Kurt Vonnegut Joins Rodney Dangerfield in Heaven

Unlike many readers, I discovered Kurt Vonnegut not through a friendly English teacher or an older brother or a dog-eared copy of Breakfast of Champions found at a local hippie's rummage sale. No, I discovered Vonnegut through his cameo in the Rodney Dangerfield film Back to School.

In Back to School, Dangerfield's character, millionaire Thornton Mellon, has returned to college in order to encourage his son's faltering academic career. Assigned a paper on Kurt Vonnegut, Mellon commissions an essay from the author himself, who (as I recall) appears at the front door of Mellon's spaciously remodeled dormitory suite in the middle of a raging kegger. I still remember seeing Vonnegut's cheerful, rumpled-suit person in the midst of that madness and thinking, "Is that guy real?" To start with, Vonnegut looked like Central Casting's idea of a novelist more than he looked like an actual novelist. And a famous writer -- a writer famous enough to be taught in English classes, anyways -- showing up in a movie that even my 12-year-old self could recognize as somewhat trashy (though awesome) seemed so out of line with the mein of a Serious Writer that I immediately became interested in his work.

Vonnegut's inability to take himself too seriously -- so much so that he was perfectly willing to cameo in a Rodney Dangerfield movie -- characterizes his writing, and it's what made his books the perfect gateway writer for young readers like me moving from genre books to literary fiction. Kurt Vonnegut was the first "serious" writer I ever read, but I read him precisely because he wasn't "serious." His novels were approachable and playful and used plots and techniques I was already familiar with from the sci-fi novels of my youth.

In Back to School, Mellon's essay on Vonnegut -- written by Vonnegut -- gets an F. "Whoever did write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut!" Mellon's professor rages. Cut to Mellon on the phone, shouting, "And another thing, Vonnegut! I'm gonna stop payment on the check!" I always liked to imagine a giggling Vonnegut on the other end of this conversation, lighting a cigar with Thornton Mellon's check, delighted to have delivered an intentionally incompetent essay on himself. So it goes!