Fugato

Here’s John Cleese, in real life, delivering a eulogy at the memorial service for his friend Graham Chapman, who had tragically died of cancer at 48.

… and I guess that we’re all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, such capability for kindness, of such unusual intelligence, should now so suddenly be spirited away at the age of only forty-eight, before he’d achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he’d had enough fun.

Well, I feel that I should say, “Nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard, I hope he fries.”

He said this to honor his good friend, and he explained that succinctly: “Anything for him but mindless good taste.”

Kurt Vonnegut must have been the greatest optimist of all pessimists. His novel Cat’s Cradle ends with a jolly narrative of the destruction of life on Earth; armageddon with a grin.

The book probably does not translate well because Vonnegut seems to love wordplay.

In bokononism, a delightful religion made up by Vonnegut, one major ritual is boko-maru, wherein two people sit barefoot facing each other, “letting their soles meet.”

Cat’s Cradle tells of an ominous invention, a new crystal structure for ice having a melting point of 45.8 °C. Below that temperature, it swiftly crystallizes all water into ice upon contact, including the oceans and the water in the human body. This mischievous material is called ice-nine … which sounds like asinine. Vonnegut must have considered this word a good fit for man’s 20th-century pastime of finding practical, cost-effective ways to demolish the planet.

It’s April. I’m travelling in North Cyprus with Tuğberk, who knows every square inch of his island. In a remote clearing at Akdeniz we find clay pottery shards. Tuğberk inspects them for a while, and then:

Tuğberk: “2000 years old.”

Gulli: “How can you tell?”

Tuğberk: “From the sign.”

[Points to a sign saying the site is 2000 years old.]

Gulli: “Oh.”

My uncle Jakob has worked many jobs in his life besides his respectable career with the United Nations Centre for Human Rights and as a judge in the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has been a farmer, a schoolteacher, a freelancing columnist, published a book of parodic poetry; all sorts of things.

One of these jobs, long ago, involved writing the responses to “Bréf til Vikunnar,” a Dear-Abby-type personal advice column in an Icelandic weekly called “Vikan” (The Week).

Jakob told me of one letter written by a couple who were in anguish about their collapsing domestic situation: they could not sleep because they had an infant who never slept and cried constantly — for fear of the family cat. The cat was very dear to the couple and all that, and the lack of sleep was driving them bonkers; they were at the end of their tether. What could they do?

His response: “Have you considered getting rid of the baby?”

That marked the end of Jakob’s work on “Bréf til Vikunnar.”