Playing chess with Mr. Vonnegut

Playing chess with Kurt Vonnegut
(Kurt Vonnegut died Wednesday night in Manhattan. He was 84.)

by Andrew Leonard

…My father and Vonnegut were good friends. One trickle-down side effect of this was that, in between devouring Asimov and Heinlein and a score of other lesser science fiction lights, I was also handed by my Dad “The Sirens of Titan” and told, “Heinlein’s a fascist, read this.” Another perk was having him crouch down on the floor that Thanksgiving, eschewing the give and take of New York conversational tango, and invite me to play a game of chess.

On a whim, he suggested that we rearrange the board. Why did the pawns have to go in front, those sacrificial lambs about to be chewed up by the slaughter-house of the front lines, those powerless vassals of the high and mighty? Let’s force the feudal lords out of their foxholes and into the hurly-burly!

Let’s put the pawns in the back row, he proposed. Let’s put the knights and bishops and kings and queens in the front rank!

Oh, the thrill of chess sacrilege!

Of course I was game — how could I not be!? As we explored the craziness inherent in this new lineup, I had only a shred of comprehension as to how this casual act of ad-libbed creativity was of a piece with everything that Vonnegut represented, as an artist, as a writer who willed strange new worlds that spoke directly to all-too-familiar human dilemmas. Mostly, I figured him as a really nice guy who enjoyed messing with the head of an extremely dweeby 12-year-old.

And, well, shaking up the board like that was kind of weird.

And I liked it.

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