© Riverfront Times
March 5-11, 1997

Mississippi Mud: God Help You, Mr. Rosewater
By Wm. Stage

March 5-11, 1997. Author Kurt Vonnegut blew in to town a few days last week to premiere ''L' Histoire du Soldat,'' an undated version of Igor Stravinsky's 1917 pacifist musical drama. At 74, Vonnegut is indeed a legend, a hero, a literary god to us boomers. On college campuses in the '70s, every doe-eyed student had a copy of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater or Breakfast of Champions. The Grateful Dead named their publishing Ice Nine, after the apocalypse-causing substance in Cat's Cradle. Harry James Cargas, Vonnegut's pal and a professor at Webster University, was kind to allow this columnist and avid Vonnegut reader a brief audience. I was to ask three questions.

We met in Cargas' office on the Webster U. campus. Vonnegut is tall, shaggy of mane and baggy of eyes. We shook hands. We sat. Notebook in hand, I led off: ''What is the most dangerous flaw in the American character?''

''Oh, we're not going to get anywhere,'' he replied. Too deep? ''No, too silly.'' This coming from a man whose own work is highly whimsical. I tried another: ''What situation or oddity would you pay to see?''

Silence. A cold, unblinking stare from the tired, red eyes. ''These are not my kind of questions,'' he said at last. Cargass explained that they had expected something relating to Vonnegut's writing, preferably his recast of ''L' Histoire'' on which he was about to address a waiting audience in nearby Nerinx Hall. I tried to segue into a line of literary queries, but he waved me off. We'd gotten off to a bad start, he said. The interview was cancelled. How sad. He could have had fun with those questions, impertinent or frivolous as they may have seemed, but the humorist was not in good humor. I hope I never get that old, and I don't mean chronologically.