“Are we able to take any of these items with us?” I asked the librarian of the Lilly Library at Indiana University. This was after somebody else asked if we were allowed to touch the books she’d put out to show us.
The librarian looked over her glasses at me. She didn’t laugh. And so it goes.
The librarian showed us at an Atlas from the 15th century. We looked at a prayer book from the 14th century. Here’s a picture of one of the 26 original copies of the Declaration of Independence printed the night after it was declared:
All of this was well and good, but then we moved to the final table.
“This is the original manuscript of Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions,” the librarian said.
I squealed so loudly she jumped.
***
Breakfast of Champions is one of the first books that made me laugh out loud. There’s something magical about books that can make you laugh out loud.
Kurt Vonnegut is one of the reasons I spend so much time writing. I try to make myself (and maybe others) laugh, in part, because he made me laugh.
I laughed out loud in the basement of Lilly Library when I turned to this page:
I laughed out loud when I got to this page, too:
Next to the copy of Breakfast of Champions was a pile of rejection letters. Vonnegut kept all of them. There were lots of them. I’ve received enough rejection letters -well, emails – to respect Vonnegut’s collection of disappointments. Messages like these are more familiar than I would like:
I rifled through documents. I took countless pictures. The world around me faded. I was alone with pages of Kurt’s clumsy notes and stupid pictures. His collection of failures. I love the idea that his hands touched what my hands were touching.
Kurt Vonnegut was not a saint. He’s nobody to be worshipped. Nobody is anybody to be worshipped. God is God. Kurt was all sorts of flawed just like you and I are all sorts of flawed. Still, his writing is an important part of how I’ve moved through the world. Timequake, God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater, and Man Without a Country have mattered to me at different times in my life.
And so it was good to spend time with Kurt’s stupid notes and clumsy pictures. The pages he played with as he made something that has mattered to me.
I can only hope to make things that matter to others.
***
“Be careful,” the librarian finally said to me. She’d been eyeing me from across the room as I rummaged through the manuscript.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I care about this more than you do.”
The look in her eyes told me she was worried. I don’t think anybody cares about books more than librarians.
Finally, it was time to go. I said a little prayer for Kurt. I thanked him for the laughter.
Off to another meeting in a series of meetings at Indiana University to learn how to be a good leader in higher education. Vonnegut was from Indiana. A midwesterner. Freshwater people. I am a midwesterner too. And even if they make me a dean, I hope I have the courage to sketch crude pictures, write true things in dark times, and seek laughter, light, and love before anything else.
Samuel Jaye Tanner 