drawings were so expressive that they crossed the boundaries of common language, allowing Steinberg to communicate through his drawings. The tribute to Saul Steinberg has the outline of a hand with faces on the fingernails, with these words, "I asked the famously effective satiric draftsman Saul Steinberg if he was gifted. He said he was not, but the appeal of many graphic works of art was the evident struggle of their creators with their obvious limitations. Put another way by me: We like some works by some artists who couldn't do what Michelangelo could do, but who damn well made pictures anyway." It is signed with a signature that includes a line drawing, a caricature of Kurt, his signature self-portrait.

People tend to feel they get to know writers from their books. There is an image that we receive from reading and that image is one side of the writer. In Kurt Vonnegut's case to those of us who knew him here, who read about his reaction to our changing community, who saw him at benefits and social events, Kurt Vonnegut was more than the sum of his writing. In reading obituaries for Kurt, I was surprised to see no mention of his artwork. I hadn't realized that many people have still not seen Kurt Vonnegut as anything other than a satirical writer. To many of us, he was a humanitarian, political activist, artist, friend, an inspiration, a husband, a father and an incredible writer.

Kurt Vonnegut is survived by three children from his first marriage, Mark, Edith, and Nanette, and by his wife, Jill Krementz, and their daughter, Lily.

Works by Kurt Vonnegut include; "Player Piano", 1952, "The Sirens of Titan", 1959, "Mother Night" and "Canary in a Cathouse", 1961, "Cat's Cradle", 1963, "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater", 1965, "Welcome to the Monkey House", 1968, "Slaughter House Five", 1969, "Happy Birthday Wanda June", 1970, "Between Time and Timbuktu", 1972, "Breakfast of Champions", 1973, "Wampeters, Foma and Ganfallons", 1974, "Slapstick", 1976, "Jailbird", 1979, "Palm Sunday", 1981, "Deadeye Dick", 1982, "Galapagos", 1985, "Bluebeard", 1987, "Hocus Pocus", 1990, "Fates Worse than Death: an Autobiographical Collage", 1991, "Make up Your Mind" and "Miss Temptation", 1993, "Timequake", 1997, "God Bless you, Dr Kevorkian" and "Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction", 1999 and "A Man without a Country", 2005