Matching Mixed Media - The Brothers Vonnegut (Nonfiction novel, 2015) and Twisters (Fiction film, 2024)
We are who we are because of a combination of both of circumstances and our consequences.
Example
It is 2016. Maybe 2017. Memory is a faulty thing. I am in an independent bookstore somewhere in the Twin Cities because I am visiting a woman who I had dated briefly the year prior. I need something to consume on the flight back and Ginger Strand’s The Brothers Vonnegut: Science and Fiction in the House of Magic catches my eye.
I had always had a passing fascination with Kurt Vonnegut and was particularly fond of Player Piano and Cat’s Cradle. I did not know he had a brother. I did not know his brother was one of the leading scientists in the invention of cloud seeding nor did I know that said research was the direct inspiration for Ice-9. I devoured the book on the flight back.
I would see the woman that drew me to the Twin Cities once more before exploding that bridge with the inelegance that was four very long text messages whose confessional contents I will not share publicly, but you get the gist.
That said, I would not have gotten into creative non-fiction if I had not read this book and I would not have read this book if not for her.
Circumstance. Consequence.
Example
It is the tail end of 2024. My friend Steenz has done nothing but laud the 2024 not-exactly-a-sequel-to-the-1996-film-Twister film, Twisters.
I had vague memories of watching the original Twister as a child. The movie looked intriguing enough and the repeated recommendation was enough for me to make it the last film I watched in 2024 (or at least one of the last films). It was also inadvertently the tipping to convince me to open a Letterboxd to keep better track of my feelings about any given movie at any given time.
Among other things, the movie makes science look really cool (a sentiment that is particularly important to me as someone whose first memory of a movie was the original Jurassic Park) and also the arc words of “if you feel it, chase it.” I’ve been doing that more recently. Intentionally or unintentionally.
Consequence. Circumstance.
One last example
A couple weeks ago, a storm system built to the west of me and barrelled through St. Louis. Winds knocked my power out and the weather was bad enough that my cats and I had to seek shelter in the basement for the first time ever of living in my house.
My phone still works. I spend three hours updating folks and watching stories on mobile data. It gets me thinking about storms.
So about this particular pair of media
I wholeheartedly encourage anyone reading this to seek out both the book and movie if you haven’t already. Amongst other things, they are entangled in my mind.
Both are stories about how science spurs creativity, both in an academic and entertainment sense. Both are stories about how trying to understand the natural world generates a fascination with it and that fascination teeters on obsession. They are about pairs of individuals who experience science in vastly different ways and reconciling the fact that their paths are valid in their own away. And crucially, both are stories about attempting to tame the environment. This is not something unique to humans (beavers being the first and foremost example of natural engineers), but it is something we do attempt on a scale that approaches hubris.
Bernard Vonnegut, the elder Vonnegut brother, was scientist who is credited with the discovery of silver iodide as a means of cloud seeding, to induce rain and snow (a fitting inspiration for Ice-9 no?). Kate Carter, Twisters’ heroine played by Daisy Edgar-Jones, research involves using silver iodide to stop tornadoes.
Their counterparts in their respective narratives are Kurt Vonnegut, a helpless technical writer who eventually breaks free into the world of fiction, and Tyler Owens (played by Glen Powell), a maverick storm chaser who also happens to science as hard as Carter.
They are who they are due to a combination of circumstance and consequence. Their collision courses inevitable either by circumstance (familiar bonds) or consequences (a choice to try and save a town). Their stories are worth consuming, individually and together.
A coda
I am a technical writer by trade. When I first started, I saw a quote attributed to Kurt Vonnegut:
Technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers.
My attempts to verify the veracity are shaky and immaterial. There is a truth to it. My day job does not want my personality, just the knowledge, just the mechanics. My day job feeds my work into Generative AI models in pursuit of a dream that will not come true and the drivel provided is actually devoid of soul and care (and often times, fact). And I continue my work because I know that even though the person using my documentation will never really know who I am, they will understand me by the work I did: the mouse clicks, the key strokes, the odd typo missed by an editor.
And I take this work elsewhere and the lessons through them and take the framework and instruct and teach and inform and find my way back to the actual story I want to tell.
All these posts: a map, an explanation, and attempt.
An honest attempt to understand and be understood.