[reprinted from May, 2002]

Months ago, when I heard that Kurt Vonnegut would be speaking at UNM, I thought, “of course, I’ll be there.” I soaked up Vonnegut’s satire in high school, lo, 30 40 years ago. But, for no reason, I never got around to buying a ticket. Little did I realize the ironies to come when Merri said, “I have good news and bad news.”

The bad news was that Vonnegut was sold out. The good news was that I could join a couple of guys from the Daily Lobo in the Media Booth. After all, I have had a number of letters printed in the Lobo — I have written for the Lobo. When I heard “Media Room,” I envisioned a bright, high-tech space with laptop ports and phones and recording equipment. Happy with my good fortune, I jotted down “sometimes good things happen to OK people.”

To my surprise, the Media Room was more like a wide, dark closet in the far back of the auditorium. The only light came through sliding glass windows facing the hall that can only be opened so far, in an alternating arrangement of glass, opening, glass, opening. And it wasn’t just me and my Lobo colleagues — there were 3, sometimes 6, other people in the booth with us. As more people crowded into the booth, I ended up seated behind glass. Most shocking of all, there was no amplified sound, just whatever sound that could drift to the back of the hall and through the half-open windows, one of which was eventually blocked by the Lobo photographer, partly to photograph but mostly so he could lean out and actually hear something.

As Vonnegut began to speak, people in the booth shifted uncomfortably and asked each other if they could hear. One woman had very good hearing and occasionally repeated a bon mot. Now & then the photographer leaned back into the booth and repeated something, too. Several people behind us just left.

For the next hour, while 2000 people listened to one of the wittiest men alive, I strained with all my might to pick out every other word. It was like listening to a foreign language, me straining for the gist, grasping a word here and there, using the end of the sentence to infer the beginning, while the native speakers were laughing their asses off.

I did get the gist. I was particularly surprised that Vonnegut is a self-professed Luddite. A sci-fi writing Luddite? I heard enough to laugh when he said “human beings are here to fart-around.” (Me, “I love to work at nothing all day.”) I missed a couple of manipulations of the doting crowd. I followed much of the chalkboard presentation on good story lines, ending with the analysis that nothing really happens in Hamlet. (As Merri points out, Bart Simpson reached a similar conclusion.)

In the end I was exhausted from all my effort, like an ungifted student of Wit as a Second Language. Much was lost in the translation. I think I endured it for much the same reason people revere the Buddha’s nail clippings — even a fragment of greatness is better than our ordinary lives.

It was, indeed, a night of irony. As I left my deaf booth, I saw & heard the TV, carrying a live broadcast just outside the Media Room door. I saw the patron with the headset for amplified assistance. Would a Luddite begrudge us this much technology? I practically slapped my forehead when Merri said, “maybe there was a switch for speakers.” I remembered Vonnegut’s last words, sharp echoes of Merri’s: “tell me, which was the good news and which was the bad.” More than farting around, I believe we’re here to appreciate Irony. _mjh