The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut
The first time I ever read Vonnegut, I was eighteen, and I was in jail. It wasn’t for anything major, just a failure to appear on a traffic citation. I was totally broke, I didn’t have a place to live, and now I couldn’t drive. I spent five days locked up, and it was a paralyzing experience: anxiety mixed with utter boredom and constant dread. Time stood still. My bail was $75, and I couldn’t even pay it. I had nothing but time in there, so I did what I always did: I read.
There was a cart of books in jail, and one of the books was called Slapstick, by a guy named Kurt Vonnegut. I began reading it; it was a strange, darkly twisted story told with almost nursery rhyme simplicity, and segmented paragraphs divided by three centered dots, (a trademark of Vonnegut's writing, I would later find out). Around half way through, I realized the middle of the book had been torn out, a lot of pages were missing, and I couldn’t finish it.
Slapstick is one of Vonnegut's worst books, in my opinion, along with Timequake. Even Vonnegut admits as much—he’s rated some of his novels on a scale of of A+ to D (see bottom of page). Timequake isn’t on the list for some reason. Maybe it’s just that bad.
Anyway, fast forward four years later, age twenty two, when I really discovered the literary voice of Kurt Vonnegut. Like so many people, I began with Slaughterhouse Five. An anti-war novel about time travel, and the Dresden bombings in Germany, it was quirky and dark, easily digestible, and surprisingly thought provoking on top of it all. In real life, Vonnegut was a POW in Dresden during the bombings, which is a fascinating aspect of the novel. There were some stylistic elements and themes in the book that I would recognize in Vonnegut’s work time and time again. It was a pretty good read.
Next, I read Cat’s Cradle. It’s a sci fi novel that satirizes science, military weaponry, and religion, just to name a few. All with a cast of zany characters, propelled by Vonnegut’s idiosyncratic narration.
“Interesting,” I concluded.
And then I read The Sirens of Titan, and I was fucking hooked. That was the book that changed my life. I began reading it and my mind completely expanded into Vonnegut’s galactic space opera of time travel and interplanetary space voyages; he delves into the celestial, the cosmic inner workings of the universe, he explores the burden of fate and purpose, he questions and answers the meaning of life . . . reading this book as my life shifted and fell apart and changed drastically all around me, it was like the story had found me at just the right time.
I was staying in Las Cruces, New Mexico at the time. I remember pacing around the cool cement floor of a massive and modern high ceilinged mansion out in the desert. It was my girlfriend’s mother’s place; we were visiting for a bit. I love the desert: the dry heat and the smell of rain, the arid landscape . . . the sensations of the desert have always spoken to me. Reading The Sirens of Titan, an early edition hardcover, out on the porch in the New Mexico sun, the book blasted my mind wide open.
My relationship with my girlfriend Madeleine was ending. We were visiting her mother as the bond between us disintegrated past the point of no return. There was an inevitable goodbye that we both had to come to terms with. I cried briefly during one of our last arguments, which was one of the only fights that we had ever had. I had never cried over a girl before, but I loved Maddie, and we were both hurting.
She wanted to stay in New Mexico, and I wanted to eventually move back to California. There was too much of a disconnect; it became clear that we didn’t have a future together. I was in a mood of acceptance and numb mourning, although somewhere deep down, I felt stable. When things happen that are beyond your control, you can either fight it or accept it, and I accepted that a certain part of my life was ending, and a new unknown story was beginning. My uncertainty and readiness to embrace change was mirrored in the novel that I read.
The Sirens of Titan is a romp through time and space, the main character, Malachi Constant, is a handsome rogue billionaire playboy. He ends up going through multiple transformations of lives, on different planets, as different people, all of them indistinguishable from the previous ones. And I connected with that: the blindness with which we navigate through our world, the minute amount of control that we have, the changes we undergo, the illusion of free will as we move through our life.
Drinking bourbon on the rocks from the mansion's kitchen, I read out on the porch. Pacing on top of the adobe wall that surrounded the back yard, I felt like even though I had nothing to my name, no money, no girlfriend, nowhere to live once I went back to Durango, I knew that I would be okay. I identified with the space wanderer Malachi Constant. I was going to let the universe hurl me like a stone.
My last night with Madeleine, we lay in bed together, the vast emptiness of the mansion resting heavy on my heart, the finality of us settling in. She drove me to the Greyhound bus stop in the early morning darkness and we said goodbye. All I had was my acoustic guitar, a bag of clothes, and some books. All I’ve ever really needed.
I reread the book immediately after finishing it. I read it as I lived out of my car, as I slept in a tent out in the woods where there were bears and rain and flash floods, as I went stomping through the nightmarish summer thunder storms in the dark nighttime forrest, stoned, drunk, alone, maybe a little scared.
I read The Sirens of Titan multiple times throughout my life: sitting at the middle bar at the Farmer's Market in LA, having just exited a toxic relationship; another moment of complete and utter transition, floating in the uncertainty of everything, my existence completely palpable because I had no idea what was going to happen. The Sirens of Titan once again spoke to me. I've read it five or six times, and I'm sure I’ll read it again.
At this point in my life, I’ve read every single Kurt Vonnegut novel. Every. Single. One. There’s a few posthumous works of his speeches that I haven’t gotten around to, but all of his novels have been worth the read (Timequake excepted). To this day, The Sirens of Titan is still my favorite Vonnegut book.
Here are some of my favorite novels by Kurt Vonnegut, in numerical order:
The Sirens of Titan
Jailbird
Mother Night
Cat’s Cradle
Slaughterhouse Five
Galapagos
Welcome to the Monkey House (short story collection)
Vonnegut’s rating scale:
Note: For some reason, Vonnegut’s novels Bluebeard, Timequake, Deadeye Dick, and Hocus Pocus are not on the list. Also missing are some other short story collections.